Dual Apprenticeships In Mexico
Published: 3 May 2021
Dual Apprenticeships (DAs) combine school-based learning with structured on-the-job training, leading to vocational qualifications. This model has proven successful in Germanic countries and as a result many middle-income countries, including Mexico, have chosen to adopt DAs.
by Ellen Vanderhoven (School of Education)
Dual Apprenticeships (DAs) combine school-based learning with structured on-the-job training, leading to vocational qualifications. This model has proven successful in Germanic countries and as a result many middle-income countries, including Mexico, have chosen to adopt DAs. In Mexico, the adopted version of the DA model is known as the Modelo Mexicano de Formación Dual (MMFD).
However, policy transfer across different political, economic and social contexts requires thoughtful interrogation of altered concepts, implementation and effects. Framing Mexico as a DA policy recipient, this research investigates how structural and individual contextual conditions and possibilities for agency mediate young people’s transitions through and beyond Dual Apprenticeships (MMFD) and with what consequences for social inequalities.
Furthermore, this research explores how such transitions unfold in the time-specific context of unprecedented global recession triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic beginning in 2020. Innovative longitudinal methodologies will capture the post-MMFD transitions of apprentices in the State of Coahuila due to graduate in summer 2020, including how they have been affected by the changing health and economic conditions and how the MMFD serves young people as they attempt to navigate the uncertainty and precarity of crisis. The research intentionally foregrounds the voices of young ‘policy beneficiaries’ over those of policy experts, exploring how young people reflect on their DA experience, evaluate the programme in light of their personal goals and current and future trajectories and how these narratives shift and evolve over time given seismic contextual change.
This will facilitate greater understanding of how - in the recipient context of Mexico - Dual Apprenticeships operate at the micro level and with what impact on young people’s lives in the medium term. Understanding of these contextual specificities (and variance within them) will shed light on the lived realities of a transferred policy and potentially offer lessons for implementation worldwide. By valorising young people’s own understandings in this way, the research will be especially attentive to the role of the MMFD in reproducing or mitigating inequalities and thus support more effective and equitable implementation of DA models in the Mexican context.
Furthermore, analysis of how these transitions have been shaped by post-pandemic recession and what role the MMFD plays in helping young people navigate crisis conditions will help interrogate global policy hypotheses that DAs can serve as a useful tool for reducing youth unemployment, smoothing school-to-work transitions and supporting social mobility, particularly in times of crisis.
Key event proposed
Knowledge exchange event with key stakeholders in Coahuila, Mexico (TBD, proposed for 2022)
Further information
Linked to GCRF-funded Dual Apprenticeship project (PIs: Oscar Valiente, Mhairi Mackenzie, Srabani Maitra). Field research collaboratively with colleagues at Tec de Monterrey, Mexico City.
First published: 3 May 2021
