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"Teaching"

Workers with disabilities are entitled to have their individual needs accommodated in a way that allows them to perform the essential duties of their job. However, adults with disabilities are often lacking in career development and are ill-prepared to negotiate workplace accommodations. This has led educators to seek workplaces that can accommodate the needs of adolescents with disabilities, so these adolescents can learn to negotiate accommodations and enhance their career development through work-based education. This paper reports on two case studies in which employers had agreed to accommodate the needs of adolescents with disabilities participating in work-based education. Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) framed the analyses of these two cases - a case of a student with physical disabilities and a case of a student with developmental disabilities. SCCT proves valuable in understanding the role of work-based education in the career development of disabled youth. © 2008 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

This paper explores opportunities and challenges presented by the development of graduate skills in Australian universities. We challenge the dichotomy that conceives of a fundamental disjuncture between the idea of universities as institutions of vocational education and the more traditional conception of universities as key institutions in the formation of reflective practitioners, social critics and good citizens. Despite the challenges inherent in implementing the graduate skills project, we conclude that a consensus around the value of graduate skills represents a valuable opportunity for universities to regain control of the higher education agenda and renew their traditional, higher purpose.

How can opportunities for teaching and learning be improved to ensure that many more people participate, gain qualifications and obtain decent jobs? Will government policies enable us to achieve these goals? What new ideas do we need to ensure a more inclusive, equitable and efficient learning system? These are some of the main concerns which underlie this thought-provoking book coming from a major research project looking at how policies affect learners, tutors, managers and institutional leaders in Further Education Colleges, Adult and Community Learning centres and in Work Based Learning sites. Post compulsory education in the UK has been constantly restructured by the New Labour government and has been subject to considerable policy turbulence over the last few years. This book attempts to understand this important but poorly understood sector by both talking to students and front-line staff and by interviewing the officials responsible for managing post-compulsory education and lifelong learning. By examining the sector simultaneously from the 'bottom up' and from 'top down', the authors show how recent policy is affecting three disadvantaged groups - 16-19 year olds who have fared poorly in official tests at school; unemployed adults learning basic skills; and employees at work learning basic skills. The authors conclude that there are serious failings and suggest principles and features of a more equitable and effective learning system. © 2008 Frank Coffield, Sheila Edward, Ian Finlay, Ann Hodgson, Ken Spours and Richard Steer. All rights reserved.

This article describes a curriculum in oral surgery for undergraduate dental education in the United Kingdom prepared by the Education Subgroup of The British Academic Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. This group is made up of representatives from each of the 13 UK Dental Schools, one Irish Dental School and one Post-graduate Institute. The document represents a group consensus of an undergraduate UK oral surgery curriculum that is founded on the frameworks outlined by the General Dental Council, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and the Association for Dental Education in Europe. Our curriculum document is more prescriptive than the information available in the aforementioned documents. It is based on UK undergraduate oral surgery experience and thus attempts to set achievable core competencies and, in a few areas, challenges the available curriculum and related documentation. © 2008 Blackwell Munksgaard.

PROBLEM ADDRESSED: The Family Medicine Residency Program at the University of Alberta has used academic sessions and clinical-based teaching to prepare residents for private practice. Before the new curriculum, academic sessions were large group lectures given by specialists. These sessions lacked consistent quality, structured topics, and organization. OBJECTIVE OF PROGRAM: The program was designed to improve the quality and consistency of academic sessions by creating a new curriculum. The goals for the new curriculum included improved organizational structure, improved satisfaction from the participants, improved resident knowledge and confidence in key areas of family medicine, and improved performance on licensing examinations. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: The new curriculum is faculty guided but resident organized. Twenty-three core topics in family medicine are covered during a 2-year rotating curriculum. Several small group activities, including problem-based learning modules, journal club, and examination preparation sessions, complement larger didactic sessions. A multiple-source evaluation process is an essential component of this new program. CONCLUSION: The new academic curriculum for family medicine residents is based on a variety of learning styles and is consistent with the principles of adult learning theory. This structured curriculum provides a good basis for further development. Other programs across the country might want to incorporate these ideas into their current programming.

Since the 1980s, the focus on learning environments has changed considerably in educational research. In earlier decades, most efforts were concentrated on optimisation of the classroom system by improving instructional technology and instructional and training systems (Romiszowski, 1988). Optimisation of learning time, the search for effectiveness in terms of group size, instruction techniques and pedagogy, teaching and coaching behaviour, mixed ability grouping, etc. were used to find the best place to learn. © 2008 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

Human resource departments are key components in the people management system of nearly every medium-to-large organization in the industrial world. They provide a wide range of essential services relating to employees, including recruitment, compensation, benefits, training, and labor relations. A century ago, however, before the concept of human resource management had been invented, the supervision and care of employees at even the largest companies were conducted without written policies or formal planning, and often in harsh, arbitrary, and counterproductive ways. How did companies such as United States Steel manage a workforce of 160,000 employees at dozens of plants without a specialized personnel or industrial relations department? What led some of these organizations to introduce human resources practices at the end of the nineteenth century? How were the earliest personnel departments structured and what were their responsibilities? And how did the theory and implementation of human resources management evolve, both within industry and as an academic field of research and teaching? In Managing the Human Factor, Bruce E. Kaufman chronicles the origins and early development of human resource management (HRM) in the United States from the 1870s, when the Labor Problem emerged as the nation's primary domestic policy concern, to 1933 and the start of the New Deal. Through new archival research, an extensive review and synthesis of the historical and contemporary literatures, and case studies illustrating best (and worst) practices during this period, Kaufman identifies the fourteen ideas, events, and movements that led to the creation of specialized HRM departments in the late 1910s, as well as their further growth and development into strategic business units in the welfare capitalism period of the 1920s. The research presented in this book not only uncovers many new aspects of the early development of personnel and industrial relations but also challenges central parts of the contemporary interpretation of the concept and evolution of HRM. Rich with insights on both the present and past of human resource management, Managing the Human Factor will be widely regarded as the definitive account of the early history of employee management in American companies and a must-read for all those interested in the indispensable function of managing people in organizations. © 2008 by Cornell University. All rights reserved.

Society for Engineering Education, 2008 The Center for Water Resource Studies and the Bowling Green Community College of Western Kentucky University has formed a partnership to address a Water & Wastewater Operator/Technician shortage anticipated over the next few years as "Baby Boomers" retire. The Water and Wastewater Technician Training Institute (WTTI, pronounced "witty"), is a partnership with the employment sector (a growing number of water & wastewater utilities/municipalities/districts), state primacy agencies and technical assistance/trade associations to refine an industry needs driven curriculum that utilizes on-line course delivery to provide options for both traditional & non-traditional students. The partnership is revitalizing an existing Associates Degree program entitled "Water Utilities Management" and integrating 4year transitions through formal articulation agreements. WTTI takes a pedagogical approach to elevating and transforming the water and wastewater operator positions from trades of last resort, to professions of choice, and integrates practitioners into the recruitment, retention and educational process to achieve a coupled education, training and capacity development environment. A gradual and strategic elevation of the perception, both internal and external, of the trades, through a combination of increased capacity, mobility and accountability will attract high school students whose interests and scholarly record fall between the traditional trades/vocations and academically-based professions, and through inappropriate choices limit their career advancement potential, and elevate skill levels in the critical environmental and public health functions of the water and wastewater utility sector. In order to limit the hurdles associated with integrating regulatory, trade association and academic principles into a single, functional, coherent framework, WTTI is initially focused on Kentucky and Tennessee. However, as a demonstrably functional framework is put in place, extrapolating to address other regional policy, academic discipline and industrial sector issues becomes a logistical rather than conceptual challenge. Partnering utilities and municipalities are developing internship and cooperative educational opportunities to ensure work-based experiences for students in the program, while the trade associations have committed to developing scholarship programs to lessen the financial disincentive for potential students. Academic content is provided by core university faculty, while practitioner oriented content is provided by qualified trade association and utility/municipality staff eligible for adjunct faculty status. Committed to the precept of open-knowledge, WTTI is extending and coupling an open-source hybrid practitioner cybercollaboratory (based on Drupal) with an open-source course management system (Moodle) to integrate the learning environment with practitioners and enhance retention of both students and the retiring practitioner knowledge-base. All instructors (academic and practitioner) involved in the program will undergo collaborative professional development to ensure that they are receptive to the unique structure of the program. All aspects of the program will be available through this on-line environment, allowing current practitioners to participate both as mentors, and as students pursuing career advancement goals. Experiential components of the program include on-line virtual activities, as well as opportunities provided by partnering utilities and municipalities local to the student. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2008.

This article discusses the pedagogical relevance of a research project into professional subtitling practices in Italy which is coordinated by the author at the University of Bologna. The key feature of this initiative relates to its collaborative dynamics: research is carried out by students writing their final dissertations, working together as a team and pooling their resources and findings. The author contends that taking part in this collective enquiry-based experience is as important for the students as the actual results of their investigation and discusses in detail the pedagogical benefits of this approach. The article begins by describing the inception stages of the project, conceived as an attempt to capitalize on the traditionally high weighting of the final dissertation within Italian degree programmes - and hence on the important amount of effort that students are likely to put into it. After describing the pedagogical and research tools used in the project, the paper goes on to present the results achieved in the first 2-3 years of the project's life; illustrate how the students' work has influenced the author's teaching practices as a subtitler trainer; and evaluate the implications of this experience for translator training in general. © St. Jerome Publishing, Manchester.

English competency is known as one of the crucial skills in various social contexts in Hong Kong. In tertiary educational setting, English courses do not focus solely on the development of the four language skills. Rather, they put emphasis on the application of English Language for academic use or instrumental use. This paper will investigate the effectiveness of the implementation of competency-based ESL teaching and the learning situation of a group of 70 pre-service teachers of Chinese in a Hong Kong tertiary institute. This paper also intends to draw implications from our findings to answer the following questions: (1) How do tertiary students respond to competencybased ESL teaching and learning? (2) What are the difficulties in implementing competencybased approach? (3) What implications has competency-based ESL teaching and learning drawn to assessment and material design in Hong Kong context? Through answering the above questions, it is hoped that light can be shed on competency-based ESL researches and give insights to the development of competency-based ESL teaching in terms of material design and assessment.