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"Article"

This research aims to illuminate the multifaceted effects of blended learning on students' piano education, focusing on factors such as readiness, engagement, and emotional support. It investigates how the implementation of blended learning models can enhance students' outcomes in piano instruction through a flexible, autonomous, and supportive learning environment. Utilising a systematic literature review approach, this study analysed the multi-dimensional effects of blended learning on students' self-cognition, engagement, and emotional support. The TCCM (Theory, Context, Characteristics, and Methods) framework guided a comprehensive analysis of 45 peer-reviewed articles published between 2022 and 2024. A broad search across several academic databases, including Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), yielded 112 articles. After screening through two phases—title and abstract review, followed by a full-text review—45 articles were selected for detailed analysis. The review reveals that blended learning significantly enhances student readiness and engagement in piano education. Specifically, student engagement would mediate the relationship between readiness and learning outcomes, while self-cognition and emotional support could play critical moderating roles. Insights from Cognitive Load Theory and Self-Regulated Learning Theory emphasise the importance of managing cognitive load through the integration of online resources, feedback mechanisms, and practice tracking. The balance between digital and face-to-face interactions is crucial in fostering student engagement and readiness. This study contributes to the growing body of research on blended learning in music education, offering both theoretical and practical insights into optimising blended learning for piano instruction. While gaps in the literature remain, they present opportunities for further research into the interplay of cognitive-emotional and practical dimensions of blended learning across different cultural and instrumental contexts. Consequently, instructors and researchers can continue to refine the blended learning experience for piano students and beyond. © 2024 Societat de Filosofia del Pais Valencia. All rights reserved.

Introduction: Achieving competence as the main goal in medical education requires a dynamic and active learning process that includes the characteristics of a community of inquiry framework. This theoretical framework provides an overall and coherent structure of an interactive educational experience with a focus on the learning process. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to develop a competency-oriented educational model for medical sciences based on the framework of the community of inquiry. Methods: This was a qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative part was conducted using qualitative content analysis of documents and focus group discussions, while the quantitative part involved internal validation of the educational design model through a descriptive survey method (based on experts' opinions) and a researcher-made questionnaire. The sampling method was purposeful, focusing on specific or unique cases continuing until theoretical saturation was reached. Results: Using qualitative content analysis (36 documents, 33 articles, and three books) and focus group discussions (with the participation of 14 experts in medical education), the dimensions of competence, principles of competency-based medical education, and principles of inquiry community were identified. Based on theoretical foundations, these were categorized into three domains: affective, cognitive-skills, and metacognitive, along with their subcategories. The alignment of these dimensions led to the formation of a competency-based medical education model, grounded in the inquiry community framework. Internal validation of the developed model was conducted using a researcher-made questionnaire and the participation of 14 experts in educational technology and medical education. According to the specialists' opinions, the developed model achieved a relatively high internal validity (T=14.52, P<0.0001). Conclusion: In this study, the competency-based educational design model for medical education, based on the inquiry community, exhibited appropriate design and organization, flexibility, and adaptability to individual learning needs, even in unpredictable situations within medical education. Its design and organization can be continuously refined and improved throughout the educational experience. Given that it achieved a relatively good internal validity according to the opinions of specialists in medical education and educational technology, it can be introduced as a suitable model in the field of competency-based medical education. © 2024 Research In Medical Education, and Guilan University of Medical Sciences.

Economic growth is dependent on well-skilled human capital. Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programmes are paramount in provision of the requisite capabilities which encompass both academic and non-academic skills also known as whole youth development (WYD) skills. Youths leaving training institutions in Kenya experience various challenges associated with skills gap including incapacity to access, sustain and progress in the labour market. This article examines influencers of WYD skills acquisition among learners in the TVET institutions in Kenya. The article uses data from a cross-sectional survey, targeting students aged 15–25 years in both public and private TVET institutions. We analyse data from 3452 students, 347 instructors and 171 heads who participated in the study. A composite score based on four domains measured acquisition of WYD skills: functional numeracy and literacy, soft skills and digital learning. Multi-level regression results on WYD reveal better performance in well-equipped institutions compared to inadequately equipped ones. Similarly, better performance from institutions located in wealthier regions compared to those in marginalised areas. We deduce that the uptake of WYD skills among TVET students heavily relies on supply-side influencers. © 2022 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.

This article analyses the main reasons for dropping out of Spanish Intermediate Vocational Education (IVET) and the link to personal (sex, ethnicity, age), family (parents’ educational level) and financial sociodemographic characteristics, as well as academic background (repeating or expulsion). To do this, a cohort of IVET students was monitored over three years via three questionnaires presenting the results for students who, over the monitoring period, dropped out without obtaining the corresponding qualification. The study was carried out in a Mediterranean region (Mallorca) with the highest levels of school dropout in Spain and an economy essentially centred on tourism. Results show that the most important reasons for dropping out are finding a job or wanting to find one, obtaining bad results and wanting to do other courses. The analysis highlights differences in reasons for dropping out by sex, ethnicity, age, the perception of financial difficulties and previous academic background. The findings suggest that educational interventions aimed at reducing dropout at this level of education should take into account the heterogeneity of student profiles as well as the limitations of the quantitative perspective in analysing students’ reasons for dropping out. © 2022 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.

