Recording Business Transactions in Textbook and Receipt Form

Abstract

An important prerequisite for meeting professional demands upon completion of an apprenticeship is for apprentices to possess the ability to transfer the professional knowledge and skills they acquire in vocational education and training (VET) to various professional situations. This paper presents the empirical results on knowledge and skills transfer from an exploratory study in commercial VET. In a computer-based test environment, 470 commercial apprentices performed business transactions with the same content but with two different forms of presentation. The results indicated that the apprentices did not fully transfer their knowledge and skills within the same context. However, interest in finance and accounting, prior school knowledge and learning opportunities were able to explain their performances. The results suggest that further research on transfer processes that reflect different theoretical approaches is needed.