Search Results for
"education"

The training and education of doctors is a complex process. The traditional apprenticeship model of clinical medical education following a pre-clinical sciences curriculum had many strengths and produced a doctor who met the needs of several generations of patients. More recently, medical training has been criticised for not adapting to the more holistic needs of contemporary society, whilst the scientific literature has highlighted deficiencies in both the procedural and humanistic clinical skills of newly qualified doctors. External bodies have called for radical curriculum reforms and failure to deliver risks increasing political interference. Apprenticeship style training has largely been abandoned as insufficiently systematic in its methods and educational responses have focused on the process of learning. Modified curricula emphasise a humanistic and student-centred approach. Although implementation is widespread, there is little evidence that the finished product is better equipped to meet the demands of postgraduate medical practice. The General Medical Council has defined the desired outcomes of the undergraduate programme. Supporting the best of apprenticeship with contemporary process models offers optimum opportunity for practicebased learning within a systematic curriculum framework. If rapid change is to be achieved, however, then assessment offers an accepted and powerful driver for medical behavioural change. Combining practice-based learning and appropriate formative assessment of generic and vocational endpoints offers the means of effecting changes in both learning behaviour and medical practice that meet the needs of today's patient. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Social partnerships that respond to and address local needs are becoming an increasingly significant feature of public policy, particularly in Europe and more recently Australia. The trend is also being actively promoted through the development planning agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, UNESCO and World Bank. The common policy intent is to devolve decision-making to the local level where action consequences are more immediate and more readily realised than in more centralised forms of governance. Working to secure mutuality of interests and reconciliation of conflicting interests among client groups then becomes the hallmark of mature service delivery. This article sets out the conceptual terrain for ‘new’ social partnerships in terms of their prospect of building communities through participation in vocational education and training (VET). It initially identifies some of the qualities and characteristics of ‘new’ social partnerships being enacted in VET, their achievements and contributions to community building. In doing so, it highlights some bases for judging the successes and threats to these social partnerships, and to appraise the extent to which they have shifted conceptions of learning beyond traditional institutional spaces occupied by centralised policy formulation and provision of VET through education institutions. A principal concern is to identify strategies for making social partnerships work better in supporting localised decision-making and opportunities for VET to be enacted in ways to support both communities and individuals. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

INTRODUCTION Since the Second World War, many economic historians have come to see human capital as a weakness of the British economy since the late nineteenth century, particularly when compared with the United States and Germany. Although there is an element of truth in this, it is important not to exaggerate the British shortcomings in this area, particularly in the period before 1945. Britain can be seen as falling between an emphasis in the United States on formal education and a German emphasis on vocational training, but the extent of human capital gaps varied with the country of comparison, the time period and the sector of the economy. There is strong evidence of a British shortfall in formal education compared with other rich countries including Germany as well as the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. However, Britain closed the gap in primary schooling during the late nineteenth century, and although the United States moved to a system of mass secondary education and rapidly expanded higher education in the first half of the twentieth century, Britain's increase in secondary schooling during this period was not unimpressive and remained on a par with Germany's. Although the modern German system of vocational training was already well established in industry and to a lesser extent in services by the early twentieth century, Britain still provided a supply of skilled workers for industry, through the system of apprenticeships, and for services, through professional qualifications, that far exceeded the supply of vocational training in the United States. © Cambridge University Press 2004 and 2008.

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Introduction: This paper reports an evaluation of the West Midlands Key Skills initiative that provides a framework for learning during vocational training (VT). Method: The 48 vocational dental practitioners (VDPs) who began their VT in August 2001 in the West Midlands were surveyed at the start and end of training (45 completed both surveys). They rated their confidence and experience in the 31 components of the Six Key Skills on visual analogue scales. Views were elicited in a survey of both VDPs (47 returns) and their general practice trainers (44 returns). Semi-structured interviews were also held with a stratified sample of 9 trainers and all four VT advisors. Results: In terms of VDP progress, a statistically significant increase in confidence and experience was found in each of the 31 components. Six themes were identified in the views data. (i) Supporting the development of Key Skills; (ii) workload implications; (iii) the ‘right’ six? (iv) links with the advanced diploma (MFGDP(UK)); (v) assessment of VT; and, (vi) consistency and quality assurance. Conclusion: VT successfully develops the confidence and experience of newly qualified dentists in the Six Key Skills and has been well received by the majority of VDPs, trainers and advisors in the West Midlands. © 2004, Nature Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

