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"learning"

In this case study a novel educational programme for students in preparatory vocational education was studied. The research questions were: (1) Which teaching/learning processes occur in a simulated workplace using the concept of a knowledge-rich workplace? (2) What is the role of models and modelling in the teaching/learning processes? The curriculum project consisted of design and construction tasks. The students were collaboratively involved in the process of designing a tricycle for a real customer. This real-life activity creates opportunities for students to develop and use models, which can be used in more than in one context. The case study explored how the teachers deal with the students' explicit and implicit need for knowledge and skills. The main findings are that teachers more often provide this knowledge, rather than guide the students in reconstructing it, and towards the end of the project, knowledge tended to remain situated. 2011 British Educational Research Association.

This article focuses on which aspects of the learning environment, aimed at fostering career learning, correspond with the development of career competencies among students (aged 12-19. years) enrolled in prevocational and secondary vocational education in The Netherlands. Aspects of the learning environment that are taken into account here are the following: career orientation and guidance methods used, instruments implemented, and the degree to which the curriculum is practice-based and dialogical. In the study, three career competencies are identified: career reflection (reflective behaviour), career forming (proactive behaviour), and networking (interactive behaviour). To research the relationship between the learning environment and the presence of career competencies, a study was done among 3499 students and 166 teachers in 226 classes in 34 schools. The results show that career guidance in school, in which a dialogue takes place with the student about concrete experiences and which is focused on the future, contributes most to the presence of career competencies among students. Without this dialogue, career guidance methods and instruments barely contribute to the acquisition of career competencies. © 2010 Elsevier Inc.

Background: General practitioners need the skills to perform a core set of procedures. The increase in community based medical education gives GPs more opportunity and responsibility to facilitate medical students and junior doctors' acquisition of these core skills. Objective: This article summarises how procedural skills are learned and describes a practical framework for constructing a supportive learning environment that is safe for patients and learners. Discussion: Procedural skills are learned in stages starting with a 'big picture' concept of the skill and its place in clinical care. Next the skill becomes fixed through deliberate practice with specific, constructive feedback based on observation. Autonomous practice is reached after further practice and exposure to increased complexity. General practitioners can facilitate skill development by using a staged learning cycle, building on their learner's prior knowledge and skill.

This book defines over 3,000 terms from the field of education to assist those charged with teaching students to become global citizens in a rapidly changing, technological society. John W. Collins and Nancy Patricia O'Brien, coeditors of the first edition of The Greenwood Dictionary of Education published in 2003, have acknowledged and addressed these shifts. This revised second edition supplements the extensive content of the first through greater focus on subjects such as neurosciences in educational behavior, gaming strategies as a learning technique, social networking, and distance education. Terms have been revised, where necessary, to represent changes in educational practice and theory. The Dictionary's focus is on current and evolving terminology specific to the broad field of education, although terms from closely related fields used in the context of education are also included. Encompassing the history of education as well as its future trends, the updated second edition will aid in the understanding and use of terms as they apply to contemporary educational research, practice, and theory. © 2011 by John W. Collins III and Nancy Patricia O’Brien. All rights reserved.

My starting point is a wish to provide a quality experience that facilitates students’ mastery of the skills they, employers and educationalists desire. An essential part of confirming the quality potentially afforded by the world of learning is clarity of definition. I argue that central measurement and control of quality is neither effective nor necessary. As Harvey (2005) reveals in his history and critique of quality evaluation in higher education, the moves towards standards, benchmarking, codes of practices and qualification frameworks may have distanced us from, rather than returned us to, “an integrated process of mutual trust that prioritizes improvement in learning” (2005, p. 274). According to Harvey, current quality assurance processes point to a future for learning, which is “not a real engagement with learning, but the advent of more complex evaluation procedures: in that setting it is unlikely that the quality in student experience will improve” (2005, p. 274). This rush for transparency has meant that the prize, the “what-for” of quality, has been lost to its own image. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.

The above words are in the opening page of Heidegger’s Building, Dwelling, Thinking, from which Heidegger provides a philological analysis of dwelling, which leads to a place where one is safeguarded. Should we desire a flourishing society, that is, a democratic community based on relatedness not transaction and on transcendence not immanence, which embraces both tacit and propositional knowledge, then workplace learning is necessary, although not sufficient, for a democratic society. I argue for the restoration of the centrality of workplace learning through active, experiential learning. Indeed, it is through experiential, vocational learning—central in the advocacy of Freire (1998)—that democracy and civic responsibility can flourish. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.

A growing feature of global higher education policy is the explicit link with economic performance. Indeed there is much that mirrors the development in the major economic regions of the world. From Singapore to Melbourne and from Mumbai to San Francisco, directing public educational institutions to provide public capital for their student bodies and then charge them has become a driving imperative of policy. The example I offer here is how European educational strategy has assertively included the vast and varied field of vocational education and training within the lifelong learning perspective. Its commitment to entwine formal education, workplace learning and governmental policy has a leading part in the economic debate on the role of higher education in Europe’s economic development. A desire to develop transparency and comparability in all forms of learning and qualifications, together with the associated required quality of assessment and teaching, has been an underlying and recurring theme in the Bologna Process. The commitment of European educational policy to lifelong learning generates a progressive transnational framework supporting innovative practice by higher education institutions at the local and national levels. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.

An active/cooperative, introductory engineering design course is planned, implemented, assessed, and evaluated using the project based learning approach to allow freshman level students to gain professional hands-on engineering design experience. The course project exposes the students to important contemporary issues, and excites their interest to address them in a creative way. The students are guided to discover by themselves how and why engineering approaches work, rather than simply providing a recipe for a solution. The open-ended design process allows the students to discover underlying complex engineering and scientific principles, and provide motivation for further study and engagement. The course was implemented for the first time in fall 2009. The students were asked to design a small wind turbine suitable for home use for energy saving purposes. Direct and indirect assessment tools indicated high level of achievement of course learning outcomes together with a high level of student satisfaction. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.

This study aims at analysing the specificities of the meaning given by apprentices in their first year of CAP (vocational training certificate, level 5) to their school guidance. This survey based on questionnaires to 353 apprentices has allowed to identify through a multi-varied analysis (descending hierarchical classification) 4 different forms of support to learning which must not be systematically linked to sociofamily background and their difficulties in their previous school history. The school guidance toward apprenticeship cannot be explained only by a lack of interest for school. It also arouses some positive forms of mobilization which testify of the way these young people try to rely on this training to give a sense to their life. © 2011 Association Internationale de Psychologie du Travail de Langue Française (AIPTLF).

In E-learning Theory and Practice the authors set out different perspectives on e-learning. The book deals with the social implications of e-learning, its transformative effects, and the social and technical interplay that supports and directs e-learning. The authors present new perspectives on the subject by: Exploring the way teaching and learning are changing with the presence of the Internet and participatory media; Providing a theoretical grounding in new learning practices from education, communication and information science; Addressing e-learning in terms of existing learning theories, emerging online learning theories, new literacies, social networks, social worlds, community and virtual communities, and online resources; Emphasizing the impact of everyday electronic practices on learning, literacy and the classroom, locally and globally. This book is for everyone involved in e-learning. Teachers and educators will gain an understanding of new learning practices, and learners will gain a sense of their new role as active participants in classroom and lifelong learning. Graduate students and researchers will gain insight into the direction of research in this new and exciting area of education and the Internet. © Caroline Haythornthwaite and Richard Andrews 2011.