Search Results for
"education"

The disconnection between many inner-city youths and employment is symptomatic of a more fundamental disconnection between the nation's education system and its employment system. Educational reformers have begun to promote schools that use the workplace as a learning context. The next challenge is to envision workplaces that are contextualized by schools.

Germany's vocational education system is one of its main competitive advantages. Due to its complex system of interrelated institutions - including business, labor, and the federal government - Germany has succeeded in creating a training system where supply and demand of apprenticeships is in balance and high quality training is provided. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the extent to which the German system can be transferred to the U.S., given the differences in the institutional context in both countries. Compared to the centralized organization of business, labor, and government in Germany, the U.S. institutions are highly decentralized and fragmented. The existing institutional context of the U.S. makes the implementation of a coherent national training system extremely difficult. A major reorganization of state and society, that is, labor and business, would be necessary to adopt a German-like system.

This article provides a rationale for exploring ways in which science educators can structure learning activities that more accurately reflect the scientific inquiry processes used by practicing research scientists. Science learning activities based on the experiential model are better able to promote student construction of scientific knowledge and provoke students into making the transition from naive to higher-order, scientific ways of thinking. The conclusion is drawn that experiential education strategies will strengthen school science performance, particularly among students from underrepresented groups, and create an increased pool of scientific and technical workers.

This article explores implications of Patient-Focused Care (PFC) for the education and training of nurses. It does so by examining various models of competence and their strengths and limitations as bases for developing training programmes. It cautions against attempting to transpose an approach to training based on the U.S.A. model of PFC without modification, given the differing nursing roles in the U.K. PFC setting. It argues for a broad-based definition of competence rather than a narrower focus on training in specific skills alone.

The advent of graduate entry into the radiography profession has brought into question the role and function of the practicum. There is evidence that the nature of the practicum remains under-theorized by both the university and the profession. As a result academic knowledge and practical know-how remain at arms length. Across a wide range of professional programmes the notion of a reflective practicum has been embraced as a means of resolving the dichotomy between academia and the practice setting. This paper examines the present conceptualization of a practicum within radiography programmes and explores ways in which a reflective practicum might be developed.

Second-year pharmacy students were divided into two cohorts, one of which participated in structured work-based learning (WBL) activities in a summer vacation training programme (VTP) in a community pharmacy work placement. Assessment methods were developed to measure quantitatively any change in knowledge and knowledge-based transferable skills. Results from the assessments showed that participation in structured WBL activities increased the students' knowledge and knowledge-based transferable skills.

In Finland, large orders from the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s had made it possible to rationalize production. With the collapse of the Soviet Union large orders and long production runs became history. Capabilities for other strategies of action hardly existed. The industry was forced to shut down large units and to drastically cutback personnel. The industry is now undergoing a thorough restructuring from smokestack production units to the computer-assisted production in SMEs. This situation places entirely new challenges on those currently employed in the industry as well as on education. The National Board of education aims within the next few years to create apprenticeship education as an equal form of education with traditional theoretical education.

Investment in vocational education and training is commonly regarded as a prerequisite of competitive success. Training is also seen as a cornerstone of management initiatives designed to enhance employee involvement and co-operation in the production process. Ironically, however, commentators have rarely sought to assess employee attitudes towards, and experiences of, training provision. the claims made by advocates of a high skills strategy with respect to employee commitment and motivation have not been empirically tested. This article seeks to fill the gap through a presentation of findings from a unique survey, undertaken by the authors, designed to examine the link between training and employee attitudes. © 1996 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

The Modern Apprenticeship programme in the United Kingdom has been broadly welcomed by employers, training providers, and commentators on the vocational education and training scene. A shift in policy focus has been detected from an emphasis on 'outcomes' (qualifications), which has come to dominate post-16 provision, towards a rediscovery of 'process'. One reason for this is that, at least at the level of policy, the Modern Apprenticeship can be linked to the challenges posed by a post-Fordist analysis of the relationship between the economy, work and skills. The paper identifies some of the features of Modern Apprenticeship and discusses three learning-related issues which emerged during development work for one sector's Modern Apprenticeship. It is argued that effective management and delivery of the learning process can be achieved through closer partnerships between employers and training providers. Relying on the measurement of outcomes alone, is likely to prove an inadequate approach to ensuring the quality of learning experiences on- and off-the-job. © 1996 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This paper explores the relationship between changes in the labour process, recent developments in the vocational curriculum and challenges that these changes present to the preparation of further education lecturers in England and Wales. Firstly it will be argued that the economy is moving from a Fordist to a post-Fordist phase and that this change is affecting the vocational education curriculum. Previous attempts to relate post-Fordism to education have tended to analyse the relationships in terms that are too general. When a specific aspect of education and training is examined such as the introduction of National Vocational Qualifications and General National Vocational Qualifications in England and Wales, more light is shed on the question of 'correspondence'. This in turn reveals issues such as divisions between mental and manual work and issues of conception and execution which tend to be ignored or overlooked in debates about changes in the curriculum and changes in the economy. Secondly it will be argued that the new curriculum demands a new kind of professionalism for vocational teachers and a new kind of teacher preparation and expectation. © 1996 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.