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"Students"

Education aiming at students' competence development asks for new assessment methods. The quality of these methods needs to be assured using adapted quality criteria and accompanying standards. As such standards are not widely available, this study sets out to examine what level of compliance with quality criteria stakeholders consider satisfactory. Two professional education programmes specified the implicit standards they applied in a self-evaluation procedure designed to evaluate the quality of their Competence Assessment Programs (CAPs). They specified similar cut-off scores, but different descriptive standards. Analysis revealed that this was due to theIR experience with competence-based education and the quality of their own CAP, but influences of the selected method and the understanding of the quality criteria were also found. As such, the specified standards are local, but meaningful for the programmes' quality assurance. Implications for self-evaluation and standard-setting procedures are discussed. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

In the biosciences, a professional placement experience in academia or industry is intended to contribute to a student's personal and professional training. While there is a general acknowledgement that a placement experience is beneficial for students, recent years have seen a decline in the number of students choosing to go on placements. Using a mixed-method research design, this paper explores the attitudes that influence the bioscience students' decisions on whether or not to undertake a year in a professional placement. Other questions considered in this study were whether placements influence student attitudes towards learning and if students achieve a better degree classification and better employment because of placement. Perspectives from academic staff and employers were compared with student perspectives on the added value of undertaking an extended placement during a period of study at university. While our findings reaffirm some of the perceived advantages of a professional placement in terms of learning and employability, it identifies important factors that influence student decisions not to undertake placements, revealing interesting questions on the placement perspectives between the student, academic tutor and employer. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

The main objective of the TravEd Research project is to develop a pedagogical model that exploits mobile technologies and electronic learning environments and that is applied especially to develop decentralised tourism education in tourist destinations with extremely mobile tourism students. Developmental work on the project will be carried out through design-based research (DBR). The approach to learning arises from the socio-cultural tradition inherent to the activities, culture, context, and environment in which the learning takes place. The focuses of attention are collaborative teaching-studying-learning (TSL) processes during which several types of applications that also enable smartphone use are utilised. This paper presents the theoretical underpinnings of the project and the first cycle of the DBR process that will be carried out during an apprenticeship period aiming to develop a pedagogical model for work-based mobile learning in tourism settings/education. © 2012, IGI Global.

This study aimed at identifying required competencies for the labor market by the graduates majoring in the agricultural extension education field. The study population included undergraduates, faculty members, and employers, as related to bachelor level in three extension and education departments at Bu Ali Sina, Tehran, and Shiraz Universities of Iran. The study has employed both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. The quantitative research method used to collect data consisted of a questionnaire and the qualitative research method was semi-structured interviews. According to results, a combination of skills, mechanisms, supportive and collaborative systems with focus on self employment and entrepreneurship should be considered in order to improve students' situation for labour market.

Learning in vocational schools and workplaces are the two main components of vocational education. students have to develop professional competences by building meaningful relations between knowledge, skills and attitudes. There are, however, some major concerns about the combination of learning in these two learning environments, since vocational schools are primarily based on the rationales of learning and theory, while workplaces are based on the rationales of working and practice. This study therefore aims to structure empirical insights into students' learning processes during the combination of school-based learning and workplace learning in vocational education. A review-study has been conducted in which ultimately 24 articles were analyzed thoroughly. The review shows that students' learning processes in vocational schools and workplaces are related to six main themes: students' expertise development, students' learning styles, students' integration of knowledge acquired in school and workplace, processes of knowledge development, students' motivations for learning and students' professional identity development. Our results show that students are novices who use specific and different learning styles and learning activities in vocational schools and workplaces. It is concluded that the enhancement of students' learning processes needs to be adaptive and differentiated in nature. Recommendations for further research are elaborated and suggestions for the enhancement of students' learning processes are discussed using insights from hybrid learning environments and boundary crossing via boundary objects. © 2011 The Author(s).

