Revisiting the system concept to understand Co-operative Education

Mehdi BOUDJAOUI University of Lille 1, France Gilles LECLERCQ University of Lille 1, France In this contribution, we mobilized the central concepts of a theory of systems in connection with Co-operative Education. We focused on the multiple component nature, through which ideal, functional and factorial arrangements make a system. This allowed us to contribute to a reflection on making the fundamental processes involved in this type of training more understandable. Here, Co-operative Education programs become an emerging property relative to certain training experiences, not necessarily having the theoretical characteristics of a system. In this article, we have first revisited the system concept. Then we laid the foundation for a model for understanding the mechanisms of training, and finally came back to the specificity of Cooperative Education systems and empirically illustrating our discussion with two case studies involving university-level teaching in France.