Search Results for
"education"

This paper proposes some new ways of understanding the relationship between policy and practice in vocational education and training (VET) in Australia. It argues that contemporary policy making in VET follows a rationalistic logic where things are divided up according to the separate spheres of policy formulation and policy implementation. The argument is exemplified through considering aspects of the design and implementation of competency-based education and training. It is claimed that education and training policy making contains a paradox insofar as it enacts separation of policy and practice worlds while relying upon their inseparability for its success. Practitioners who are alert to this paradox work the gap between these worlds and create new worlds in the process. Here, the policy-practice relation is an intricately entangled one where practitioners act as practical policy makers. The conclusion is drawn that contemporary policy making in VET establishes a partial picture of practice and, that dealing with this partiality involves (i) understanding policy and its instruments in terms of the multiple options it embeds, and (ii) reconfiguring the relationship between policy and practice. © 1998 Journal of Vocational education and Training. All right reserved.

Results from qualitative research involving interviews with apprentices, employers and teachers in Commercial Cookery at a TAFE NSW College are used to highlight a range of problems for apprentices in work-based learning. Of considerable importance in effective learning are employee-employer relationships, opportunities for learning and deliberate practice under the supervision of managers/employers with specialist knowledge and the ability to convey that knowledge. Many small-medium size business owner/managers revealed little concern for the learning of the employees and a considerable lack of understanding of how to create conditions to contribute to learning. It is concluded that, if work-based learning is to achieve the goals which are desired, then substantial changes of attitude of employers and managers to apprentices must take place, and governments must implement systems to develop and monitor policies, and enforce relevant legislation. © 1998 Journal of Vocational education and Training. All Rights Reserved.

‘Modern’ apprenticeships have been in place in Britain since 1994. However, the social characteristics of 'modern' apprentices appear remarkably similar to those of traditional apprentices: 89% of the first wave of modern apprentices were male; and only 3% from ethnic minorities. As will be shown subsequently, such exclusivity is deep-set within the British apprenticeship system. It is interesting to note that most previous analyses of modern apprenticeships have described this situation in a variety of ways but failed to grasp its significance. The lack of commitment by the Conservative Government, headed by John Major, to issues of social exclusion has been well documented. This is seen clearly in the Department of education and Employment's report into the early stages of modern apprenticeships. Their discussion of social exclusion and modern apprenticeships is perfunctory and their recommendations merely boil down to exhortations to various institutions to increase the proportion of apprenticeships from ethnic minority backgrounds and who are female. In this they reproduce the timidity of the Commission for Racial Equality. The main purpose of this article is to situate the continuation of patterns of ethnic and gender exclusivity in British apprenticeships within a broad historical and comparative perspective. It will be shown that ethnic and gender exclusion is central to apprenticeship structures historically in both Britain and America. Further, it will be shown that these structures are breaking down to a considerable degree in the United States, more for women than for ethnic minorities, and that the catalysts and institutional changes that have helped precipitate these developments in the United States hold important lessons for contemporary Britain. © 1998 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Student affairs professionals at 7 Wyoming community colleges and at 3 outreach campuses were interviewed regarding the career guidance and development functions at their institutions. This inventory was performed for the Wyoming School‐to‐Work Management Team to be used in the development of the state's school‐to‐work plan. Based on a taxonomy of increasing quantity of services, 2 of the campuses provide Level I career center services, 4 maintain Level II services, and 4 provide Level III services. Interviewees suggest closer examination and change in the areas of resources, career guidance and development services, collaboration with the business community, promotion of services, and collaboration with secondary schools. Specifically, the Wyoming School‐to‐Work Management Team might assist the community colleges to improve their career guidance and development services by (a) providing colleges with Wyoming labor market projections by county; (b) coordinating cooperative education programs statewide using established operational definitions for terms, such as cooperative education, internship, and practicum; (c) providing training to improve the effectiveness of business advisory committees; (d) instituting community‐wide promotion of community college career guidance and development services; and (e) improving articulation between career counseling in secondary schools and community colleges. © 1998 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

This article uses data from a five-year ethnographic study of a single higher education institution to assess aspects of the 'realism' of managerialist approaches articulated through the credit framework in higher education in the United Kingdom. By 'credit framework' is meant the constellation of more or less compatible features facilitated by the assignment of credit to assessed learning, including modularity, the semester system, franchising, the accreditation of work-based learning and of prior learning. From the perspective of managerialist ideology the framework as a whole and its individual components offer a number of attractions, including greater economy, efficiency, manageability and market responsiveness in higher education institutions. Data from the site of the study and a theoretical framework derived from policy sociology are used to show that managerialist ideology oversimplifies and occludes aspects of social reality in higher education, the effect of which is to undermine many of the benefits claimed for the credit framework by managerialists. © 1998, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.