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"education"

As a result of policy initiatives in the mid-1980s, the Department for education and Employment has been encouraging the development of national occupational standards and National and Scottish Vocational Qualifications (N/SVQs) in all occupational sectors within the UK. For the health and social care sector, these developments give rise to a number of issues and concerns. Using Health Promotion as an example of an area of professional practice within health and social care, this paper explores the relationship between academic assessment and the assessment of National and Scottish Vocational Qualifications; the relationship between the academic and the National and Scottish Vocational Qualification model of credit accumulation and transfer; and the relationship between qualification, licence to practice and competence in practice. Subsequently, it examines the development of the reflective professional practitioner and the relationship between 'competence' and notions of 'excellence' and 'expertise' in professional practice. Finally, it considers the role of knowledge and understanding in professional practice and the role of academic institutions in the development of a professional practitioner.

As more teachers move into new areas such as enterprise-based workplace education, concerns have been expressed regarding the deprofessionalisation of their work. This article explores an approach to workplace education, within a manufacturing environment, which not only re-defines the work of teachers In ways which utilise, enhance and extend their skills, but also values the role of professional educators in advising industry personnel on matters relating to learning and assisting in the development of learning frameworks. It is argued that when competence is contextualised and viewed holistically, and the subsequent training program is based on the complex reality of the particular workplace, all the professional skills of teachers are required to design effective learning strategies. If the resultant educational program is also to be responsive to the needs of the learners and sufficiently flexible to encompass changes in the workplace as they occur, its development and implementation will pose a unique challenge to teachers.

Proponents of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) reason that if the disability-related barriers to employment are removed, the goal of full employment for the population with disabilities can be reached. However, some researchers have suggested that the ADA will not be the panacea hoped for by its most ardent supporters. In particular, concerns have been raised about the ability of the ADA to promote employment among the doubly disadvantaged—those with a poor education and poor job skills, on the one hand, and a disability, on the other. This article uses the experiences of the doubly disadvantaged in Germany, a nation that pursues a disability policy that includes direct intervention in the labor market on behalf of workers with disabilities, to gauge the impact of the ADA on this group. The patterns observed in Germany suggest that while the ADA may have an impact on the ability and willingness of the doubly disadvantaged to remain in the labor market, it is not likely to guarantee their long-term economic well-being. © 1997, SAGE Periodicals Press. All rights reserved.

A set of Euro-wide trends is discussed: the prolongation of young people's transitions, the individualisation of their biographies, and the greater uncertainty of their futures. It is argued that youth's new condition is currently being normalised throughout Europe, and that this process is aided by appropriate careers guidance which must be recurrent, customised, and couched in terms of possibilities. Problems that are posed for young people and their advisers in Britain, and in some other countries, by the persistent jobs deficit, the inability of some families to provide the support that youth's new condition requires, and the fact that some forms of vocational education and training are most likely to be dead-ends, are identified.

In 1987 the English National Board (1987) made it clear that it supported a move towards an andragogical approach to nurse education. Recently such moves have been questioned as has the validity of andragogy (Darbyshire 1993). In response to such challenges this paper extends some of the arguments made in the article 'In defence of andragogy' (Milligan 1995). It is argued that andragogy provides a framework within which care and other crucial aspects of the nurse-patient/client relationship can be mirrored and thereby facilitated in future practitioners. In the socialization processes inherent in nurse education, care is surely difficult to teach or facilitate unless the philosophy and methods are consistent with such ends. Furthermore, it is frequently argued that as educationalists we need to be consistent in our approach to students with that which we hope to see in their future practice (Bevis & Murray 1990). Andragogy offers a medium through which this can be facilitated. It is essentially a humanistic educational process that values the individual. The power relationship between the educator and student is much more horizontal than is found in the historically common hierarchical educational relationship. An educational process based upon andragogy therefore mirrors important parts of the nurse-patient/client relationship. It offers a theory of education consistent with the aims of modern day nursing practice. We should seek to improve our understanding of andragogy and no longer conceptualize it as one end of a false dichotomy with pedagogy. © Harcourt Brace & Co Ltd 1997.