Search Results for
"education"

Based on five years of research in high school and community college programs, this book explores the potential for using work-based learning as part of a broad education reform strategy. © 2004 by Thomas R.Bailey, Katherine L.Hughes, and David Thornton Moore. All rights reserved.

Like other advanced societies, Germany has experienced marked developments in its social structures during the last decades. But Germany has also been a rather special case due to historical events and institutional characteristics. This distinctiveness is now being called into question. This study traces the major changes in social structure during the last four decades. In particular, it looks at developments in population, family, education, labour markets, class structures and life-course patterns. The final section addresses the question of how these changes might have affected interest formation, political cleavages and policies.

The system of primary, secondary, and tertiary education in Austria is largely regulated through federal laws. Especially on the tertiary level major reforms have been initiated during the last decade. Beyond that, vocational training, especially as part of apprenticeships, is shaped by and adapted to the structure of the Austrian economy, consisting mostly of small and medium sized enterprises. This type of job oriented training and development is strongly, although decreasingly, influenced by the system of social and economic partnership in Austria. In contrast, management training and post tertiary education is much more diverse and less regulated. Beside already ongoing educational reforms, pressures due to global competition will increasingly impact vocational training and development in the future. © 2003, John Wiley and Sons Inc. All rights reserved.

A Student Exchange Program began with four students from Germany visiting Siemens-Westinghouse and the University of Central Florida in Summer, 1999, as an initiative from Siemens training officials in Muelheim, Germany. In Summer 2000, a program with four German apprentices coming to the U.S. and four U.S. interns working and studying in Germany was very successful. The initial UCF students continued part-time work at Siemens during their senior year and were offered full-time employment upon graduation. Not only did the German students complete their work, but some of them returned for employment in the U.S. Siemens, as a multinational enterprise, is preparing technologists and engineers to understand product design and manufacturing for integrated systems in international markets. Students will benefit from an understanding of the systems, standards, and cultures involved. The internship model being developed uses the best from the German and U.S. systems and merits further study and implementation.

The University of Ulster places a strong emphasis on vocational education and work-based learning. Furthermore, the Faculty of Informatics has recognised achievements in technology transfer and industrial collaboration. This paper outlines how the industrial partnerships forged and experiences gained through these ventures have been utilised in the design, delivery and assessment of an undergraduate module in entrepreneurship. Different models for incorporating entrepreneurial skills will be explored including: Classroom based teaching, learning and assessment; Support for students in industrial placement through the use of a Virtual Learning Environment (WebCT); Development of a portfolio of professional competencies; highlighting the merits and problems associated with each.

The vocational education system in Germany is challenged by the wide range of societal demands made on it. The current organizational structure of the ‘Dual System’ of vocational education is too rigid. Teaching in vocational schools and the parallel company apprenticeships are too isolated from each other. Educational provision thus follows the systemic logic of this separation: there is inadequate and only superficial cooperation between school and firm. This paper recommends a change in approach from cooperation to networking. Based on the theoretical instrument of a ‘reflection step model’, an approach for bringing the two sectors together is developed. Examples are given of two research projects that indicate the potential of this approach. © 2002, © 2002 SAGE Publications.

This paper considers youth engagement with dominant discourses regarding school completion. The paper is fundamentally concerned with the way the notion of school completion is being cast, its supporting discourse and the manner in which this potentially marginalizes and excludes. The ultimate efficacy of secondary school completion in the current economic climate is not questioned, however, policy that aggressively promotes and normalizes universal Year 12 completion raises issues of equity and social exclusion for those who opt for other pathways for whatever reasons. Data are drawn from a qualitative longitudinal project tracking trade-oriented adolescent boys from five Western Australian secondary schools who undertook the same Year 11 cross-sectoral building and construction vocational education and training programme. Half of this cohort subsequently left secondary school prior to Year 12, while the other half chose to complete their final year of secondary schooling. The school completers endorsed the dominant ideas concerning the efficacy of Year 12 although few believed that they gained much academically or vocationally from their final school year. Contrary to the dominant claims made for Year 12 completion, however, the early exits tended to view their Year 12 peers as lacking in maturity, motivation and vocational commitment. Youth engagement with, and negotiation of, the dominant ideology and supporting discourse concerning the efficacy and purpose of school completion, such as that reported here, have implications for the manner in which encouragement to complete secondary school is presented to youth in the post-compulsory years.

The vocational education and training system in Australia has been rocked by continuous change for the past fifteen years. The three most radical changes have been the move to competency-based training, the privileging of industry as opposed to students as the most important stakeholder group, and the opening up of government funding to private providers as well as to TAFE, the public provider. In 1997 Training Packages became the basis for all future curriculum in the Australian VET system. Like any curriculum change, the introduction of Training Packages has aroused controversy but so far there has been only a limited amount of empirical research. This paper summarises the debates about Training Packages, using the existing body of research and comment, interviews with key national and State figures in Training Package development, and the author's experience as a Director of a State Industry Training Advisory Board involved in the development and review of several Training Packages. The paper identifies some of the basic underlying difficulties with Training Packages which, it is argued, stem from their being written for the workplace while their primary field of application is in educational institutions. © 2002 Issues In Educational Research.

Vocational education and Training (VET) plays an important role in the reshaping of upper secondary school curriculum. Retention to the end of secondary education in Australia went from 35% in 1980 to 72% in 2000. This increase caused major problems for the senior school curriculum which historically prepared students for university entrance but now has to serve multiple purposes. While the purposes of VET suit different groups, our interest is those students alienated from, reluctant to complete, or attempting re-entry into senior secondary education. Our objective is to understand policy reforms in this area, in order to assist stopping the spiral of disadvantage in which these young people are caught. We shall argue that VET has the potential to re-engage young people with education. With the labour market becoming more knowledge-based, such re-engagement becomes increasingly important. We ask to what extent is the post-compulsory curriculum serving student and family ambitions for employment in a way that is equitable and inclusive?

The 'brain fag' syndrome, which was first reported from West Africa in 1960 among students, has been shown to occur very widely in African students in western educational systems south of the Sahara. This study investigated the distribution of its symptoms in a group of apprentices chosen by convenient sampling from Ile-Ife, a university town about 240 km northeast of Lagos in Nigeria. The subjects who (in contrast) were training under an indigenous form of education - the African apprenticeship system - consisted of 183 (69.8%) males, and 79 (30.2%) females, in the age range of 13-26 years (mean ± SD 18.2 ± 3.0 years). Questionnaires were interview-administered to collect data on the sociodemographic, economic, and family background, English language proficiency, and the degree of the presence of brain fag symptoms. Results indicated a generally low rate of brain fag symptoms among these different types of apprentices. A relationship between proficiency in English, but not socioeconomic status, with brain fag symptoms was found. In the case of the Nigerian apprentices investigated here, brain fag symptoms were not significantly associated with the method of training learning (which is dependent mainly on verbal instructions in the vernacular from their bosses, and vicarious learning by observing the boss at work). The implications of these findings for two of the theories advanced for the pathogenesis of the brain fag syndrome were discussed. Copyright © 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel.