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"human"

This paper outlines a study designed to validate competencies for dental vocational training (DVT) and general professional training (GPT) in order to ensure their accuracy and acceptability. A highly inclusive approach is described whereby all trainers in Scotland were invited to participate in the exercise. The 168 individuals recruited were drawn from all branches of the dental services and all regions in Scotland. Using online or paper questionnaires, quantitative and qualitative data were collected for each competency statement over 9 months, after which focus groups discussed and decided which changes should be made. A high response rate was observed and from the 160 competencies originally identified, almost half (47.5%) were redrafted as a direct result of the validation process. Sections of the competency document that required most attention are discussed, as are the nature of changes made to the competencies. As a result of this study, a fully validated competency document for DVT and GPT has been produced and will allow a high degree of standardization of training through the provision of essential consistent information to trainers and VDPs.

Because workers must be prepared to constantly update their skills and reeducate themselves for new skills, lifelong learning must be a goal for every teacher and student. The curriculum provided during educational experiences should pave the way for attainment of this goal. This is particularly true for deaf and hard of hearing students. School-to-work (STW) has become an umbrella term for activities, experiences and opportunities that prepare students for the world of work, such as youth apprenticeships, mentoring, internships, job shadowing, career exploration, and integration of academic and vocational curriculum. This article provides historical background on STW, laws shaping requirements for STW programs, and research supporting STW components. Recommendations are provided for curricular elements of an STW program, and trends in STW are forecast.

The German apprenticeship system is considered an exemplary school-to-work program for youth not intending to complete a baccalaureate degree. Yet the traditionally highly stratified system has been changing, with more students pursuing both general education and obtaining vocational certification. Using the German SocioEconomic Panel, this paper analyzes initial wage levels based on school quality and training track for two cohorts of non-university young adults, 1984 versus 1994. For the older cohort from the more stratified system, graduation from the lowest school track predicted lower initial wages which vocational certification did not ameliorate. Vocational certification did predict higher wages for youth from higher quality school tracks. In contrast, for the 1994 cohort among whom general education is becoming more prevalent, formal vocational certification is an important predictor of higher initial wages for both high and low quality school tracks. The earnings of the 1984 cohort are also compared five, ten and 13 years after labor market entry. Apprenticeship predicts higher changes in wages by the final period. Returns to specific vocational training manifest in higher initial wages, but the effect obsolesces quickly over time. This pattern of initial returns and obsolescence holds for subsequent vocational certification, suggesting support for lifelong learning. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Medical education has witnessed recently an accelerated and worldwide trend of change. The race is on for curricula that are relevant, appropriate and accountable. One of the consequences of this is the need for a drastic reassessment of how we devise curricula, and of what models, approaches, and strategies to adopt. Outcomes-based education is currently offered as an alternative to the content-based approach, which has been criticized by many educational experts in the past. Although this new approach has its detractors, it holds some promise of being able to improve on a current situation that is in deadlock with itself. There has been a great deal of interest in educational strategies in the last decade. This has been associated with the development of new concepts such as "problem-based learning", " student-centered learning", and "integrated teaching". Each school has to assess each of these strategies and adopt what ever will serve the aims of the curriculum. Similarly, the considerable progress that has taken place in the design and development of instructional materials and instructional technology should be appreciated. This includes, development in computer assisted learning, virtual reality, the use of simulated subjects, e learning, and the new concept of Reusable Learning Objects (RLO's). Finally, it was realized, with the rapid development in medical education that medical education requires professional training. The assumption that any good medical practitioner has the ability to teach no longer holds and professional training is required.

The mobility effect of general and specific training is a key issue in the debate on the design of educational systems. Using data from two retrospective life-history surveys, we compare general school-based vocational training and specific apprenticeship training with regard to inter-firm, inter-occupational and inter-industrial mobility. The results show that workers with school-based degrees display greater occupational mobility, while no difference in firm and industrial mobility can be discerned. This suggests that apprenticeships do not eliminate job search at labor market entry, that they reduce occupational mobility, and that responsiveness to structural change is similar under both training systems.

Like other advanced societies, Germany has experienced marked developments in its social structures during the last decades. But Germany has also been a rather special case due to historical events and institutional characteristics. This distinctiveness is now being called into question. This study traces the major changes in social structure during the last four decades. In particular, it looks at developments in population, family, education, labour markets, class structures and life-course patterns. The final section addresses the question of how these changes might have affected interest formation, political cleavages and policies.

Irritant or allergic contact dermatitis of the hands is by far the most common type of occupational skin disease. In clinical studies with hand eczema patients, both an overrepresentation of subjects with sensitive skin (mostly patients with atopic dermatitis) and an excess of certain high-risk occupations have been noted. A systematic search for population-based epidemiological studies, which are interpretable in terms of analytic epidemiology, addressed hairdressers, nurses and metal workers (car manufacturing) compared to "unexposed" office workers. A heterogeneous definition of "hand eczema", sensitive skin (atopy/atopic dermatitis) and exposure is evident from these studies. Furthermore, various different risk measures have been used, often without adjustment for potential confounders such as age and sex. Despite overall limited comparability resulting from such heterogeneity of study designs, it may be concluded that both previous atopic (hand or flexural) eczema and excessive "wet work" (e.g. more than 2 hours per day) are associated with at least a doubling of the risk of occupational contact dermatitis. In occupations where many are exposed to excessive wet work, the attributable risk (AR) associated with this factor is higher than the AR associated with atopic eczema. Primary prevention should thus aim at reducing excessive amounts of wet work, as far as this is possible. Irrespective of wet work, risk group-adapted primary prevention should furthermore be implemented, e.g. intensified skin protection and early (self-) diagnosis of initial irritant skin damage especially in employees with sensitive skin.

Across Europe, contemporary negotiated reforms of economic and social policy are increasingly characterized by a logic of information rather than a logic of exchange. Unlike in neo-corporatist bargaining over incomes policies, states negotiate with the social partners not primarily to secure their acquiescence, but instead to enlist their active assistance in designing and mobilizing support for substantial reforms of public policy. State policy-makers lack the combination of technical, relational, and local information necessary to design successful blueprints for reform, and so they are dependent on the social partners to acquire this information. In systems in which unions and employers' associations can exercise dialogic capacity, policy innovation is more likely to come from the propositions of the social partners than from political parties or bureaucrats. Using this logic, the article undertakes a pairwise comparison of episodes of negotiated reform: pensions in France and Italy, and vocational training in France and Germany.

Vocational training on a rotational basis was born with capitalism. It grew up with it. Historically speaking the parallelism is striking. Apprenticeship first started with a tutelary and normalising approach. A second insertion approach appeared in the mid-seventies, in a time of persistent unemployment. Finally, a third step developed in the nineties with a stamped human ressources management orientation.

The 'brain fag' syndrome, which was first reported from West Africa in 1960 among students, has been shown to occur very widely in African students in western educational systems south of the Sahara. This study investigated the distribution of its symptoms in a group of apprentices chosen by convenient sampling from Ile-Ife, a university town about 240 km northeast of Lagos in Nigeria. The subjects who (in contrast) were training under an indigenous form of education - the African apprenticeship system - consisted of 183 (69.8%) males, and 79 (30.2%) females, in the age range of 13-26 years (mean ± SD 18.2 ± 3.0 years). Questionnaires were interview-administered to collect data on the sociodemographic, economic, and family background, English language proficiency, and the degree of the presence of brain fag symptoms. Results indicated a generally low rate of brain fag symptoms among these different types of apprentices. A relationship between proficiency in English, but not socioeconomic status, with brain fag symptoms was found. In the case of the Nigerian apprentices investigated here, brain fag symptoms were not significantly associated with the method of training learning (which is dependent mainly on verbal instructions in the vernacular from their bosses, and vicarious learning by observing the boss at work). The implications of these findings for two of the theories advanced for the pathogenesis of the brain fag syndrome were discussed. Copyright © 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel.