Context related evolution of conception of students during professional traineeship in Guadeloupe.

Résumé En

We focus on some French BTS (Brevet de Technicien Supérieur / Advanced Technician Certificate), namely tourism and assistant manager, which are two important diplomas for the local development and in which microeconomic and management sciences plays a great part. The French BTS is a short Vocational Diploma prepared in two years after the “baccalauréat”, with national programs and evaluation criteria.The successful candidates are supposed to be immediately employable, especially in their local geographical environment. Thus, there exists a paradox between the national definition of the diploma and the local contexts of teaching and (supposed) professional integration. However, the professional traineeship plays a great part in this diploma. For this reason, it seems interesting to investigate how the conception of students evolve, with respect to the aforementioned paradox, during and after professional traineeship. For this purpose, questionnaire surveys have been carried out at various moment of the scholar during two years (two cohorts).The main results can be summarized as follows. The professional traineeship is positively perceived by the students at the beginning of the training. They consider it as very important for the development of professional skills. Over time, this positive representation progresses homogeneously. The students are convinced ofthe efficiency of professional traineeship: their professional project strengthened but, they also realize that their professional future will not necessarily be in Guadeloupe. This is probably linked with a better representation of the economic situation of Guadeloupe and shows, as excepted, that the context of the professional traineeship modifies the representation of students. For the BTS assistant manager, we specially note a degradation of the representation of the profession of assistant manager, whereas this training’s choice was realized with conviction.