Search Results for
"Vocational education"

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the opportunities and challenges involved in providing clinical inter-professional education (IPE) to physical therapy (PT) students in the acute-care setting from the perspective of PT clinical instructors (CIs). Methods: Focus groups were conducted in four acute-care hospitals in Toronto. Participants were recruited using a purposive and convenience sampling approach in order to enhance our understanding of the perceptions of acute-care PT CIs. Eighteen full-time PT CIs with an average of 11 years in practice participated. A constant comparative process was employed to identify recurrent issues and themes within and between groups Results: Three main themes emerged from the focus groups: (1) Clinical IPE happens when inter-professional collaboration (IPC) occurs; however, IPC differs according to setting, access to other professions, time, support, and structure. (2) IPE is a lifelong learning process that applies to both CIs and students. (3) Student preparedness is a prerequisite for clinical IPE. Conclusions: IPC is an integral part of clinical IPE that requires ongoing commitment and reflection by CIs to ensure that they are ready to instruct students who have some preparation in formal IPE. More knowledge about providing clinical IPE in a structured manner, through academic and health institutions, will allow CIs to become role models for future generations of PT students.

Introduction: This survey set out to identify innovations in teaching of ageing and geriatric medicine delivered to medical undergraduates in the UK. Methods: An electronic questionnaire which asked respondents to report innovations in teaching of which they were particularly proud was sent to all 31 UK medical schools. Results: Twenty-eight schools agreed to participate and full responses were received from 17. Thirteen of these reported innovations that were categorised in six areas - computing and technology, curriculum design, assessment, student-led teaching, multi-professional teaching, and clinical apprenticeships. The use of technology and multi-professional education were the most common areas of innovation. A broad theme touched on by most respondents was the teaching of ageing as a longitudinal theme throughout the course, across many disciplines, rather than in a discrete module. Conclusions: These data reveal a number of innovations in undergraduate teaching of ageing and geriatric medicine within the UK. Work should now focus on how to disseminate current innovations and co-operate at a national and international level to develop future teaching interventions. © 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS and European Union Geriatric Medicine Society. All rights reserved.

In this case study a novel educational programme for students in preparatory vocational education was studied. The research questions were: (1) Which teaching/learning processes occur in a simulated workplace using the concept of a knowledge-rich workplace? (2) What is the role of models and modelling in the teaching/learning processes? The curriculum project consisted of design and construction tasks. The students were collaboratively involved in the process of designing a tricycle for a real customer. This real-life activity creates opportunities for students to develop and use models, which can be used in more than in one context. The case study explored how the teachers deal with the students' explicit and implicit need for knowledge and skills. The main findings are that teachers more often provide this knowledge, rather than guide the students in reconstructing it, and towards the end of the project, knowledge tended to remain situated. 2011 British Educational Research Association.

Countries around the world have witnessed educational expansion at all levels, leading to the massification of tertiary education and training. Tertiary education has become a major factor of economic competitiveness in an increasingly science-based global economy and a key response to shifts in national labour markets. Within the EU, the reform of skill formation systems has been advanced by the Lisbon strategy, with the Bologna and Copenhagen processes in higher education (HE) and vocational education and training (VET) articulating and diffusing overarching goals in European skill formation. If European benchmarks call for at least 40% of all 30- to 34-year-olds to hold a tertiary-level certificate, Germany exhibits a relatively low proportion of each cohort entering HE and attaining that qualification level (28%). We analyse this 'German exceptionalism', locating a range of factors in the educational system: The institutional logic of segregation, the structure of secondary schooling, the division or schism between the organisational fields of VET and HE, and limited permeability throughout. Regardless of isomorphic pressures that led Germany to quickly implement undergraduate bachelor's (BA) and graduate master's (MA) courses of study, these factors limit the extent of HE expansion visible among other European countries. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

This article focuses on which aspects of the learning environment, aimed at fostering career learning, correspond with the development of career competencies among students (aged 12-19. years) enrolled in prevocational and secondary vocational education in The Netherlands. Aspects of the learning environment that are taken into account here are the following: career orientation and guidance methods used, instruments implemented, and the degree to which the curriculum is practice-based and dialogical. In the study, three career competencies are identified: career reflection (reflective behaviour), career forming (proactive behaviour), and networking (interactive behaviour). To research the relationship between the learning environment and the presence of career competencies, a study was done among 3499 students and 166 teachers in 226 classes in 34 schools. The results show that career guidance in school, in which a dialogue takes place with the student about concrete experiences and which is focused on the future, contributes most to the presence of career competencies among students. Without this dialogue, career guidance methods and instruments barely contribute to the acquisition of career competencies. © 2010 Elsevier Inc.

