26.1. Introduction

The top-down manager–student relationship has always been the mode of transmission of predominant knowledge¹, but at the end of the 20th Century, this practice began to be challenged. Indeed, a major paradigm shift has shaken the modes of representation on which our societies have operated for millennia: paternal power existed under Roman antiquity, and this symbolic role of fatherly power has continued to be perpetuated to this day in all social relations. These changes are of the same order as those highlighted by Jack Goody (2007), when the birth of writing contributed to the advent of Neolithic societies that allowed the emergence of empires.

As Jacques Lacan proclaimed: “Without a father, no point of reference, no place among my peers?” If traditional points of reference are challenged because they are obsolete, a situation that generates fears, anxieties and worries, today’s world must create new points of reference, different from traditional ones. These are new and completely different relational forms of relationship on which these new points of reference will be constructed. These are democratic modes between adults. This requires people who know how to recognize each other. To do this, it is necessary for everyone to respect the other. This requires entering into modes of discussion and having the ability to debate. The next question is how these discussions will lead to democratically based, rather than autocratic, decision-making methods (Supiot 2015). Intended to be implemented, these are modes of regulation in relations between people that require the implementation of a reference framework (Rosanvallon 2018) built on principles and values.

Over the past few decades, we have been moving towards relational modes that are at odds with traditional ones. They are characterized by the questioning of the chief’s authority, corresponding to the notion of the pater familias who held the patria potestas over his wife, children and slaves. Potestas was the “life or death” power that the father had over his family. This notion was perpetuated until the early 1970s. In France, for example, it was not until June 1970 that a law replaced paternal power with parental authority (Hefez 2016). This legislative change transformed family relationships. Indeed, this legislation called into question the position of women as “minors”. Whether in relation to children, in making decisions about the household or his wife’s life (signing an employment contract, opening a bank account, etc.), it was necessary for the husband to give his consent. This model, which made Engels say that the wife was the husband’s proletarian (Engels 1982), was the one that was found in all strata of society, at the religious, economic, social, cultural and political levels. At all levels, it was always the same pattern of relationship that applied to everyone: either you were dominant or you were dominated. The Taylorian work organization has highlighted this notion of the engineer who defines the organization of work and the worker, the latter having to apply orders and be supervised by the foreman. In all social fields, the same pattern prevailed: dominant-dominated, knowing-learner, leader (or small leader) and performer. It is the questioning of this relationship that is currently underway throughout the world, with more or less progress depending on the society.

However, it is not only family relationships that have been disrupted. It is also and above all the questioning of the father’s power corresponding to a broader questioning of the manager’s authority. The symbolic social references of the father’s power are being replaced by others but taking a different symbolic form, that of peers. A vertical and downward authority is being replaced by more horizontal relationships. Information and communication technologies are developing in the same transversal direction, which contributes profoundly to changing the relationship with knowledge.

As a result, new and more horizontal forms of social relations are emerging. At the same time, we can observe the increased weight of informal interactions that are now reshaping collectives. It is within this framework that apprenticeships are being rethought, in a context of a paradigm shift in the belief that they are also a political issue related to empowering citizens (Barbot and Camatarri 1999) and social cohesion. At the meso level, this implies accepting the questioning of trainers, as well as managers, knowing that the now more central role of peers and third parties destabilizes the status traditionally attached to these functions². Seen in its broadest sense, an apprenticeship thus refers to a mechanism “for the construction and assimilation of a new response” (Berbaum 1994), which modifies the subject and its environment at the same time. Reflection on apprenticeships deserves, as such, to be anchored in broader philosophical debates on the links between subject, nature and knowledge. In the second edition of the preface to Critique of Pure Reason, Kant (2006, p. 13) asks the following questions: “Why then has nature afflicted our reason with an aspiration to pursue its restless trail, as one of its most important occupations?”

Beyond these philosophical questions and the socioeconomic issues related to the development of apprenticeships, thinking about these processes also makes it possible to rethink certain representations of the teacher and the learner that are now obsolete in order to build this relationship on different forms. This is what we would like to do in this chapter in order to highlight the new challenges and the modalities of transmission in such a context. If taking into account the voice and knowledge of learners is now a key issue for organizations, how can we promote the exchange of practices and knowledge? What spaces should be open to apprentices?

After having discussed the upheavals that have affected traditional conceptions of learning and transmission, we will focus on the exchange of practices around the use of digital technology, work-linked training and support, as well as the place of the learners’ voices in these exchanges.

This digital revolution ultimately means questioning the role of teacher–researchers by rethinking training, teaching methods and content or transmission methods. It is a break with traditional teaching, from the knower, the bearer of knowledge, to a learner, seen as relatively passive. The digital training revolution is only just beginning, especially since the consequences of cognitive sciences are gradually being integrated into nanotechnologies and neurosciences. Much remains to be invented, and we are only at the beginning of these cultural and economic transformations.

26.2. Escaping narrow rationalism

The essential point of modern education is rationalism³, i.e. the focus on rational logic alone. This rationalist logic favors the power of the knowledgeable over the learners, who are supposed to rise to their level. Other values are emerging, emphasizing the importance of subjectivity in relation to pure objectivity, diversity and particularism versus universalism, interdisciplinarity versus disciplinary confinement and, especially, collective learning and intelligence versus individualism and inter-individual competition, the call to creativity versus repetitive learning. Applied to pedagogy, these principles aim to develop creativity and rehabilitate the imagination, to enrich reality (purely rationalist and materialistic) through dreaming, creation, to make it a real re-enchantment. Training, like most sectors, must therefore (re)invent new practices and approaches that break with the existing operating methods. In contrast to the leader who knew and therefore decided, controlled and sanctioned, the logic of sharing and exchange can only really work well if it is based on collaborative behavior between peers. Innovative teaching must therefore know how to “unlearn before learning”, as Erasmus said, adding that “the first task is the more difficult of the two”.

