Search Results for
"Vocational education"

[No abstract available]

This paper examines selected reform efforts in technical and technological education from a comparative perspective. The similarities and differences between reforms in selected countries – Brazil, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden – are analysed to determine major world‐wide trends. Lessons are drawn which should be useful for nations contemplating reform of their education and training systems. Particular attention is focussed on the time taken to complete reforms effectively and the need for long‐term approaches, relationships between educational reforms and industrial development, the interdependence of reforms affecting general, technical and vocational education, regional co‐operation and the decentralisation of national decision‐making. © 1993 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

This overview of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is concerned with four main issues: The diversity of locations in which TVET is delivered, the nature of different client groups, curriculum, control and the role of the state. There is no single version of best practice. External agencies will need to be cautious about providing universal prescriptions; problems in any particular country are perhaps best solved by building on the culture of TVET which is already well established in the country concerned. © 1993 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

This article reports a study of students' experiences in a community college vocational program in banking and finance and the jobs the students got and lost in the data center of a bank. The study is situated in current concerns about the presumed literacy problems of North American workers and the relationship between skills and competitiveness in the global economy. The discontinuities between such concerns and the situations of the vocational students in this study are discussed, as are calls for “functional context” and “critical” literacy programs. An argument is made for the educational, social, and political importance of studies of work in juxtaposition to studies of schooling. 1993 American Anthropological Association

The rapid expansion of competence-based education (CBE) through the work of the National Council for vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) has now, thanks to generous public funding and official endorsement by the Department for education, penetrated the theory and practice of professional studies in teacher education at both school and post-school levels. The NCVQ model of CBE is criticised and alternatives described. The current NCVQ approach is neither the only nor necessarily the most appropriate model of occupational development on offer. Models of professionalism based on the concept of ‘expertise’ are recommended as the ones most likely to produce the reflective practitioners required to enhance the status and quality of teaching in schools and colleges. © 1993, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

The recent Government White Paper on further education (now part of the Further and Higher education Act) made a host of proposals designed to address some urgent issues in the post-compulsory sector, including the need to increase the post-16 participation rate and to upgrade generally vocational education and training to bring the British system on a level with those in France and Germany. A central problem in this area is the cultural divide between the vocational and the academic, and the White Paper proposes to bridge this gulf by introducing new diplomas and by expanding the framework of National vocational Qualifications. The origins of the cultural chasm between the vocational and the academic are briefly explored, and criticisms of the Government proposals are put forward, particularly the use of National vocational Qualifications as a means of enhancing vocational education and training. What is required is a transformation of educational values, and John Dewey’s thoughts on knowledge and the vocational are offered as a valuable source of ideas for effecting the desired shift in philosophical perspective. © 1993, Taylor & Francis Group LLC. All rights reserved.

[No abstract available]

This paper explores the emerging settlement surrounding vocational education and training in England in the 1990s. It describes and then considers the dangers in the post‐Fordist position that argues a high skills/high trust economy/society offers emancipatory possibilities. Insufficient attention is addressed to the way post‐Fordist concerns are lodged within capitalist social relations oriented to capital accumulation. Educational practices placed within these relations can easily lose their radicalism and sit readily alongside the concerns of curriculum modernisers who are wedded to capitalist rejuvenation. © 1993 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Abstract: Patterns of smoking in Western Australia since 1974 were examined using four data sets. Consistency between sets of data was high for adults in the various categories of smoker status. Having established consistency, the patterns revealed by the surveys conducted by the Health Department of Western Australia were examined in more detail. According to these data, prevalence fell from 31.2 per cent in 1984 to 23.9 per cent in 1991 but was still higher among males, at 27.3 per cent, than among females, at 23.4 per cent. Although the sex‐specific prevalence levels were converging, the difference was still significant (P = 0.01). While patterns of smoking in Western Australia generally reflected those in Australia as a whole, some differences were detected. The variation in prevalence according to level of education among women became less pronounced: in 1991, prevalence was 25.5 per cent among women who had completed an apprenticeship or trade certificate compared with 21.7 per cent among women who had undertaken some university studies, the corresponding figures for 1984 being 31.1 per cent and 24.8 per cent. Differences in prevalence among young women between state and national data were also noted. Between 1987 and 1991 the prevalence of smoking among women in the 20‐ to 24‐year age group decreased from 41.2 per cent to 29.0 per cent. This is at odds with findings from the data collected by the Anti Cancer Council of Victoria which indicate that, in 1989, the prevalence of smoking among Australian women aged 20 to 24 years was 37.7 per cent, which was higher than the prevalence in any other male or female age group. 1993 Public Health Association of Australia

Malawi's literacy rate for people aged 15 years and above is estimated at 48,3 per cent. The high level of illiteracy impedes the exchange of information and so also socio-economic development. The government of Malawi launched the functional literacy programme so that those without formal education could achieve numeracy and literacy and also education for socio-economic development. The programme has failed to attract the youth, whose major concern is getting a job or self-employment that would enable them to earn a cash income. It is argued here that literacy education should feed into apprenticeship training and that this would help to alleviate poverty in the country. © 1993, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.