This paper describes the development, implementation and evaluation of an educational resource, ‘On Track’, designed to support dental SHOs throughout their time in post, thereby helping them gain optimum benefit from this important stage in their early postgraduate training. The need for such a resource was highlighted by a previous study undertaken by the paper’s key authors with SHOs and their trainers in a UK dental school. Among several areas of change identified by both trainers and trainees were the needs to develop the SHO experience into more than an apprenticeship by improving the trainer/trainee relationship, and to encourage trainee-centred learning and self-appraisal. The key aims of ‘On Track’ were therefore to define the outcomes of SHO training, to facilitate the relationship between SHO and educational supervisor (trainer), and to encourage the SHO in reflective learning and self-appraisal. ‘On Track’ was subject to developmental testing with both trainers and trainees to ensure that it could achieve these aims and the resultant resource is described, along with its implementation and evaluation. ‘On Track’ met with mixed success and the reasons behind this and conclusions drawn for the introduction of any future similar resources are outlined. © 2004, Nature Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

The UK Government's recent emphasis on the graduate workforce raises the profile of work placements within higher education. Anecdotally, the authors find that students on their optional bioscience sandwich degrees benefit academically from placement experience but there is little supportive evidence of this in the literature. To investigate rigorously the link between sandwich placement and academic performance, two cohorts of bioscience students (n = 164) were described in terms of gender (male = 0, female = 1), pre-university qualifications (HESA score), academic performance (%) for each year of degree study (first, second, and final), and mode of study (non-placement = 0, placement = 1). Multiple regression analysis yielded the following predictive equation where all terms were significant: Final % = 28. 80 + 2. 97 (gender) + 0. 14 (HESA score) + 0. 44 (Second%) + 3. 82 (mode). On average, placement students gain an advantage of nearly 4% in their final year performance. Given that the final year contributes 75% towards degree classification, over a quarter of placement students may benefit from the independent effect of mode of study by crossing a threshold into a higher degree class. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

In the Dutch Vocational education and Training (VET) system, competence-based education is the leading paradigm for innovation, both at the system level and at the level of learning environments. This article provides an historical analysis of the development of competence-based education in various countries and explores the concept of competence and its popularity. Possible pitfalls with respect to the concept of competence, standardisation, school and workplace learning, determining learning activities, assessment of competencies, changing teacher roles/identity and competence-based management will be discussed. Taking these pitfalls into account, roads for future development will be sketched. A learning policy connecting governance, practice and research is believed to be the most fruitful way to develop flexible VET systems that are suited to the emerging knowledge-based economy. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This article is concerned with the politics of lifelong learning policy in post-1997 Hong Kong (HK). The paper is in four parts. Continuing education, recast as ‘lifelong learning’, is to be the cornerstone of the post-Handover education reform agenda. The lineaments of a familiar discourse are evident in the education Commission policy documents. However, to view recent HK education policy just in terms of an apparent convergence with global trends would be to neglect the ways in which the discourse of lifelong learning has been tactically deployed to serve local political agendas. In the second part of this paper, I outline what Scott has called HK’s ‘disarticulated’ political system following its retrocession to China and attempts by an executive-led administration to demonstrate ‘performance legitimacy’—through major policy reforms—in the absence of (democratic) political legitimacy. Beijing’s designation of HK as a (depoliticized) ‘economic’ city within greater China must also be taken into account. It is against this political background that the strategic deployment of a ‘lifelong learning’ discourse needs to be seen. In the third section of this paper, I examine three recent policy episodes to illustrate how lifelong learning discourse has been adopted and has evolved to meet changing circumstances in HK. Finally, I look at the issue of public consultation. The politics of education policy in HK may be seen to mirror at a micro-level, the current macro-level contested interpretations of HK’s future polity. © 2004, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

In this paper we review the literature on the impact of workplace basic skills training on individuals, as measured by their effects on wages and employment probability. In addition, we also examine studies on the returns to individuals of general training at the workplace. On the whole, the evidence suggests that better numeracy and literacy skills have a strong positive effect on individuals' earnings and employment stability, even when other relevant factors, such as qualifications levels, are taken into account. There is also good evidence to suggest that general training provided at the workplace has a positive impact on individuals' wages, particularly when this training is employer provided rather than off the job. However, the literature also suggests that improvement of basic skills levels in adults has very small or even no positive effects on wages and employment probability. We discuss the implications of these findings on the formation of government policy on basic skills provision. We also propose that there is a real need for more research in this area, not only in terms of longitudinal quantitative studies tracking the effects of basic skills programmes on firms and individuals but also in terms of detailed case studies focusing on specific training programmes and their impact at the level of the individual and firm. © 2004, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.