Search Results for
"Vocational education"

As elsewhere, vocational education and training (VET) has a poor image in Hong Kong. To remove the stigma, the vocational Training Council of Hong Kong embarked on pro-active strategic planning to make it more relevant and cost-effective, exposed long and widely held myths that VET is for dullards which leads only to low-paid and low-status jobs, provided a through-train education system to ensure that VET is no longer an educational cul-de-sac, and sought external accreditation aggressively. Though it is early days, there is strong evidence that these strategies have worked.

What is the competency? It will integrate the new technology and the career content into the basement of the vocational education. In addition, it also has to furthermore research to identify the content or rubric of competency (Hsu, 2006). The purpose of this study is conducting the competency rubric for fashion design students of technology institute, moreover, indicating the cognitive difference of the competency between the fields of industry and academic. The research will be a valuable reference for the development of fashion design department of technology institute in future. This study uses the Delphi Technique to develop the competency rubric, which includes 8 rubrics and 32 criteria, for fashion design students of technology institute. The research result indicates there are not the cognitive difference of the competency as well as the important order of the competency between the fields of industry and academic. Therefore, this study developed the competency rubric that includes human accomplishment, fashion sense, enterprise organization, marketing economics; design communication, design technique, foreign language and selflearning attempting were accepted by both experts of industry and academic.

WEB-BASED LEARNING AND TRAINING is becoming more important in vocational education and training. Such online learning environments make high demands on motivation for both trainers and learners. What is interesting in this respect is whether theories of motivation can predict the actual motivation of learners in online learning environments. In our study, we focus on three theories of motivation, namely the flow theory of Csikszentmihalyi, the cognitive motivation model of Heckhausen and the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan. These theories emphasise different conditions that are supposed to generate motivated behaviour and are also required to make learning motivation more likely. Our primary object is to find out if there is a relation between the experience of the above-mentioned conditions and the actual motivation of the learners in an online learning environment. The outcomes of the analyses of data from the evaluation of the web-based professional training ENTER show that the selfdetermination theory predicts learning motivation in online learning environments best. For designing web-based trainings that are able to enhance motivation, we present some recommendations derived from the outcomes. © 2008 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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This article provides an update on the Special Edition of the Journal of vocational education and Training 57, no. 3, 2005, which focused on the launch of the National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS) in South Africa. The analysis here evaluates the impact of the first phase of the NSDS, which ran between 1 April 2001 and 31 March 2005. The discussion highlights many of the successes and challenges facing skills development in South Africa. Central amongst these are: (i) a lack of political will to ensure the success of the ‘integrated’ approach to education and training formally adopted in South Africa after 1994; (ii) severe governance problems with regard to the management of Sector education and Training Authorities (SETAs), including financial mismanagement and fraud; and lastly, a multitude of operational problems, making the rollout of the NSDS an extremely difficult and complex task. © 2008 The vocational Aspect of education Ltd.

The authors provide an overview of current policy in the 14-19 area. They cover changes to 14-19 education, diplomas, and work-based learning in the context of new developments. They provide a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the new 14-19 phase with a focus on A levels and GCSEs, the new 14-19 Diplomas vocational learning and institutional collaboration. Drawing on international and historical analysis, recent research and practice and interveiws with policy actors, the authors set out the case for a more unified and strongly collaborative approach to the organisation of upper secondary education in England. The book is intended for education practitioners, policy-makers and researchers. It is for PGCE students on new 14-19 courses, and for those following Masters level courses on 14-19 curriculum and training. The authros are both co-directors of the Nuffielld Review of 14-19 education and Training in England and Wales, which is a six-year independent review of all aspects of 14-19 policy, research and practice funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The Review is based at the Department of Educational Studies, Oxford University. © Ann Hodgson and Ken Spours 2008.

New postsecondary graduates seeking entry into the Canadian workforce may experience more favourable labour market outcomes if they augment their education with job-related training. Employers, looking for new ways of differentiating among equally credentialed prospects, may prefer job candidates with practical training. These new realities have led to a steady increase in the availability and popularity of cooperative education programmes in Canadian colleges and universities. Few existing studies, however, have sought to examine whether or not earnings premiums or employment advantages exist for coop graduates. This paper compares the earnings and employment outcomes of postsecondary graduates with coop credentials to those with traditional, non-coop credentials. Even once controlling for a number of factors, coop programmes provide the greatest advantage at the university level, particularly among male graduates. In terms of employment status, college males and university females experienced the greatest advantages to attending coop programmes. © 2008 The vocational Aspect of education Ltd.

This chapter considers contributions from the political science literature to understanding the causes and consequences of cross-national diversity in training regimes across the most developed democracies.1 The recent surge of interest by political scientists in skills has developed as an offshoot of debates over distinctive varieties of capitalism. Although economists are mostly interested in the efficiency effects of different skill formation systems, and sociologists, often, in the effects of educational opportunities on social stratification, political scientists came to the topic of skills through an interest in understanding the political and institutional foundations of national political-economic systems associated with divergent political and distributive outcomes. In these debates, the skill systems that have attracted the most attention are those, such as the German one, that appear capable of reconciling high wages with high productivity via high skills and high value-added production (Streeck, 1991). In this chapter, therefore, we focus particular attention on Germany, while situating this case in the context of a broader comparative literature on the origins, operation, and future of distinctive skill regimes. The chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section briefly considers a range of arguments by political scientists on the implications of different, nationally specific models of skill formation. It presents an overview of the various typologies that have been devised to characterize cross-national differences in training systems, and it links these to recent claims about how vocational education and training systems fit into broader national political-economic models. © Cambridge University Press 2008 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Competitiveness and performance of national economies is inherently linked to the productivity of their workforces. Some of this productivity is created by full-time primary, secondary, and postsecondary education. A significant part is built up later when workers participate in the workforce.With strong complementarities between technology and skills, training and education is nowbeing considered as a key factor in global competitiveness. Industrialized countries seek to improve, and are willing to substantially invest in, their education and training institutions. Only recently, the Organisation for EconomicCo-Operation andDevelopment (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment study has led to critical scrutiny of primary and secondary education systems in those countries that achieved relatively low scores, and triggered a wave of research and reform suggestions (see, e.g., Fertig & Schmidt, 2002; Fertig, 2003). At least equally important are postsecondary education schemes. Although primary and secondary education provides skills that are largely general and provide mostly academic knowledge, postsecondary schemes are tailored toward specialization, and often toward provision of skills that are specific to the needs and requirements of particular labor markets. There are large differences between postsecondary education systems across industrialized countries. For instance, in the Anglo-Saxon countries, postsecondary education is usually state provided, through universities, colleges, and vocational schools. There is some concern about the emphasis on the academic bias of this system, with school-based vocational training schemes and specialized colleges not being able to provide workers with the “hands-on” skills the labor market requires. © Cambridge University Press 2008 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.

In 1957, 12 years after the end of World War II, the Ministry of education issued Circular 323 to promote the development of an element of ‘liberal studies’ in courses offered by technical and further education (FE) colleges in England. This was perceived to be in some ways a peculiar or uncharacteristic development. However, it lasted over 20 years, during which time most students on courses in FE colleges participated in what were termed General or Liberal Studies classes that complemented and/or contrasted with the technical content of their vocational programmes. By the end of the 1970s, these classes had changed in character, moving away from the concept of a ‘liberal education’ towards a prescribed diet of ‘communication studies’. The steady decline in apprenticeship numbers from the late 1960s onwards accelerated in the late 1970s, resulting in a new type of student (the state-funded ‘trainee’) into colleges whose curriculum would be prescribed by the Manpower Services Commission. This paper examines the Ministry’s thinking and charts the rise and fall of a curriculum phenomenon that became immortalised in the ‘Wilt’ novels of Tom Sharpe. The paper argues that the Ministry of education’s concerns half a century ago are still relevant now, particularly as fresh calls are being made to raise the leaving age from compulsory education to 18, and in light of attempts in England to develop new vocational diplomas for full-time students in schools and colleges. © 2008 The vocational Aspect of education Ltd.