Search Results for
"education"

This article explores the potential role of further education (FE) colleges in the delivery of Modern Apprenticeships. It reflects upon FE’s role in traditional apprenticeships and examines, through a case study of Modern Apprenticeships in a large manufacturing company in partnership with two FE colleges, the extent to which that role has been redefined. The case study draws upon the responses of apprentices, work-place supervisors, company young people development personnel and college staff. It identifies differences from and similarities to traditional apprenticeships and suggests ways in which Modern Apprenticeships can help to forge closer relationships between college and work-place. It further suggests that FE is well placed to make a contribution to the successful delivery of Modern Apprenticeships but that, at the moment, insufficient evidence is available on the extent of the sector’s involvement nationally. © 1998 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Governments are encouraging enterprises to enhance their expenditure on vocational education and training to assist with maintaining and developing further national skill bases, while sharing the cost with those enterprises. However, there are clear differences between what government intends and enterprise practice. This paper reports a review of the recent literature which focuses on the expenditure by enterprise on vocational education and their interest in securing returns on that expenditure. Enterprise expenditure is far from uniform and is influenced by factors including their size, speciality and location. Moreover, enterprise interest on returns on their expenditure is focused on goals which are of a different kind from those of government and may not be aligned to achieving long-term national goals of maintaining and developing the skilfulness of the workforce. © 1998 Journal of Vocational education and Training. All right reserved.

Technical and Further education Colleges are the main providers of formal vocational education in Australia. This article investigates the perceived contribution of these Colleges to the development of skilled trade-persons. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from apprentice trade-persons and their workplace supervisors. The study shows that these Colleges do provide an important context that promotes vocational learning for apprentice trades-persons. The major strength of TAFE is the opportunity to practice with teacher feedback, without the press of production. In this context their skills improved and they learnt aspects of their trade that were not learnt in the workplace. The significance of these results is that TAFE colleges are perceived to provide ‘workplace learning’ that is not available to apprentices in particular workplaces. © 1998 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

It is argued that vocational education belongs in the common core of school knowledge. Distinction is made between vocational education for jobs and vocational education about work. It is the latter aspect of the subject that allows the general education claim to be made. The former aspect, it is argued, belongs beyond the secondary school. The resilience of the liberal/vocational divide is reflected upon. So is the "new vocationalism," which seeks to narrow the divide. The ideas of those who, consistent with Deweyan ideals, have imagined a unitary curriculum that includes vocational knowledge are examined. A three-part rationale for vocational education as general education is then discussed, namely, meaning of work, practical knowledge as knowledge, and situated cognition. © 1998 by The Ontario Institute for Studies in education. Published by Blackwell Publishers.

[No abstract available]

This paper seeks to explore the different perspectives held by those joining in the work-based learning experience. First it examines the concept of partnerships in work-based learning in more detail and considers the various partners who may be involved. It also discusses the types of learning that occur during these collaborative processes. Then it focuses on one particular partnership, that between the employee and the academic mentor, as the authors reflect upon their own learning from the setting up and running of a work-based learning module on the part-time degree programme run by the Institute of Continuing education at The Queen’s University of Belfast. This module has been supported by the QUB Enterprise Project with funding from the Northern Ireland Training and Employment Agency. Finally, we raise some questions around the nature of employer learning and leave these open for future debate. © 1998 Journal of Vocational education and Training. All right reserved.

This paper examines the "connection" between higher education and economic development in Massachusetts, a state whose renowned academic institutions have fueled the rise of a premier high technology industrial district. But in the aftermath to the abrupt demise of the "Massachusetts Miracle", the state higher education system sought to develop a new mandate for public service in the 90s keyed to upgrading the state's industrial base and coordinating with labor market needs. These growing involvements in manifestly vocational endeavors seem to reflect a major shift in the models that articulate the higher education-economic development "connection" in Massachusetts. Thus, it appears that the elite model of the "world-class" research university sparking numerous industry spin-offs has been joined by newer diffusion-oriented models of academic outreach that extend out from the community colleges into the workplace and even into the K-12 schools. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

At a time when Britain's vocational education and training (VET) system and vocational qualifications are undergoing a major review and restructuring in response to critical reports about the model established under the former National Council for Vocational Qualifications, the British Council and associated agencies is currently trying to market National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) overseas. The chief weaknesses and failings of NVQs and the competence-based education and training (CBET) system on which they are based are outlined in terms of assessment anomalies and the needs of firms, trainees and employers. Since these shortcomings are so so serious, it is suggested that - until they have been remedied through the current reforms under the aegis of the new Qualifications and Curriculum Authority - it is ethically unjustifiable to export a failed VET system to countries which may be unaware of the critical research surrounding NVQs and CBET.

Important workforce competencies for managers and professionals were identified separately for males and females through a sequence of interviews, content analysis, accessing expert opinion and statistical factoring procedures. Interviews of thirty-two professionals and managers and a subsequent content analysis led to the development of a list of important skills, knowledge and attitudes which formed the basis for separate male and female competencies questionnaires. Principal components analyses were performed separately for male and female questionnaires, with samples of 310 women and 249 men. Seven important competencies were identified for each gender. Competencies for women were: maintenance of job skills; orientation to innovation and change; affective and cognitive efficacy; self determination and stability; presentation skills; interpersonal communication skills; and office politics skills. Competencies for men were: leadership ability; self-determination; interpersonal ability; task management; job skill maintenance; office politics skills; and tolerance and open-mindedness. Results suggest that acquiring competence in the workforce involves a combination both of learning and of overcoming constraints, and that individual experience influences important competencies. © 1998 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

AFTER a period of dramatic growth in school completion in Australia, rates of school retention have begun to decline. At its peak in 1992 the national rate of retention to Year 12 was approximately 77 per cent. By 1995 the rate had fallen to 72 per cent. The aim of this paper is to document state, system, and social differences in the recent downturn in school completion rates in Australia. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and from the Australian Youth Survey are used to look at patterns across states, school systems, geographical locations, social backgrounds, and by sex. The results suggest that during the 1990s the downturn in completion has been uneven and some groups of users which had come to rely on schooling during the 1980s for their future economic security are now turning away from school. The findings indicate a continuing need to monitor the numbers of young people completing school and their backgrounds.