Search Results for
"Vocational education"

Use of simulation is well established as a way of learning and assessing skills in vocational disciplines. In many institutions the use of simulation with student nurses is being tested as a way of helping them learn clinical skills, problem solving, clinical assessment and decision-making. This paper explores the value of simulation as a learning tool through the presentation of findings from an evaluative research project into the use of simulation in nursing education. The focus of this paper is how students perceive that simulations help them learn and suggests that simulation may play a part in how students perceive learning that is meaningful to them. A literature review on the use of simulation is presented together with literature related to the learning theory that underpins simulation. The methodology, data collection and findings of the evaluative study are then presented followed by a discussion of the findings. Although the original research did not set out to examine how students perceived that simulations influenced their learning, the analysis indicated that this was a significant issue for them. Conclusions are drawn about how learning theory and simulation can be brought together to enhance student learning. © 2010 The vocational Aspect of education Ltd.

Workplace simulations (WPS), authentic learning environments at school, are increasingly used in vocational education. This article provides a theoretical analysis and synthesis of requirements considering learner skills, characteristics of the learning environment and the role of the teacher that influence good functioning in WPS and foster students' learning. WPS appeal to students' self-directed learning (SDL) and self-regulated learning (SRL) skills, as students are required to work and learn independently in these settings. To achieve individual learning, the environments should be adaptive to the learners' needs. Furthermore, the teachers should support learners to become competent in the domain but also guide them to become self-directed learners. To do so the interaction between the student, the teacher and the environment is of importance. The proposed model depicts the different elements and their relations. © 2010 The vocational Aspect of education Ltd.

School-enterprise cooperation is the direction of reform and development of China's vocational education. This paper, taking Zhejiang College of Construction as an example, first surmises the way how train high vocational talents of civil engineering with school-enterprise cooperation. Then, some suggestions on school-enterprise cooperation are made. It is recommended that vocational colleges and enterprises should conduct all round cooperation, including design of talent cultivation program, establishment of courses system, selection of teaching content, construction of training base, organization of practical teaching, training of qualified worker and teacher, and Problem-solving of technological difficulties enterprise encountered etc. Second, Policies should be made to initiate the enthusiasm of enterprises. Long-term mechanism of cooperation should be established and financial support should be given to promote the efficiency cooperation. © 2010 IEEE.

In Denmark, Germany and a number of other countries vocational education and Training is based on the principle of dual education. This means that the apprentices spend one part of their education and training at a vocational school and another part in a company or firm directly involved in ordinary working life. The close connection to working life implies that the transition from being apprentice to becoming a trained employee is relatively easy compared to school based VET systems. The principle of dual education within VET is known worldwide for its ability to provide the labour market with highly qualified labour which is able to adjust to new and changing conditions and introduction of new technology. Furthermore skilled labour educated and trained according to dual education has a very high mobility on the labour market. Dual education secures tight connections between the educational system and businesses and enterprises because of the involvement in the educational processes and finally the principal of dual education is a relatively cheap way to educate skilled labour compared to school based educational systems within VET. The economic crisis put pressure on the principle of dual education within vocational education and training (VET) because the firms and companies are less motivated to provide the necessary number of training places for the apprentices. On the one hand this causes problems for the young people wanting to take a vocational education as they are not able to finalize it without access to a proper training place. On the other hand it provides problems for businesses and enterprises because there will be a shortage of skilled labour in the future. In this paper a number of approaches to comply with this challenge from countries which organize their VET on the basis of dual education are presented. The examples come from Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland and Norway. The purpose of the paper is to provide knowledge and inspiration across countries about different ways of handling the principle of dual education in difficult economic situations and to create a basis for making the principle less fragile during economic down turns. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

This study was undertaken to determine the elements of Sustainable Development in Technical and vocational subjects and to develop the framework of sustainable Technical and vocational subjects in secondary school in Malaysia. This research was carried out using a qualitative research method that involved participation from 12 experts purposively chosen according to their positions. Interviews guided by interview protocol were employed in data gathering. The findings revealed 16 elements that contributed to the framework. These elements are creativity, innovation, networks and partnerships, staff development programme, teaching methods, generic skills, industrial relations and internships, counseling, entrepreneurship, ICT skills, interest, recognition, knowledge, competency based training, articulation, and commitment of management. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Objective: To investigate the effective, economic and viable long-term mechanism of Sichuan college students' social practice. Methods: A questionnaire was designed to investigate the students from North Sichuan Medical College and other 7 colleges in Sichuan province randomly. A secondary research of China students social practice status was combined and the results of Sichuan and other areas were compared. Results: A total of 2 200 questionnaires were issued, of which 1 920 effective ones were taken back with the recovery rate of 87.27%. The most common forms of social practice were social investigation (47.5%), public welfare labor (42.3%), novitiate/internship (38.7%); the most interesting contents of social practice were social morality education (54.79%), credit morality education (53.07%), professional skill education (51.88%), and near 80% college students thought the contents had close relationships with their major. College students hoped that the contents could combine their job-hunting, characteristics of their major, local economy, and needs of social development. The social practice department they wanted to go most was public welfare or civil service departments (43.7%), corporations (27.8%), and government bodies (19.2%). The most difficult thing was to get connected with target department, shortage of fund, empty topics, hard-to-determine practice projects (44.1%), and lack of teachers' guidance (43.6%). Degree of satisfaction from the students was moderate. Compared with other universities, social practice of Sichuan undergraduate students had broader coverage and was more closely related to students' majors with more attention on the combination with moral education and employment. Conclusion: Sichuan college students have higher expectations of social practice. However, the range and the time of actual participation are limited. The students are not very satisfied with status of social practice. The social practice of Sichuan college students should give prominence to the local features, be close to the students and serve the local place, strengthen the construction of practice bases, and establish effective systems of teacher training, funding, principle security mechanism and evaluation system. © 2010 Editorial Board of Chin J Evid-based Med.

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.

Research on education from the perspective of political science has so far been concentrated in four areas: comparative public policy analysis, internationalization and Europeanization of education systems, work in the tradition of comparative political economy and studies on the effect of education policies and institutions. On the basis of an in-depth analyses of reforms and transformations of education and training systems in Switzerland, Austria and Germany, the contributions to this special issue highlight three points that should serve as guideposts for future research: the analysis of the interaction between education policy and federalism, studying the impact of the balance of power between political actors and the dynamics of political coalitions on reform processes, and the distinction between reform politics and policies on the one hand and processes of institutional change on the other. © (2010) Swiss Political Science Review.

This paper considers the effects of temporary work on labor market entry and the subsequent careers of graduates of the vocational training system in Germany (VTS). Departing from Spence's signaling theory we conjecture that low schooling and bad grades in the final VTS exams contribute to early temping. Early temping is in turn expected to have negative long-term career consequences. To test these assumptions we use unique data on several cohorts of German VTS graduates which provides detailed information on schooling and the quality of vocational skills, including final VTS grades. The results of multivariate regression analyses (probit models) show that graduates with a lower level of education and graduates with poor grades are highly likely to have to turn to temporary employment after completing their vocational training. VTS graduates who enter the labor market via temporary employment are also found to suffer from low wages and repeated spells of unemployment. They are also disproportionately prone to forced occupational mobility. We conclude that graduates with low productivity in particular have to rely on temporary work to make the transition from vocational training to the labor market. © 2010 Lucius & Lucius Verlag Stuttgart.

The vocational education and training (VET) sector is a major pathway to postschool education for indigenous students, yet questions are being raised about the capacity of the VET system to provide successful outcomes for the indigenous apprentices and trainees it attracts. Within a system plagued by high cancellation rates in general, indigenous apprentices appear to do particularly badly. This paper combines data from an administrative database on apprenticeship with income data from the 2001 Census of Population and Housing to provide an analysis of attrition rates for apprenticeship training contracts in Queensland, asking: Are cancellation rates for indigenous students significantly higher than those for nonindigenous students, and, if so, what factors are responsible for this? © 2010 Taylor & Francis.