26.3. The immensity of the cyberspace of knowledge

Beyond the technophile appeal of the new tools deployed in training, it seems necessary to take a clear look at the consequences of the in-depth changes in digital technology in both initial and continuing training. All training courses operated in a vertical mode of content. The transfer of knowledge was delivered in the only form of teaching: the lecture course. It was therefore necessary to go to school to access knowledge. Proximity is no longer a necessary condition for learning (or teaching). With digital technology, knowledge is available at our fingertips by making a request in cyberspace that is accessible to everyone. Today, this cyberspace is a reservoir of all the world’s knowledge. Everyone can produce new knowledge and access it. Everyone is part of an approach that encourages sharing and co-production, such as Wikipedia. Distance thereby allows the emergence of immersive collaboration and breaks this historical constraint of needing a unique place for access to knowledge.

26.4. A new way of thinking

New technologies make us think differently from the technology developed by book culture. Reading, until now, has been a cognitive and psychological process structured by an individual, solitary and linear approach to access to the written word. The individual is alone in front of his book, his page with his pen. The culture developed by digital technology is very different. Indeed, digital technology forces us to read differently with a logic of collecting ideas, from one hypertext link to another in a network operation. This is the very basis for the use of these new tools. Moreover, if some of these tools are qualified as social, it is because they work on collaborative principles by allowing co-production between actors, such as Wikis.

Blogs and other forms of participatory communication can therefore lead to a “more critical and introspective culture” (Benkler 2006), where citizens have greater power through their ability to publish their own assessments on a range of issues. Many means of training will be able to be built using these tools to allow different people to collaborate with each other. These thus constitute a vector of creativity and efficiency for training by generating exchanges and sharing. However, the transition from “literacy” to “digital literacy” (Silva and Lacan 2015) raises new questions. Indeed, hypertextuality in cyberspace develops a loss of attention (or rather a difficulty of attention) and concentration of the Internet user. The tendency for the Internet user is to imagine that reading or listening to a video will make it possible to acquire the knowledge broadcast. This apparent ease of access to knowledge on the Internet is in line with the danger that Socrates perceived in the book as a “dead” prosthesis⁴. Finally, this direct access to knowledge, without the filter and structuring that a teacher allows, promotes the important development of a form of a “self-taught” culture that does not facilitate the acquisition of critical thinking.

26.5. Developing critical thinking skills

Learning requires the use of information available in cyberspace. There is a real issue as many sites (which are not necessarily mentally conspiring) contain numerous pieces of fake information and other counterfeits. False, approximate and/or half-true information is legion. They may be scientific impostures that are the result of deliberate will or naivety but which, in any case, constitute trickery. So what is their relevance? What is their credibility? How can we sort through the sources of information available on the Internet? The question of the credibility of information contained in cyberspace is an open one. This is a major challenge today.

To be able to make choices, the person must have a critical mind. And how can one be acquired, if not by possessing a general culture, that which was once referred to as the humanities? Only then can the person properly sort through a large amount of information. It is only by sharing with others that she can build an informed opinion.

In the context of digital humanities, a whole stream of reflection is emerging around the ability of Internet users to analyze what they find on the Web and know how to interpret it. It is in fact an apprenticeship of critical thinking that cannot be done through exercises or quizzes. To build a critical mind, each Internet user, i.e. each of us, must make a path that is part of metacognition, learning how to learn. The pedagogical postures of today and tomorrow, from De Vecchi (2016) to Breton (2015), underline that learning to debate and communicate is at the same time acquiring critical thinking skills. It has become a major position in the world of business 2.0., which cannot be improvised. To do this, it is necessary to deploy new pedagogical methods, which do not require technological tools, in order to support learners – or allow them to support themselves – to understand, take a position, seek arguments, illustrate them and take into account the point of view of the opposite party. Learning to listen in order to build arguments requires new pedagogical methods. This Copernican revolution requires creating places and moments in formations to learn to think and communicate with others. Trainers are trained to transmit, but waiting for them to train in critical thinking means asking them to change their position, to acquire a new state of mind that constitutes a Copernican revolution: to accept giving of their and to exchange in positions of equality; to move from a function that is still essentially based on a traditional transmission of knowledge and vertical organization to horizontality to share and exchange knowledge among peers.

26.6. Solving problems

Digital or not, the basic principles of training remain the same: focus and learning. However, with digital technology, we learn above all to solve problems. It is on this principle that the pedagogy of Xavier Niel’s School 42 works like that of Simplon.com, a social factory of coders in Montreuil. It is through exchanges of practices between learners that the pedagogy of these schools develops on the basis of principles developed by Étienne Wenger (1998). Over the past 20 years, he has conceptualized peer learning communities that foster the exchange and sharing of experiences between peers (Cristol 2016). This is how skills are increasingly acquired. We move from the law of fathers (verticality) to that of peers (horizontality). These communities of practice are more effective than traditional training structured around the knowledge/learner gap. The horizontality of practical exchanges between learners is more relevant than verticality in a knowledge transfer. The teacher/trainer’s role is transformed from a knowledge carrier to a tutor, facilitator and coordinator. As a result, many e-learning courses mix face-to-face and distance approaches. This work-linked training makes it possible to sequence the training and to better distribute the contents. Theoretical contributions are made at a distance, while the classroom is reserved for simulation exercises. It thereby facilitates exchanges with the tutors, who are factors of feedback and development⁵.