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Several moldmakers organizations collaborated to develop a model curriculum for the training of moldmakers. Their objective was two-fold; (a) to develop a national training curriculum that would help to assure that a moldmaker trained in California could bring his/her credentials to New England and the potential employer would know the training he/she received, and (b) to provide guidance to school curriculums and vocational training programs to bring them in as partners in future moldmaker training. This article presents the curriculum and shows how it is implemented.

Background and Objectives: This study was designed to determine whether medical school graduates who completed undergraduate degrees in particular college majors were more likely to enter primary care residencies. John L. Holland's theory of vocational personalities and work environments was used to cluster undergraduate disciplines sharing distinctive qualities. These clusters were evaluated to determine if graduates from similar fields were more likely to pursue residencies in family practice, general internal medicine, or general pediatrics. Methods: Students who graduated from US and Puerto Rican medical schools in 1987 were eligible for the study; college majors of 2,661 graduates entering primary care specialties were analyzed. Results: Students completing undergraduate studies in the following majors selected primary care residencies by a twofold difference over the expected frequency: agriculture, black studies, civil engineering, general studies, literature, occupational therapy, and speech. Chi-square tests revealed no differences across Holland types in the frequency with which science and nonscience students selected primary care residencies. Conclusions: Primary care specialties tend to accommodate students from varied academic backgrounds and appear to be tolerant of individuals who have completed undergraduate course work in either bioscientific or biosocial nonscience disciplines.

The idea of competence has different constructions in different areas of practice. Indeed, the construction of the idea of competence has undergone substantial but constrained change, in some areas of practice, over the past decade. For instance, in the contemporary competency‐based education and training (CBT) movement, competence was initially defined as behaviour, observed as performance on pre‐specified work‐based tasks. In the face of criticism, the construction has moved to accommodate those cognitive structures which are thought to underlie and enable such performance. This can be characterised as a colonisation of cognitive psychology which has occurred safely for the CBT movement because of the purportedly value‐free nature of cognitive psychology. Nevertheless, it serves to push aside the implicit values that general education attaches to certain kinds of knowledge. CBT may appear to seek to redress normative problems underlying rival constructions of competence. However, it has not confronted these normative problems, but, rather, has assigned a pre‐emptive good to education, which does not overcome or reconcile differences in the construction of competence in different areas of practice. The final quest for a better construction of competence seems to be Interrupted by the imposition of a value system which rivals other sets of values. Thus, there seem to be restricted possibilities for the transformation of the idea of competence into a shared construction underpinned by shared values about what constitutes competence. © 1995 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Background This study investigates the subsequent careers of the Senior House Officers (SHOs) who have passed through the Leicestershire SHO training scheme in public health medicine since its inception in 1981 and their views of the scheme.Methods Postal questionnaires were sent to past and current SHOs, using addresses compiled from personnel records, the Medical Directory and the General Medical Council Medical Register. One reminder letter was sent to non-responders.Results Of the 21 past SHOs, one is now a consultant and four are currently trainees in public health medicine. Other past SHOs have followed diverse careers but the largest group are now in general practice. The four past SHOs who are now trainees in public health gained no further clinical experience before obtaining registrar or lecturer posts. All past SHOs responded favourably when asked about the benefits of the scheme regardless of their subsequent career choice.Conclusion The continuing need for high-calibre recruits to the specialty and the favourable response from past SHO trainees suggests that this scheme, and no doubt other similar schemes, should be making their benefits known to a wider audience. © 1994 Oxford University Press.

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There are two contrasting world views discernible in contemporary Australian government skill-formation literature: one which recognises the need for the development of underlying cognitive structures and interpersonal attributes for the workplace; and one which values the development of pre-specified observable skills, as in competency-based training. This study examines TAFE assessment practices across Australia, as an indicator of the extent to which each view is represented in practice. The study found that, for initial vocational courses, some practices accord more with the latter world view than with the former; but, for non-vocational courses, there was a greater balance in approaches to assessment and relatively more emphasis on assessing some increasingly important workplace attributes. The implications of some current practices are that TAFE graduates entering the workforce may be inept when required to adapt, solve problems or innovate. © 1994, © 1994 Australian Council for Educational Research.

This article describes a principled approach to the design of computer-based tools for use in collaborative instruction. We argue that a project should progress through four steps: (a) making explicit the instructional requirements that serve as design goals for the project; (b) performing a detailed study of current educational practice with regard to these goals; (c) developing a specification based on the identified requirements/limitations of the instructional setting and the known capabilities of the technology; and (d) producing an implementation that allows for local adaptation to instructional practice. We propose six principles of effective learning and instruction, which we view to be the critical features of learning in complex and ill-structured fields. Next, a detailed case study is presented based on the preclinical training given to medical students in the first 2 years of medical school. The problems of providing adequate instruction in the preclinical years are described, as is an instructional method known as problem-based learning (PBL) that has been introduced to redress some of these problems. The product of this design process is a set of specifications for technical augmentations that we believe will serve not only the needs of PBL but also those of other methods of instruction that depend on collaborative, case-based, or student-centered learning. © 1994, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

In Australia and elsewhere, a sometimes heated debate is taking place about the significance for higher education of the adoption of competency standards by professions and other occupations. To many in the higher education sector, it is self-evident that competency standards cannot do justice to the professional aspects of an occupation. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that this conclusion is too hasty. There are various ways of conceptualising occupational competence. The paper argues that one of them does do justice to the variety and richness of the professional aspects of job performance. This conception of competence is shown to meet the more considered objections to competency standards in the philosophical literature, as well as various less well-articulated criticisms that have appeared in recent debate in Australia. The implications of this richer conception of competence for higher education are discussed. © 1994, © 1994 Australian Council for Educational Research.

January 1994 saw the start of a pilot second year VT scheme in the West Midlands combining house officer/GDP associateship experience as an integral part of general postgraduate training in dentistry. The scheme is funded by a grant from the W.M. Board of Postgraduate Medical and Dental education. The availability of such a course in each region would be beneficial for those dentists who wish to experience hospital practice following their mandatory vocational training. © 1994 Nature Publishing Group. All rights reserved.