In vocational education, there is an ongoing discussion about problems occurring in school-work transitions and in relating school and work-based learning processes. Apprenticeships have been identified as valuable learning and working trajectories for making successful transitions and relations between school and work. However, they have been mostly located as activities taking place solely in the workplace with hardly any attention for what students do and learn during release days at school. Deploying the theoretical notion of boundary crossing, we conducted a study in Dutch senior secondary vocational laboratory education, investigating the actions and interactions taking place between school and work during apprenticeships, taking into account both the cognitive and identity-related challenge of students' boundary crossing. Specifically, we conducted workplace visits and analyzed how apprentices' experiences at work are discussed and reflected upon with students and teachers at school. The findings reveal that what students are expected to learn in work practices is largely rendered invisible by the technology-mediated, scripted and socially distributed nature of their work. They are educated as lab technicians doing much manual work, but become more operators of machines in the workplace. The release days seem to provide initial ways to explicate and reflect with the teacher on what is going on in work, but they can be exploited more fully for vocational learning. Based on the results we discuss how school and work institutions can mutually feed each other in facilitating apprentices' learning. © 2011 The Author(s).

In this study, we aimed at revealing the alterations in the agricultural knowledge of students that have occurred by means of the "School Garden Project" which had been conducted to accomplish 5 targets that were determined in the scope of an agriculture course program held in Turkey. The application was made in 5 months' time between February and June in the spring semester of the academic year 2007-2008. We have followed the steps of a model named "RAST (Researchers, Administer, Student, Teacher) Model" developed by researchers with the aim of conducting the School Garden Project. The sample of the study consisted of twenty-four 6th grade students intentionally choosing agriculture course in Trabzon in Turkey. During the application, the 24 students were divided into 6 groups of 4 students each, and a representative was chosen for each group. In order to collect data in the research, interviews have been made with students both before and after the application. Also, observations have been made by researchers during the application. The project has generally made alterations in the desired level of all the targets; and suggestions have been made in this direction. © Sila Science. All rights reserved.

This paper presents the results of an investigation into contextual differences in the development and delivery of enterprise education in higher education globally. Using information gathered from an online survey distributed to enterprise educators, distinct differences in the provision of enterprise education are identified, as are differences of opinion among enterprise educators. The findings demonstrate that although enterprise education is highly diversified in terms of presentation, content and style, there are clear commonalities with regard to expected student outcomes. The respondents reported low levels of business start-up activity among students during enterprise education and/or within one year of graduation. Over 75% of the educators surveyed had personal start-up experience, and there was limited reliance on academic literature, with a preference for referencing broader stakeholder perspectives. With regard to the practical implications of this research, the international metric of enterprise education appears to be a broad set of enterprising skills that equip and enable students to recognize and exploit opportunities in order to navigate future unknowns. The commonly employed metric of business start-up appears less valid in light of this investigation. © 2012, © 2012 SAGE Publications.

This article focuses on the question: which aspects of a learning environment, aimed at fostering career learning, correspond with the development of career competencies among university students in the Netherlands? A questionnaire-based study was carried out among 4820 students and 371 career counsellors in 11 universities. Four career competencies were identified: career reflection (reflective behaviour), work exploration (exploring behaviour), career action (proactive behaviour) and networking (interactive behaviour). The results show that the existence of these competencies among students in higher vocational education correlates with a learning environment that is characterized by a practice-based and inquiry-based curriculum, which offers students the opportunity to engage in a career dialogue. The existence of a career dialogue, in which students can discuss the personal and societal relevance of the real-life problems they encounter, and the experiences they have, proves to be essential. Without a dialogue the learning potential of a practice- and inquiry-based curriculum is limited. © 2012 Copyright Society for Research into Higher Education.

Globally, there has been attention given to addressing the workforce shortage in nursing. One strategy to respond to this has resulted in renewed emphasis on the development of career and education pathways for students in the final years of high school. An evaluation of the School Based New Apprenticeship (SBNA) initiative in nursing in a regional Area Health Service in New South Wales (NSW) was undertaken. The evaluation revealed the experiences of the students who participated in the Programme were largely positive. However, there are a number of ambiguities that should be addressed in order to better enable SBNA Programmes to achieve broader goals within changing education and health contexts. These relate primarily to the need to clarify the intent of the Programme and the activities of health and education personnel in order to meet the shared desire among stakeholders to provide a quality learning and employment experience for students. © 2012 Copyright The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.