Search Results for
"education"

Context: The evaluation of competence in the health professions is of great importance to the public and professionals alike. Recent efforts to design dependable and accurate systems of assessment for demanding clinical roles are increasingly attempting to focus on all-round competence of practitioners. Many challenges are faced in this field as a balance between robust assessment methodology and feasibility in practice is crucial to implementation and adoption. Objectives: The authors discuss some of the challenges faced by educators and clinicians involved in the development of systems of assessment for the health professions, and describe a method which aims to address these issues in the assessment of postgraduate dental training in Scotland. Discussion: Three of the major challenges facing educators and clinicians involved in the design of competency-based systems of assessment are considered: the requirement for evaluation in different areas of competence; the importance of association of assessment with the training objectives, and the types and focus of the assessment introduced. Issues around the use of formative and summative assessment, and the perception that these must always remain completely separate, are discussed in detail. Solutions: A proposal is made for the introduction of a method of assessment which has been designed keeping these challenges in mind. The rationale behind this assessment method is described.

Learning-to-learn skills are essential for effective lifelong learning to develop over the entire lifespan. These skills, which consist of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies, largely have been neglected in analyses of issues surrounding lifelong learning and in policy development. This article draws particularly upon the work of Weinstein, Meyer, Schraw and other cognitive psychologists to outline some of the knowledge and skills required and some of the educational implications for their development from a human developmental psychology perspective. Much of the initial work in establishing these skills needs to lie with schools for reasons of access and equity. However, since mastery of cognitive and metacognitive skills is not likely to be fully achieved by the end of secondary schooling, with metacognitive skills in particular only likely to reach fuller development through work experience, there are important implications for educators at further and higher education levels. © 2002 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Colleges may be well placed to compete with industry training providers if retention continues to be a key factor in attracting and retaining funding under the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), but college managers will need to be proactive in their approach. Issues concerned with the retention and early leaving, or drop out of students have assumed renewed significance and emphasis in the further education (FE) sector since incorporation. Under the new LSC, where value for money is a key measure of success, increasing recruitment, improving retention and seeking to understand and address early leaving, from a wide range of education and training programmes, are set to remain high on the agenda, for managers working in FE and industry training organisation. This article summarises research carried out with training provider managers to explore strategies to improve retention on training programmes previously funded by the Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs). The article concludes that, staff employed by training providers to support trainees and provide training, are a key factor in reducing the rate of early leaving. Provision of monitoring, support and guidance is a key factor for improving retention, although not all factors affecting retention can be controlled by training provider managers, especially when trainees’ decisions are influenced by financial considerations. © 2002, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

There is considerable pressure to expand the student take-up of university places in the United Kingdom. This has had implications for the nature of provision and pedagogy in higher education. In particular there is a tension between graduateness as a state after the completion of a course, and employability as an assessment of the economic worth of a student at that time. This investigation charts the background to the tension and reports on findings from 400 students at the commencement, and 400 students at the completion of their university courses. Evidence indicates that economic motivation is more important than the pursuit of knowledge and that instrumentalism directed towards employment is increasingly expected of higher education courses. Graduateness alone is not seen by students as a sufficient basis for continued personal and institutional investment and hoped for success in a highly competitive, flexible, and globally responsive, environment. The extension of partnerships between higher education and employers is considered essential if student numbers are to be maintained. © 2002, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This article analyses the impact of e-learning on the higher education skills agenda. The main question addressed in the article is whether the e-learning environment meets the learning needs of the student to enable skill development to take place. Analysis is provided of face-toface versus on-line teaching of Edexcel common skills and Qualification Curriculum Authority (QCA) Key Skills and challenges the view that soft skills are difficult to develop on line. The conclusions highlight that the dismissal of e-learning from the skills agenda would be a mistake. The challenge to higher education is to utilise the advantages of e-learning to skills development in ways that balance on-line learning with face-to-face learning. © 2002 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This article analyses the mechanisms of a state-organized educational system as it functions between households and the labour market, regulating the passage of age cohorts from the home via school to the labour market. One question is what outcomes the educational system actually produces and what mechanisms are at work in the distribution of educational advantage. In terms of disadvantage, the paper assesses solutions for overcoming the skill gap and entrapment problems of post-industrial society by means of education. In addition to describing how the educational system worked in the conditions of a mature Nordic welfare state and an industrial society based on paid work, feasible ways of reorganizing education in the changing work conditions of an increasingly crisis-ridden post-industrial society are also sought. © 2002 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

There are relatively well-established traditions of research in both school effectiveness and school improvement. These traditions are quite mature in that they have distinct research methodologies, agreed terms of reference and discourse and, not infrequently, some consensus around advice offered to both policy makers and practitioners. The position of colleges is quite different. For a variety of reasons, colleges have provided less of a focus for educational research. At first sight, moreover, there is no equivalent to the school effectiveness and improvement traditions. This article reviews the research that is currently available to argue that: There is more college effectiveness and improvement research than has sometimes been supposed; the theoretical foundations and methods of this research resemble but in some crucial ways are distinct from the research traditions focused on schools; some specific research issues and priorities need to be addressed in college-based research to enable it to make a profound contribution to educational theory, policy and practice; there are some opportunities, nevertheless, for school researchers to benefit from college research on retention, achievement and improvement issues. © 2002, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This article presents empirical evidence on labour market performance of graduates of curriculum options in a diversified upper secondary education scheme, with emphasis on the benefit of choosing the vocational intensity of instruction. Such evidence, which was generated for the Greek education system, shows a generally high employment mismatch (68-85%), the largest mismatch attributed to graduates from an integrated comprehensive curriculum option and the smallest to graduates from the occupation specific curriculum option. On the other hand, the evidence shows that the vocational options benefit low achievers, who, because of them remain in school, acquire minimum employable skills and avoid long term unemployment. The evidence did not show differences in earnings relative to the type of curriculum completed, but it did show differences relative to gender (females had lower earnings) and relative to type of employment (i.e. self employment, civil servant, employer, etc.). © 2002 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Provides an overview on a German lighthouse research project called L3 ("Lifelong Learning - Learning as a utility") in the area of e-learning systems that supply e-learning services via a virtual private network. More specifically, this paper focuses on a new approach of meta-tagging learning elements to enable the flexible execution of courses depending on the individual learning styles of the students. The notion of a content aggregation model is introduced and a set of tools and a first prototype of an associated run-time environment are described. An extension to the existing standardization according to SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) is given to project future developments in this area to allow more in-depth implementation of didactical knowledge into courseware systems. A basic ontology on instructional units is described, which provides extensions to additionally allow advanced learning scenarios where group learning is supported in the design and implementation of the courseware. First results of the evaluation are provided, as the material becomes used in vocational training centres as part of the e-learning service. © 2002 IEEE.

This article investigates the views of the students of the University of Cyprus concerning the aims and character of the university, in general, and the Department of education, in particular. Moreover, it examines the extent to which the students’ preparation for the labour market is considered satisfactory. Data were collected from 135 students of the education Department of the University of Cyprus through both fixedalternative and open-ended questions. According to the findings, respondents appear to reject a purely instrumental or vocational approach to the formulation of higher education aims. At the same time, they believe that both their university and their department exhibit a vocational orientation in the provision of skills and knowledge to their students. Respondents consider the professional preparation they receive at the university and the department to be satisfactory even though they point out several areas for improvement. The article suggests that universities ought to address the students’ desire for personal development in the context of the humanistic mission of higher education. It also points to the need for improvements in the students’ professional training. © 2002 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.