Search Results for
"learning"

Singapore, like many other countries in the world, is on a journey towards a culture of lifelong learning to keep its workforce competent, resilient, and future-ready in the rapidly changing world of work. In order to realise this, a significant amount of resources has been invested to the training and adult education (TAE) sector. The TAE sector is expecting considerable and evolving skills demands from the TAE professionals specifically from the adult educators who are directly involved in the training delivery and development activities. With the high skills expectations from the profession, it is important to find out the level and predictors of work satisfaction among adult educators so as to provide necessary support for their performance and development. Work characteristics or quality indicators such as income, work autonomy, complexity, intensity, security, career prospect, professional development support, as well as work expectations were examined in relation to adult educators’ work satisfaction. Multivariate analyses show that work autonomy, job security, and professional development support are strong determinants of work satisfaction among adult educators, even after considering adult educators’ work expectations and other employment and individual characteristics. © 2022 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.

Authentic learning is gaining popularity in higher education, particularly for courses related to research skills, where authentic assessments can overcome trepidation from both students and faculty. Prior literature has demonstrated the potential value of authentic client-based projects (CBPs) in such settings. However, questions remain about how best to scale authentic learning across different student cohorts, including both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. This paper explores two case studies of authentic learning applied across undergraduate and postgraduate research courses. We explore the impact of different forms of authentic learning, ranging from in-class activities to fully authentic client-based projects, on both student satisfaction and success rates. The results suggest that client-based projects represent a trade-off between satisfaction and learning at the undergraduate level but can be highly successful at postgraduate level if implemented effectively. We provide practical tips for how faculty may scale authentic learning and assessments across undergraduate and postgraduate courses. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper discusses how Bernsteinian concepts (‘pedagogic rights’, ‘discursive gaps’ and ‘pedagogic code’) from the field of sociology of education can be used as didactic tools to illuminate how different ways of organising teaching in VET has implications for citizenship preparation. The paper is based on results from a five-year research project investigating the extent and nature of learning processes that can be characterised as civic education in Swedish VET. Results from the project show how VET often contributes to social reproduction through provision of class-, gender-, and ethnicity-based access to knowledge with different powers to students. However, we also identified many variations in the VET-contexts studied. In the paper at hand, examples of when and how students got access to different types of knowledge through different ways of organising teaching, and how different ways of teaching prevented or promoted different types of questions with implications for the kind of citizenship preparation the students were offered, is discussed. Our hope is that these discussions contribute to a conversation on how to make a language accessible to VET-teachers that is helpful to problematise and plan their teaching to offer greater access to an active citizenship for students in vocational programmes. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The challenges facing the tourism industry and tourism educators call out for a new paradigm of tourism education. This requirement for this study is illustrated in the results obtained from the sector professionals and tourism graduates. This qualitative research has taken place in North Cyprus, through in-depth, face-to-face interviews with twenty-two representatives to identify the principle requirements for a contemporary tourism education degree that is consistent with the requirements of all stakeholders. Advanced apprenticeship programs in higher education may resolve the skills shortages in the tourism sector, with evidence of sector representatives outlining the need for learning and assessment to take place in the workplace and graduates outlining their preferred and most effective courses they have applied in the workplace to be those that had practical training elements. The results of this study can serve as a model for developing programs for other tourism and hospitality educational institutes. © 2022 ICHRIE.

When women enter occupations that have historically and traditionally been the realm of men, they face a multitude of barriers that make their experience difficult and that contribute to a gender-segregated workforce. Vocational Education and Training (VET) is the entryway to employment in the skilled trades, and VET providers have a role in introducing students to the industry, in the formation of occupational identity and occupational behaviours, establishing workplace cultures and standards of professionalism. Furthermore, VET has a moral and legal obligation to provide a safe classroom for all students. This paper reflects on the role of VET in perpetuating gender segregation in the skilled trades in Australia. We report on a qualitative research project with tradeswomen, apprentices, industry and government representatives that found that significant barriers confront tradeswomen apprentices in VET institutions. The study found that VET has the capacity to normalise the tokenism of women and contribute to gender harassment. We argue that a VET classroom environment where gender inequalities and harassment are normalised, and a gender biased apprenticeship system, contribute to gender segregation in the skilled trades. © 2022 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.