Når lærlingen møter arbeidslivets vurderingslogikk: Yrkessosialisering i det norske salgsfaget

[The apprentice’s encounter with the assessment logic of working life: Vocational socialisation in the Norwegian sales trade]

Abstract

The article examines the role of formative assessment to occupational socialisation processes in retail apprenticeship in Norway. The analysis draws upon a qualitative study of managers and apprentices in the Sales Vocational Education and Training (VET). The Norwegian sales trade struggles to gain foothold. The skilled sales assistant constitutes neither an established social category, nor an employee category. Sales VET is directed towards a labour market sector depicted in terms of high turnover, traditionally valuing soft skills and personality over formal credentials. The article aims to extend understandings of apprentices’ subjective accounts of the assessment they are subjected to and coconstructing. Three different assessment practices integrated in the daily work are analysed. First, retail work centres on customer interaction. The feedback the apprentices receive from the customers, as a type of user-evaluation, provides rich and immediate learning resources. Second, the retail apprentices were thrown into tasks from day one, and are thus shown trust and given responsibility. This recognition by gradual access to more complex tasks serves as another type of assessment, implying increased self-confidence and sentiments of commitment. Third, the sales figures of each apprentice were transparently registered and monitored in the computer system of the shop, representing assessment as management control. By deploying the notion of assessment logic, the article argues that one is better equipped to grasp the interplay between learning, assessment, becoming and working in the retail sector. The interactive nature of customeroriented service work implies re-interpretation of the traditional assessment nexus of trainer – apprentice. The findings of the article show that the apprentices ascribed customer evaluation of great importance to their learning and becoming.