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"Teaching"

This paper presents an educational methodology of cooperative project-based learning. This methodology emerges in the final years of the undergraduate programme of the Technical University of Madrid. The paper focuses on the evolution of this experience up to its insertion in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), incorporating the project management competences of the International Project Management Association (IPMA) and broadening its scope to an entire educational strategy for undergraduate and graduate programmes. The results show how the methodology provides three main advantages: (1) it facilitates training in technical, personal, and contextual competences; (2) real problems in the professional sphere are dealt with; and (3) collaborative learning is facilitated through the integration of teaching and research. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This study investigated special education teachers' perceptions of the benefits, barriers, and components of community-based vocational instruction (CBVI). Participants included special education teachers (N = 68) from randomly selected high schools in Illinois who had experience delivering vocational curriculum to students with disabilities. Data collection occurred via a survey. Special education teachers perceived CBVI to result in numerous benefits for students with disabilities. Limited resources, requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, and student issues were identified as barriers to implementation. Incongruence existed between teachers' ratings of the importance and use of the components of CBVI. Years of teaching experience, types of students with disabilities served, size of school, and experience with CBVI affected teachers' perceptions of CBVI. © American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

Objective: International reports on school-to-work transition make it clear that worldwide youth are at-risk for educational disengagement and are three times as likely to be unemployed as their adult counterparts. Work-based education (WBE) is one of the most frequently recommended solutions for youth disengagement which suggests that WBE serves as a protective factor and encourages resilience in at-risk youth. The objective of this study was to describe and compare the experiences of two at-risk youth enrolled in WBE. Participants: Two 18-year old at-risk youth enrolled in WBE were chosen for study because they were learning in workplaces judged likely to promote resilience. Both had been disengaged from school prior to enrolling in WBE. Method: Each multiple-perspective case study includes the perspective of the youth, the workplace employer, and the work-based educator. Data consisted of ethnographic observations and interviews conducted at the workplace, and with the teacher in the school. Results: Each case study highlights how supportive adults and an at-risk youth engage in interactions that facilitate the emergence of resilience in the workplace. Conclusions: In these two cases, risk and resilience are context specific, suggesting that at-risk youth may require tailored workplace programs to meet their career development needs. © 2010 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.

This article explores teaching assistants' (TAs) perceptions of suggestions that English schools should encourage large numbers of 'low-achieving' school leavers to become apprentice teaching assistants. It reports on a piece of qualitative research that aimed to capture teaching assistants' views of these proposals. Semi-structured interviews were utilised to enable 44 TAs to express their views. These individuals were all enrolled on a foundation degree programme at a new university in the North of England. The findings of this research suggest that established teaching assistants' reactions to apprenticeships are likely to promote a learning environment where an already restricted form of apprenticeship experience will be subject to further constraint. This article highlights the risks that vocational education and training (VET) of this type poses in terms of reproducing gender and class-based inequalities. It further maintains that diluting the meaning of apprenticeship learning to meet ambitious governmental targets potentially endanger the integrity of this form of learning. © 2010 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.

[No abstract available]

Objective: To describe the way in which the rural press portrays a rural clinical school and its staff and students. Design: Textual analysis of a collection of newspapers kept by the local campuses of the University of New South Wales Rural Clinical School (UNSW RCS). The study: The UNSW established a RCS in January 2000. This study sampled a total of 225 articles from eleven rural newspapers, a collection held by the campuses of the rural clinical schools. The major themes of the articles were identified; the descriptive terms the newspaper articles used for medical students, the UNSW RCS and rural doctors were also identified. The way in which clinical schools, their staff and students, are portrayed in the rural press has the potential to influence recruitment and retention. Conclusions: The study showed that the rural press was strongly supportive of the rural clinical school in their local region. This was particularly true for medical students, the school itself and the potential impact on workforce. The newspapers provided information for future students, depicting work-experience programs and current students. They were less illustrative of current medical and academic staff, with the exception of the Head of School. © 2010 The Authors. Australian Journal of Rural Health © 2010 National Rural Health Alliance Inc.

