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"human"

This essay places work certification at the center of all modern educational regimes. I sketch the growth of the education, training, and certification systems of the United States and Germany in new ways, highlighting the role of their highly divergent certification regimes in shaping them. Whereas Germany's education and training system, anchored in the economy through employers' associations and unions, accords well with human capital models, American practice, governed primarily by academic interests divorced from the economy, fits much better with credentialist theory. I consider how the absence of meaningful work certification at the secondary level in the US negatively affects educational justice and has encouraged the creation of a costly, inegalitarian system of higher education. Finally, I conclude with an assessment of human capital, signaling, control, and credentialist theories of certification, one that finds them all to some degree wanting. © 2011 International Sociological Association Research Committee 28 on Social Stratification and Mobility.

Attention to the inequitable distribution and limited access to primary health care resources is key to addressing the priority health needs of underserved populations in rural, remote and outer metropolitan areas. There is little high-quality evidence about improving access to quality primary health care services for underserved groups, particularly in relation to geographic barriers, and limited discussion about the training implications of reforms to improve access. To progress equity in access to primary health care services, health professional education institutions need to work with both the health sector and policy makers to address issues of workforce mix, recruitment and retention, and new models of primary health care delivery. This requires a fundamental shift in focus from these institutions and the health sector, to each view themselves as partners in an integrated teaching, research and service-oriented health system. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities for primary health care professionals, educators and the health sector in providing quality teaching and clinical experiences for increasing numbers of health professionals as a result of the reform agenda. It then outlines some practical strategies based on theory and evolving experience for dealing with some of these challenges and capitalising on opportunities. © 2011 La Trobe University.

The aim was to identify a set of competences for the Flemish academic Master of Nursing and Obstetrics degree that answer perceived needs in health care. The competency model was to demonstrate a degree of consensus among key nurses.The study was conducted in all Flemish hospitals registered to have 400 beds or more. Head nurses of surgery, geriatrics and intensive care units were eligible to participate, as well as one nurse from administration per hospital. A two round Delphi process allowed participants to comment on items identified in an analysis of existing international competency profiles of master level nurses and adapted to the Flemish context. Competences agreed to by 90% of the respondents were considered to have consensus.Fifteen out of 19 eligible hospitals were recruited in the study, 45 nurses participated in the Delphi panel. Consensus was reached on 31 competences that can be assigned to 5 nurse's roles: nursing expert, innovator, researcher, educator and manager. The resulting competency profile is in accordance with published profiles for similar programs.The reported study demonstrates a practical method to develop a consensus competency model for an academic master program based on the input of key individuals in mainstream nursing. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.

A firm's decision to invest in the general human capital of its workers can be affected by labor market conditions. Firms located close to a large number of competitors might refrain from financing general training because skilled workers may be poached after completion of training. To better incorporate economic realities, we apply a novel definition of regional labor markets based on travel time rather than travel distance or political borders. Our results show that firms provide less training in dense regional labor markets, indicating that (potential) labor poaching affects the training behavior of firms. Moreover, the threat of poaching is relevant only if general training is financed by the employer. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

In recent decades, education at all levels has been seriously impoverished by a growing obsession with standards, targets, skills and competences. According to this model, only a circumscribed range of basic cognitive skills and competences are the business of education, whose main role is to provide employability credentials for people competing for jobs in the global economy. The result is a one-dimensional, economistic and bleakly utilitarian conception of the educational task. In Mindfulness and Learning: Celebrating the Affective Dimension of Education, Terry Hyland advances the thesis that education stands in need of a rejuvenation of its affective function - the impact it has on the emotional, social, moral and personal development of learners. Drawing on the Buddhist conception of mindfulness, he advances a powerful argument for redressing this imbalance by enhancing the affective domain of learning. Mindfulness and Learning: Celebrating the Affective Dimension of Education shows how the concept and practice of ‘mindfulness’ - non-judgmental, present moment awareness and experience - can enrich learning at all levels. Mindfulness thus contributes to the enhanced achievement of general educational goals, and helps remedy the gross deficiency of the affective/emotional aspects of contemporary theory and practice. The author outlines a mindfulness-based affective education (MBAE) programme and shows how it might be introduced into educational provision from the early years to adult education with a view to harmonising the cognitive-affective balance across the system. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.

Accepting that human understanding of learning inevitably employs metaphor, this chapter argues that the idea of professional learning is most fruitfully illuminated by employing the metaphor of becoming. The argument has two strands. Firstly, we show that becoming enjoys significant advantages over common alternative metaphors, such as, acquisition and transfer, participation and construction, which are still favoured by various policy makers and industry bodies. Secondly, we outline and discuss several examples of profession learning, derived from various research projects, to illustrate the value of the becoming metaphor for analysing and enhancing professional learning. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.