Over the last two decades, the skilled practice of learning the ney (Sufi reed flute) has gone through a massive revival in Turkey, as part of a broader interest in the revitalised ‘Sufi music’ genre and in Islamic arts learning. One key step in this process has been the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government’s incorporation of ney teaching into mass public education through its council-run adult education programme (İSMEK). While this development has been pivotal in broadening access to skill attainment in the metropolitan area of Istanbul in significant ways, it has also led to a rationalisation of pedagogical practices, bringing with it transformed understandings of musical skill. To show what this process of rationalisation involves, this article examines skill training encouraged at government-sponsored lesson sites in tandem with a second mode of learning the ney grounded in apprenticeship pedagogy. The divergences emerging from this comparison reveal two very different paths to becoming an expert ney player, demonstrating, in turn, how pedagogical particularities foster different communities of practice. © 2022 Global South Ltd.

Drawing on Lave’s theorisation of situated learning, this article engages with skills in the so-called ‘unskilled’ domain of waste work. Waste work involves handling diverse material discards, from household vegetable peelings, metal and plastic scraps, to human and animal faecal material and corpses. In India, forms of waste work are toxic, historically stigmatised, burdened on Dalit and Adivasi bodies, and officially categorised as ‘unskilled’ work. Based on fieldwork in a town in central India, the paper draws attention to skills in waste work, documenting social practices that involve processes of learning and acquiring skills. Analysing institutions that mediate skill acquisition in waste work, the paper argues that ‘skilled’ work is politically and socially constructed and materially contingent. The article destabilises reified notions of how work gets classified as ‘(un)skilled’. Further, the paper reflects on the conflicts and paradoxes that a conversation on skills in waste work throws up: valuing and recognising different forms of waste work while also pointing to their toxicities and struggles. © 2022 Global South Ltd.

This article explores change possibilities towards status improvement in vocational education’s social construction. Following other researchers, it assumes that higher-status vocational education should give vocational learners perspectives that would accord with their identities and desires, broadly ranging between working in a particular company and further studies. The article proposes that change in this direction must concern the transmitter-acquirer-knowledge-relation and also curriculum, evaluation and the external relations of education. To think systematically about changes of these ‘adjusting screws’, this article proposes a realist approach with Bernstein’s conceptual language, and Moore's Bernstein-based model of education where vocational learners, plausibly, receive an orientation towards broad futures beyond narrow job roles. Moore's model implies fundamental changes of all these ‘adjusting screws’ and, importantly, of the principle underlying their realisation in schools. The case of company-based education in Germany’s ‘dual system’ is advanced as a real-life example for the highly theoretical model. Findings from a Bernsteinian analysis of the transmitter-acquirer-relation in regulated company transmission made sense, when the system was understood as realising the principles envisioned in Moore’s model. The model and its underlying principles, together with their realisation in the DS, open up a perspective towards education (instead of job training) in workplaces. © 2022 Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training, Germany.

Electricians’ exposure to ergonomically challenging working positions and conditions makes them vulnerable to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). Ergonomic behaviour and compliance with interventions may be expected to be intertwined with their understanding, knowledge, and habits regarding their occupation and regarding work environment and ergonomics. These habits and knowledge are initially formally shaped during vocational education and training. Therefore, the aim of this article is to explore how electricians and the electrical trade are conceived, expressed and (re)produced in a trade school context and how these may function to impede or facilitate implementation of healthy ergonomic habits and behaviours for electricians. Five semi-structured focus group interviews were performed with trade school related stakeholders regarding electricians and MSDs. Interview data was analysed using discourse analysis. Results show that discourses of ‘the architecture of electricity’ and of ‘time pressure’ informed the informants discussions. The discourses positioned electricians as tenacious and responsible, which, in turn, tended to both impede and facilitate the interviewed electricians’ ergonomic behaviour, with a macho-culture serving as a major impeding influence. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This article offers an interpretive examination of the future orientation of students in vocational schools as part of their vocational habitus. Through in-depth interviews with 30 adolescents (16 boys, 14 girls), the study identified three key future orientations: (1) the vague use of the term ‘success’ in the absence of an accompanying description of specific goals for achieving that success; (2) the future described through ‘hard individualism’––a future replete with many challenging anticipated scenarios: constant struggles to achieve goals, lack of control, and an inability to predict reality, becoming accustomed to failures, and self-reliance; (3) preference for occupational independence or being solo self-employed, partially motivated by a desire to avoid future experiences of subordination, exploitation, and humiliation––factors characterising their current employment. The effects and implications of vocational school students’ structural vulnerabilities and experiences of social exclusion on their future orientations are discussed. Further research of future orientation is critical in its role as a component of vocational habitus to achieve a complex understanding of the educational work in vocational schools. © 2022 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.

Prior learning assessment (PLA) uses testing or competency portfolios to assess and grant credit for college-level learning, thus offering personal and professional empowerment to adult learners. The purpose of this review was to systematically examine global academic literature related to PLA over a decade. An earlier review of U.S. literature focused solely on PLA, but this review focused on the globally used term recognition of prior learning (RPL) and prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR). Data collection followed a structured process to identify all peer-reviewed journal articles published over a decade that meet inclusion criteria. Data analysis included thematic coding to identify categories leading to themes. Major findings included journals publishing about PLA, author perspectives and affiliations, underlying empirical studies, and eight major themes: studies of programs, policy and systems, studies of PLA, technology tools, theory building, assessment practices, workplace applications of PLA, and immigration. © 2022 Association for Continuing Higher Education.