This paper reports on a case study investigating learning outcomes at the individual and organisational level of a cross-institutional innovation project based on the SOAP approach. SOAP integrates Schooling of teachers, Organisational development of schools, Action and development-oriented research, and Professional development of teachers. The innovation project was aimed at combining teachers, student teachers, and teacher educators in an alliance to design and develop new competence-based vocational educational arrangements for pupils. An inductive qualitative analysis of 37 semi-structured interviews among the participants revealed seven main categories of individual learning outcomes: attitudes, project design and management, collaboration, action theory, teaching practice, educational principles, and developments within secondary vocational education. Three main categories of organisational learning outcomes were identified: institution-level learning, project-level learning, and combining institution-level and project-level learning. A tension was identified between the participants' individual interests in learning and personal development, and the need for organisational learning aimed at improving organisational processes. © 2010 Association for Teacher Education in Europe.

In Portugal, like in other European countries, people with strong professional competencies are encouraged to obtain higher education, no matter their age or their social condition. With their strong professional background and some theoretical aspects linked to scientific and technological domains, they become more helpful for the companies and for the society they belong. Considering these facts, the Portuguese Government developed specific legislation to attract new students for the technological higher education system. This legislation, intends to attract students older than 23, and also aims the improvement of technological education after the secondary school level. Pursuing this goal the Technological Specialization Courses (TSC) were created. The TSC are post-secondary, non superior training courses that will lead the students to obtain level 4 of professional training, according the 85/368/CEE decision of the European Union Council, published on the European Communities official journal. The TSC also allow people from different professional backgrounds to get technological training. The best students are allowed to access higher education in technological domains (basically in Engineering fields) and/or to the job market relied with the country's technological industries. Before the beginning of a TSC, the students are submitted to technological tests to determine their profile, which will be taken into account on the initial training, before the starting of the TSC. In this paper, the success of TSC courses in Portuguese context is demonstrated, and the implementation of a successful partnership between University of Minho and the Technological Association for the Professional Education of Beira Interior (AFTEBI) is shown. The illustration of the successful partnership is done by presenting a case study of a TSC in Industrial Maintenance where the best students can pursue their studies in University of Minho, in the Mechanical Engineering Department in order to obtain a Mechanical Engineering Degree. The main role of UMinho (as Superior Education Institution) at different levels of this post-secondary (non superior) education is also discussed and highlighted. © 2010 IEEE.

teaching method is the means and ways to implement the task of teaching. The purpose of this study is to select the appropriate teaching methods for a newly developed school-based curriculum Introduction to Zhejiang Business Culture. A validated and reliable self-administered questionnaire developed by the investigators was used in the study. 70 students from Zhejiang Economic & Trade Polytechnic were chosen as samples randomly. It was emphasized that participation was voluntary, and respondent confidentiality was assured. Results shows majority of students believe that visits to businesses, real circumstance training, and group discussion may work well. Questionnaire results also indicated that the examination form should be flexible. In stead of the solely writing examination, the performance of students in the discussions and training should be given full consideration and appropriate rating. Flexible teaching methods can stimulate student's passion for learning, develop their independent problem-solving skills, and markedly increase the student's satisfaction to the curriculum. ©2010 IEEE.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to help schools for vocational education determine teachers' continuing professional development needs associated with implementing competence-based education programs, so that these schools can develop better attuned HR policies. It investigates which elements from the cognitive apprenticeship model and from the acquisition and participation metaphors can be identified in the individual action theories of their teachers. Design/methodology/approach: A case study was conducted in one school for vocational education, where 12 teachers engaged in an innovation project around the development of a new competence-based education program for pupils. They participated in concept mapping, cued interviews (based on video recordings), semi-structured interviews, and a joint feedback session. These four sources were used for an in-depth content analysis of teachers' action theories. Findings: No distinctive, crystallized action theories about competence-based vocational education emerged at the individual teacher level; let alone individual teachers' action theories well in line with the two normative frameworks on competence-based education. The case study shows the struggle that individual teachers are going through to get their every-day teaching repertoire more in line with new ideas on competence-based education. Research limitations/implications: Only qualitative data are gathered, in one school, representing one school type, in one country only, limiting the statistical generalizability of the results. Not all respondents are able to participate in all four data sources. Practical implications: Schools should develop HR policies that offer teachers CPD activities in the crucial area of competence-based education; the frameworks presented in the study can be used to this end, by teacher educators as well as by HRD professionals interested in combining training programs with informal employee learning. Originality/value: The study draws on literature from various disciplines (especially educational psychology and HRD), which traditionally have remained mostly separate. It combines insights from four separate data sources. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.