Clinical learning experiences have always been considered a hallmark of nursing education. Introduced in 2004, the ten-week paid internship is a fourth year summer course offered to select students who have demonstrated strong academic and clinical performance. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study designed to explore student and staff perceptions about extrinsic factors that promote or impede learning during a nursing internship course. A descriptive exploratory design was used to conduct this research. Findings have been grouped into two main themes: extrinsic factors that promote interns' learning and extrinsic factors that impede interns' learning. The sub-themes under extrinsic factors that promote interns' learning are: staff making themselves available, having knowledge of policy, and units setting the tone for success. The sub-themes under extrinsic factors that impede interns' learning are: difficulty accessing staff, lack of knowledge of policy, and units not setting the tone for success. It is apparent that the factors identified in this study are similar to those found in the literature. It is striking that research findings of multiple studies examining factors that affect clinical learning converge regardless of the context or clinical learning models examined. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.

This article is concerned with the transition from school to the workplace for pupils with special educational needs in Germany. First, an outline of the standard system of professional training in Germany shall be given. Then, the initial conditions that adolescents are confronted with at the end of their time in school shall be examined. This review will then focus on studies and surveys of students with special educational needs who have graduated from school in Germany. It quickly becomes apparent that, after school, adolescents with special educational needs (SEN) most times visited a one-year school-based pre-vocational programme, and afterwards a state-funded school-based vocational programme; therefore the standard German dual-educational apprenticeship system generally doesn't apply. Looking at segregated schoolbased vocational training for students with SEN, it can be observed that the placement rate into the general labour market is not sufficient. Inclusive models play a minor role here, even if the analyses at hand suggest promising perspectives. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Whilst the literature consistently argues that vocational education and training, including apprenticeships and traineeships, contribute to positive employment outcomes for people with disability, little is documented regarding their post-course outcomes, particularly over time. This paper presents a retrospective outcome analysis of 253 apprentices and trainees with disability who were placed and supported by EDGE Employment Solutions (EDGE) between 2000 and 2010. EDGE, established in 1984 as a Disability Employment Service (DES) in Perth, Western Australia, has actively pursued apprenticeships and traineeship for people with disability in Australia since the 1990s. Post-course outcomes, including income, hours worked, and job durability, were analysed and compared with matched pairs of current EDGE registrants with similar socio-demographic characteristics who had not commenced an apprenticeship or traineeship. The retrospective outcome analysis found significantly better post-training outcomes for participants in the "completed" apprenticeship cohort than those achieved by their matched pairs. Improved outcomes were evident in higher hourly wages, more hours worked per week, higher weekly wages, and greater job durability. Better outcomes were also achieved by participants in the "completed" traineeship cohort and "did not complete" apprenticeship cohort. The outcomes for participants in the "did not complete" traineeship cohort did not differ significantly from the comparison group on most outcome measures. © 2011- IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.

The development of interdisciplinary approaches to environmental conservation is obviously related to interdisciplinary training in undergraduate and postgraduate conservation-oriented degree programmes. This paper therefore examines interdisciplinary training in environmental conservation, with a focus on conservation biology. The specific objectives are: (1) to analyse debates about the nature of interdisciplinarity in conservation biology; (2) to examine the status of interdisciplinary training in current academic programmes in conservation biology; and (3) to make recommendations in terms of interdisciplinary or other non-natural science content that should be prioritized for inclusion in the curriculum. The term 'interdisciplinarity' has been used in relation to conservation training to refer to (1) any social science content; (2) vocational skills training; (3) integrative or practice-based exercises, sometimes with no indication of disciplinary content; (4) the (variously defined) 'human dimensions' of conservation, and (5) interaction between different academic disciplines (usually crossing the natural science-social science divide). In terms of training, the natural sciences have remained predominant in almost all reported academic programmes, but there now appears to be more coverage of non-natural science issues than previously. However the lack of consistency in the use of terms makes it difficult to assess progress. Further debate about curriculum development in conservation would be aided greatly by recognizing the distinction between the different aspects of non-natural science training, and treating each of them in its own right. Most degree programmes in environment-related disciplines specialize to varying degrees either in the natural sciences or the social sciences, and a comprehensive programme covering both of these in depth is likely to be problematic. However, some understanding of different disciplinary perspectives is increasingly important in a career in environmental conservation, and it is argued that, as a minimum, a primarily natural science-based undergraduate programme in environmental conservation should include: (1) an introduction to social science perspectives on the environment; (2) basic training in social science methods, research design and science theory; (3) vocational skills training, to the extent that it can be built into existing curricular components; and (4) integrative problem-solving tasks that can be used in relation to any or all of the above. A similar list could be constructed for social science-based environmental degree programmes, incorporating some basic training in natural science perspectives. Postgraduate training programmes are more varied in what they aim to achieve in terms of disciplinary breadth; they can develop students' existing specialist expertise, offer supplementary training to allow students to increase the disciplinary breadth of their expertise, or focus on the issue of interdisciplinarity itself. © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2010.