Train the Trainer training in FribourgTrain-the-trainer programme in the canton of Fribourg: how can comparing cases from different professions reveal a shared principle?
In the bilingual canton of Fribourg, the agri-food sector, industry and the university hub often work across the Sarine, switching daily between French and German. For SHR’s train-the-trainer programme, this raises a question: how can examples reveal a shared line of reasoning without erasing differences between activities?
What the literature establishes: comparison rather than juxtaposition
Dedre Gentner, Jeffrey Loewenstein and Leigh Thompson (2003, Journal of Educational Psychology) show, in negotiation-learning experiments, that explicitly comparing cases can support transfer of their shared structure to a new situation. The useful work involves more than reading two stories: it requires mapping the relationships between them. For a trainer, this suggests asking “what problem and reasoning recur here?” rather than simply “can you think of a similar example?”
The mechanism: building a schema beyond surface details
Mary L. Gick and Keith J. Holyoak (1983, Cognitive Psychology) examine how multiple examples can contribute to schema induction and analogical transfer. Their experiments highlight the role of the representation constructed from examples, rather than their mere availability. For bilingual training, this suggests a pedagogical hypothesis: making the relationships between constraints, decisions and consequences explicit could help learners move beyond differences in professional terminology.
The hasty conclusion: all cases are interchangeable
It would be excessive to conclude that an agri-food case can replace an industrial or university situation without qualification. A similar storyline guarantees neither shared regulatory constraints nor equivalent responsibilities. Comparison should therefore identify both the shared principle and the differences that prevent exactly the same solution from being applied. (our executive and employee training programmes)
The limits: translation alone does not establish an analogy
These studies do not address bilingual vocational training in the canton of Fribourg and cannot predict a numerical effect there. They illuminate a learning mechanism without demonstrating that a straightforward French–German translation preserves every relevant relationship within a case. The common practice of accumulating sector-specific examples should therefore be distinguished from a genuine guided-comparison activity.
A practical check in Fribourg
In a hypothetical workshop in Fribourg, a trainer could offer three fictional cases: an agri-food production instruction, a change to an industrial machine setting and a protocol handover in a university laboratory, each requiring responsibility to be clarified before action. After a guided comparison of the first two cases, presented in French and German with vocabulary support, participants would analyse the third individually, without first receiving a model answer. A checklist would record separately whether they state the shared principle, connect it to features of the new case and identify a limit to the analogy. The number of responses meeting each criterion would provide a verifiable descriptive measure, without being presented as causal evidence of the exercise’s effectiveness. To go further: explore the Train the Trainer training in Fribourg in the canton of Fribourg, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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