The Apprenticeship in Craft Guilds in Preindustrial Europe: A Model for Engineering Education in the European Higher Education Area

This work aims to carry out a comparative study between the apprenticeship system in the craft guilds in preindustrial Europe and the educational methods used in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), with the aim of highlighting the role, within the field of engineering education in the EHEA, of the practice-driven approach (learning by doing), which yielded excellent results during centuries to craft guilds, since their institutionalized apprenticeship system was one of the reasons for their long-term survival. The transmission of technical skills and associated innovation were effectively supported by craft guilds but not as a main objective and even, sometimes, as a cause of undesired effects (formation of future competitors, revelation of secrets or shift of control over the production process from the owners of skills to the owners of capital. It has been demonstrated that both the organizational modalities or scenarios and the educational methods of the EHEA (except the binomial scenario-method formed by the theoretical class and the master lecture) used in engineering education, have a clear precedent in the preindustrial craft guilds, which emphasize the learning process instead of the teaching process and established, several centuries in advance and without intending to, a model for the EHEA. Keywords: Craft guilds; Apprenticeship; Learning by doing; Engineering education; EEES