With the increasing complexities in the economy, the special need for fostering micro and small entrepreneurs through proper training and education has been felt. On the one hand, it is important to impart to them technical skills and the associated tacit knowledge (for performing production activities) and some articulated knowledge (part of which is scientifi c knowledge), required for comprehending the overall system of production in general. On the other hand, in order to run business profi ciently, they require to be imparted with modern managerial and organizational skills involving, inter alia, marketing, sourcing materials, fi nancing, and tying up and negotiating with other organizations. The existing system of entrepreneurship training or vocational education in India has mostly been grossly inadequate to meet all these requirements. At the same time, neglecting the traditional system of trainee apprenticeship under master craftsmen compounded the problem. Consequently, high mortality among micro and small enterprises (MSEs) has become a major concern. Appropriate policies can combine the traditional apprentice system with the modern training and vocational system that would impart tacit knowledge, articulated knowledge, technical skill and the managerial skill required for an effi cient own-account entrepreneur. © 2011 Keshab Das.

My starting point is a wish to provide a quality experience that facilitates students’ mastery of the skills they, employers and educationalists desire. An essential part of confirming the quality potentially afforded by the world of learning is clarity of definition. I argue that central measurement and control of quality is neither effective nor necessary. As Harvey (2005) reveals in his history and critique of quality evaluation in higher education, the moves towards standards, benchmarking, codes of practices and qualification frameworks may have distanced us from, rather than returned us to, “an integrated process of mutual trust that prioritizes improvement in learning” (2005, p. 274). According to Harvey, current quality assurance processes point to a future for learning, which is “not a real engagement with learning, but the advent of more complex evaluation procedures: in that setting it is unlikely that the quality in student experience will improve” (2005, p. 274). This rush for transparency has meant that the prize, the “what-for” of quality, has been lost to its own image. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.

The above words are in the opening page of Heidegger’s Building, Dwelling, Thinking, from which Heidegger provides a philological analysis of dwelling, which leads to a place where one is safeguarded. Should we desire a flourishing society, that is, a democratic community based on relatedness not transaction and on transcendence not immanence, which embraces both tacit and propositional knowledge, then workplace learning is necessary, although not sufficient, for a democratic society. I argue for the restoration of the centrality of workplace learning through active, experiential learning. Indeed, it is through experiential, vocational learning—central in the advocacy of Freire (1998)—that democracy and civic responsibility can flourish. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.

A growing feature of global higher education policy is the explicit link with economic performance. Indeed there is much that mirrors the development in the major economic regions of the world. From Singapore to Melbourne and from Mumbai to San Francisco, directing public educational institutions to provide public capital for their student bodies and then charge them has become a driving imperative of policy. The example I offer here is how European educational strategy has assertively included the vast and varied field of vocational education and training within the lifelong learning perspective. Its commitment to entwine formal education, workplace learning and governmental policy has a leading part in the economic debate on the role of higher education in Europe’s economic development. A desire to develop transparency and comparability in all forms of learning and qualifications, together with the associated required quality of assessment and teaching, has been an underlying and recurring theme in the Bologna Process. The commitment of European educational policy to lifelong learning generates a progressive transnational framework supporting innovative practice by higher education institutions at the local and national levels. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the compatibility between general education and the educational approach of Competency Based education, CBE, whose concept is very close to the one known as training. Competency Based education today is, in part, the convergent result of two previous educational movements: a) the American attempt to deeply changing the way of training elementary school teachers in the 70s; and b) the world general reform of vocational education in the 90s. Even though from the beginning, CBE has been the object of serious criticism, nowadays it appears as an important topic in the educational literature and, very frequently, as an alternative in educational reforms. There is not a concept of competency universally accepted. In this article, we present a definition of competency coherent with the function and role of education, generally identified with the preparation of the new generations to perform life roles in the context of a given culture. Consequently, to be competent implies the successful performance of roles in one aspect of life or in life in general. Finally, considering CBE as a transfer from Training Psychology to conventional education, the pertinence problem of this approach in the context of general education is formally brought up. After analysing the problems and difficulties of CBE in fulfilling the specific function of general education, that is, the generic preparation for life in general, it is put forward, as a starting point, the hypothesis of the possibility and the pertinence of a general competency. In theory, this highly abstract competency would apply to perform general roles in life with common aspects. The requirements of this general competency for life would be also very general: A rather large ensemble of wide knowledge and adequate use of intellectual abilities and cognitive strategies.