The aim of this dissertation is to describe and critically discuss the literacies apprentice-students in the Health and Social Care Programme in the upper secondary school in Sweden are given access to during the workplace-based learning part of the education. The study draws on sociocultural understandings of learning and knowing, and on perspectives developed in the field of new literacy studies of literacies as situated social practices. Ethnographically inspired methods consisting of participant observation, interviews and study of textual artefacts in both the work and school domain are used to generate data. Literacy events and literacy practices students are given the opportunity to participate in are explored as a part of tasks in the work or school domain. Additionally, the literacies students do not gain access in these workplaces but are crucial in health care and social work are explored.  The results indicate that literacies in the work domain are to a large degree embedded in other work tasks. This contributes to making a large part of the reading and writing invisible for the students and their supervisors. Access to literacies at the workplace is not discussed between teachers and supervisors. A major finding is that students’ access to digital literacies in the work domain depends on the local culture of each workplace and on individual supervisor’s decisions, bringing questions of equality in the apprentice-education to the forefront. The digital literacies support central activities in the workplaces; not getting access to these practices raises questions about what kind of working life the apprentice-students are being prepared for. Thus the meaning given to the term employability, which is central in policy-documents for the apprentice education, seems to be enacted as preparing the students for a job in one position, rather than offering broad competences for advancement or changes in working life. School tasks can function in a compensatory way by introducing central texts in Health and Social care work for students, but writing these kinds of texts in the school domain are part of different literacy practices than when writing them in the work domain. Furthermore the schools have no possibilities to offer students access to the kinds of digital systems that are used in the work domain.

The aim of the project is to point out the necessary support for studying craft trades and the motivation to continue later in professional life. I am trying to achieve that through the medium of architecture which is important in the perception of the space in which students, graduates and the whole of society operate.