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"education"

Professional life counselors will serve an increasingly important role in the life quality of global citizens in the 21st century. The optimal preparation of service providers will reflect basic principles of human development, professional helping, and educational processes. The dynamic systems appreciations of constructivism offer valuable scaffoldings for mentoring and apprenticeship in human helping. Suggestions are made for practical refinements in professional education. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Although most needlestick/sharps injuries (NSIs/SIs) research focuses on health care workers (HCWs), students in hospital internships are also at risk. Investigations that examined NSIsS/SIs in student populations generally studied medical rather than nursing students (NSs). In 1999, approximately 17,000 Taiwanese nursing graduates were exposed to the hazard of NSIs/SIs. We examined the frequency and mechanism of NSIs/SIs among vocational school NSs in southern Taiwan. Between July and December of 1999, within 1 week after the NSs completed their internship training, one of the researchers, who was a teacher in this vocational school, asked them to fill out questionnaires. Five hundred twenty-seven of 550 (92.6%) questionnaires were considered valid. Two hundred sixty-four of 527 (50.1%) responders sustained one or more NSIs/SIs. Ninety-six of 527 (18.2%) responders suffered contaminated NSIs/SIs. The average number of NSIs/SIs per student was 8.0 times/year (4.9 times/student/year for NSIs and 3.1 times/student/year for SIs). NSIs/SIs rates for NSs in 10-week and 4-week internships were significantly different (P =. 039): 53.3% versus 43.7%, respectively. The NSIs/SIs frequencies were influenced by length of internship: 7.3 times/student/year in 10-week internship and 11.7 times/student/year in 4-week internship. Logistic regression analysis indicated that length of internship rotation was statistically significant with respect to contaminated NSIs/SIs (OR = 1.682; 95% CI: 1.005-2.81; P =. 048). The NSIs/SIs frequencies of NSs were higher than those for HCWs. We found that frequency of NSIs/SIs for vocational school NSs is above average. Whether the young age of these NSs put them at greater risk for NSIs/SIs warrants further inquiry.

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In our days, the Competency-Based Approach invades all the fields of the human activity. The author shows the complexity of the word " competence" and its interpretations particularly in the context of globalisation. He points out the origins and the theoritical basis of this trend. Then he insists on the increasing impact of CBET competency based education and training) on the educative and social systems: mixing out of constructivism and comportementalism, transformation of the teacher-strudents relationships, assessment based in priority on outcomes as it occurs in the world of industry. The author analyses the contributions do this trend, its limits and the critics about it. He streses on the importance of adopting a critical and dialectical attitude based on reflexion and research.

Contract learning is an approach to classroom instruction that emphasizes teacher-student collaboration in the teaching-learning process. Participation in instructional decision-making encourages students to take responsibility for what happens to them, and it engenders a greater sense of commitment to the outcomes of the music program. In music education, where large group performance-based instruction is prevalent, students often feel that they are alienated, and the programs do not meet their personal needs. This article illustrates how the strategy can be adapted for music instruction, and outlines the benefits that contract learning offers for fostering student participation in the instructional process. Copyright © 2004 International Society for Music education.

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The development of the African workforce is at a critical moment. Wage employment in the modern sector is largely stagnant, with those unable to find these jobs left to pursue self-employment in the informal sector. Unemployment among urban youth is substantial and increasing. Much of the impact of HIV/AIDS has fallen on the educated and the skilled. What can African governments do to ensure that the workplace skills needed for growth and equity are taught and developed in a cost-effective way? Skills Development in Sub-Saharan Africa provides r elevant and useful knowledge that should help African leaders and donor agencies find answers to this question. An update of a World Bank Policy Paper on technical and vocational education and training (TVET), this review assesses a decade's progress on TVET development and reform. The study puts into an African context the Bank's earlier work on TVET, explores issues and recent developments, and reviews recent literature and policy studies. Without being prescriptive, the book provides a comprehensive review of the challenges facing skills development in Africa today and the lessons learned over the past decade. Based upon 14 thematic studie s covering 20 countries and 70 case studies, the volume provides a good starting point for the development of country policies and programs, including a strategic role for governments. The wealth of information specific to training in Africa should be of value not only to African leaders but also to countries in other regions that are facing similar challenges. Skills Development in Sub-Saharan Africa will be of great interest to policymakers, leaders, and international donors with a stake in skills development in the region.

The Central College of Medical Specialities has presented guidelines for modernisation of all postgraduate speciality training programmes. These guidelines include the definition of seven general competency fields, each of them described in more detail with four key competencies. By 2006, all postgraduate speciality training programmes will be based on these competency fields. Furthermore, by then assessment of residents will be focused on the achievement of competence, rather than only on fulfilment of length of specified rotations, numbers of clinical experiences and numbers of performed skills. The application of this competency model emphasises the fact that the education of medical doctors entails more than providing them with the required theoretical and clinical knowledge and skills. © 2004 Van Zuiden Communications B.V. All rights reserved.

In order to provide high quality services in reproductive health, training of health professionals is essential. In Turkey, a project for in-service training of medical residents was conducted in 2003 under the aegis of the Human Resources Development Foundation, the Turkish Ministry of Health and UNFPA. The project included a needs assessment, training programme development and evaluation activities. A seven-day course was developed to train institutional trainers in both training skills and reproductive health information. Fourteen experienced master trainers conducted four courses for 67 institutional trainers from 37 hospital departments in four cities, who in turn conducted a three-day programme on reproductive health topics in their respective institutions, using interactive teaching methods. 163 residents from departments of obstetrics and gynaecology, family medicine, urology, public health and paediatrics participated. Over three-quarters of trainers and residents who participated in the programme approved of the content of the courses. A limited number of topics, e.g. sexual health and adolescent reproductive health, were thought to need more attention. Trainers cited improvements in doctor-patient communication and quality of outpatient and in-patient care, and initiation of counselling in their institutions. We conclude that this training programme, attended by trainers and participants from different disciplines and using interactive teaching methods, has been successful as an effective training model for medical residents. The establishment of an ongoing collaboration between the Ministry of Health and other institutions involved in resident training in Turkey is needed to ensure the expansion of this programme to all residents in training. © 2004 Reproductive Health Matters. All rights reserved.

Arguing against a concept of learning as only a formal process occurring in explicitly educational settings like schools, the paper proposes a conception of the workplace as a learning environment focusing on the interaction between the affordances and constraints of the social setting, on the one hand, and the agency and biography of the individual participant, on the other. Workplaces impose certain expectations and norms in the interest of their own continuity and survival, and in the interest of certain participants; but learners also choose to act in certain ways dependent on their own preferences and goals. Thus, the workplace as a learning environment must be understood as a complex negotiation about knowledge-use, roles and processes – essentially as a question of the learner's participation in situated work activities. © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited