Why make apprenticeship simpler? Part 3: Industry jargon

In the fall, we started talking about why we're focused on making apprenticeship simpler. Let's continue that. If you need a refresher, we focus on making apprenticeship simpler because it's inherently complicated. Start with a multi stakeholder agreement and then add in some regulation, and you've got yourself a recipe for complication. Now let's make it more complicated. Let's layer in industry jargon.

Layer in industry jargon

Apprenticeships work across all kinds of industries. Apprenticeships work across all kinds of organizational types -- from unions to colleges to employers. Each of these industries and organizations has their own jargon.

The apprenticeship system has their own jargon on top of all of that, and it's not jargon that's necessarily familiar to any of the above groups until you're steeped in apprenticeship for a while.

Jargon for the experts

Apprenticeship jargon is known to the regulators -- the apprenticeship agencies -- and the experts who eat, sleep, and breath apprenticeships. However, few employers, educators, or apprentices come to the table with previous knowledge of apprenticeship terms.

At times, it seems like apprenticeship language was drawn up in a workforce or government think tank for use of an in crowd while forgetting that success of these terms depends on adoption from the public.

An example of basic jargon

I think this is really hard for government to appreciate, but apprenticeship terms just aren't well known to the general public. Here's a great example from a conversation we once had with a new apprenticeship program.

This conversation was with an internationally known tech company, worth billions, a brand named used as a verb -- all of the potential advantages you might hope for when starting an apprenticeship program. The group in charge of running their apprenticeship all came from top schools, had loads of industry experience, and likely won their positions over 100s of other people. Brain matter and resources were not a problem here.

This group once admitted to us that, at first, they did not even understand what it meant to be time-based versus competency-based. They had to wrap their heads around what their ATR was even asking them when they needed to define their approach.

Since that's just the very beginning of apprenticeship-specific jargon, it became clear to us there's a whole ocean of terms that're problematic when discussing apprenticeships. It's why one of the number one goals of this blog is to simply explain terms and ideas in apprenticeship in language that's not layered in its own jargon to do so.

Translation examples

To give you a few examples, we always try to speak human as opposed to apprenticeship.

Why say related instruction, related technical instruction, related supplemental instruction, RTI or RSI? Why can't we just call it coursework? Or curriculum?

Why call it a work process schedule? Does that mean anything to anyone outside of apprenticeship? Could it just be a training plan? Or on-the-job training plan?

There's all kinds of examples like this, but those two cut to the core of how difficult it is to break into apprenticeship jargon. They're the heart of what's unique about apprenticeships -- combining classroom and real world learning -- but we can't even describe them transparently to the general public.

A complicated system

So, now we have a multi stakeholder agreement, with regulations, and a difficult to decipher jargon. The need for making apprenticeship simpler is only growing. For now, we're doing our part on the jargon by explaining these terms as we go. Look for Definitions posts on our blog, and you'll learn what time-based and competency-based, ATR, standards, and a whole bunch of other terms mean.