Supporting Degree Apprentices through the school/work/university transition: a social capital lens

Abstract

This paper reports on the early stages of a PhD study into supporting Engineering Degree Apprentices in a UK University through their contemporaneous transition into work and study.  After briefly setting the context and rationale for the study it considers the development of the research design and integrates this with the corpus of literature to develop a framework for the primary research developed from Laurillard’s Conversational Framework work and the ideas of social capital and habitus.  The contributions of the overall research are noted under the Aims and Objectives section, work reported herein contributes by developing a unique framework for understanding the experience of Degree Apprentices in the UK.