The differences between on- and off-job learning environments continue to be the subject of much debate, and the notion of complementarity between them is a perennial issue for most forms of training and development. This paper grapples with this issue in relation to apprentices in the building industry in Australia. It analyses the different perceptions of complementarity held by apprentices, host employers and college teachers. It strives to understand the diverse meanings of complementarity within the context of communities of practice in which apprentices acquire not only vocational knowledge and skills, but also a sense of identity through internalising sometimes complementary but often contradictory messages from their different learning environments. Their development towards the status of ‘competent tradespersons’ heavily depends on their individual abilities to integrate and synthesise these messages. © 2003, John Wiley and Sons Inc. All rights reserved.
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