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"Article"

This paper describes the Cascade Communication Skills Teaching Project, which is a programme of facilitator training enabling communication skills teaching in the consultation to general practitioners to be cascaded throughout the former East Anglia Deanery. The paper also explores the project's educational and organizational effectiveness. The programme is based on an ongoing training programme for a cohort of around 30 district-based communication skills facilitators, and was set up in the autumn of 1995. These facilitators are now able to act as a resource to cascade high-quality communication skills teaching into vocational training schemes, trainer education and the continuing professional development of established general practitioners throughout each district in the region. The project has now been extended into medical student teaching, specialist teaching at junior and senior level, and multidisciplinary teaching.

This article traces vocational education policy in the province of Alberta from the 1960s federal Technical and Vocational Training Assistance Act to the provincial endorsement of new curriculum and transition initiatives in the 1990s. The purpose is to understand the implications of shifts in policy over time. Our examination suggests that although the current provincial approach is strengthened by the commitment of local educators and employers, it is hampered by the lack of institutional support including resources and research into outcomes, as well as coherence and clarity about educational policy objectives. The resilience of existing structures, attitudes, and practices also poses challenges to the implementation of policy.

While the need for evidence-based medical education is widely acknowledged, it is often assumed that the 'gold standard' used in evidence-based medicine is sufficient evidence for practising evidence-based medical education. Using the introduction of a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum as an example, this paper argues that evidence from ethnography can provide valuable insight into medical education, although few such studies have been carried out. Ethnography attempts to capture the true nature of human social behaviour by going beyond what individuals say to what they actually do, and explores social and educational phenomena beyond mere mechanical products of our purported educational interventions. Applied to problem-based learning, ethnographic accounts would be valuable to help us understand the PBL process and improve our educational practice.

This paper makes recommendations for the improvement of assessment in postgraduate dental education. The recommendations are based on a twelve-month study conducted in 1998/99 which evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the existing assessment systems. Evidence was taken from examination syllabi, assessments and records. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives from national bodies and with trainers and trainees in the West Midlands. Strengths in parts of the system include: commitment and professional experience; commissioned work; opportunity to share experience; a monitoring framework; procedures for maintaining standards and examples of broadbased assessments. Weaknesses include: lack of assessment of quality; existence of some forms of unregulated assessment; lack of transparency and lack of clarity between training and assessment. Development is recommended in three broad areas: a competence-based model of assessment; distinguishing assessment from the analysis of educational needs and quality assurance. The introduction of a competence-based model is the most significant and is addressed in some detail. Specific proposals for consideration by national regulatory bodies and education providers include: strengthening the management of assessment; national leadership in the development of a competence model of assessment; widening the assessment base; clearer criteria for inspection; revisions to how vocational training, HO/SHO training and general professional training are assessed and training for trainers.

This article critiques some assumptions shaping the current discourse on workplace learning. It proposes that these assumptions restrict how workplace learning is conceptualised and discussed. Principally, describing workplace learning environments and experiences as ‘informal’ and that ‘informal learning’ occurs in workplaces constrains understanding about how learning occurs through work and, consequently, the development of a workplace pedagogy. As with educational institutions, in workplaces there are intentions for work practice, structured goal-directed activities that are central to organisational continuity, and interactions and judgements about performance that are also shaped to those ends. Therefore, describing learning through work as being ‘informal’ is incorrect. Instead, the structuring of workplace activities has dimensions associated with learning directed for the continuity of the practice, which also often has inherently pedagogical qualities. Moreover, the unqualified description of learning environments as being either ‘formal’ or ‘informal’ suggests a situational determinism. Instead, learning is proposed as being interdependent between the individual and the social practice. The core tension in this relationship is that between those needs for the continuity of the work practice and individuals' needs to realise their personal or vocational goals. It is proposed that considerations of learning, learning in workplaces and the development of a workplace pedagogy need conceptualising in terms of participatory practices. © 2002, © 2002 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Learning-to-learn skills are essential for effective lifelong learning to develop over the entire lifespan. These skills, which consist of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies, largely have been neglected in analyses of issues surrounding lifelong learning and in policy development. This article draws particularly upon the work of Weinstein, Meyer, Schraw and other cognitive psychologists to outline some of the knowledge and skills required and some of the educational implications for their development from a human developmental psychology perspective. Much of the initial work in establishing these skills needs to lie with schools for reasons of access and equity. However, since mastery of cognitive and metacognitive skills is not likely to be fully achieved by the end of secondary schooling, with metacognitive skills in particular only likely to reach fuller development through work experience, there are important implications for educators at further and higher education levels. © 2002 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Colleges may be well placed to compete with industry training providers if retention continues to be a key factor in attracting and retaining funding under the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), but college managers will need to be proactive in their approach. Issues concerned with the retention and early leaving, or drop out of students have assumed renewed significance and emphasis in the further education (FE) sector since incorporation. Under the new LSC, where value for money is a key measure of success, increasing recruitment, improving retention and seeking to understand and address early leaving, from a wide range of education and training programmes, are set to remain high on the agenda, for managers working in FE and industry training organisation. This article summarises research carried out with training provider managers to explore strategies to improve retention on training programmes previously funded by the Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs). The article concludes that, staff employed by training providers to support trainees and provide training, are a key factor in reducing the rate of early leaving. Provision of monitoring, support and guidance is a key factor for improving retention, although not all factors affecting retention can be controlled by training provider managers, especially when trainees’ decisions are influenced by financial considerations. © 2002, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This article uses the findings from a qualitative study of Australian young people in their first year of full-time work to examine the nature and utility of off-the-job training in apprenticeships and traineeships. The findings confirm the conclusions of earlier studies about the importance of off-the-job training as a supplement for workplace learning. It was found that, while initially not attaching much value to off-the-job training, the young people gained more of an appreciation, during the course of the year, of what off-the-job training had to offer. Other findings about off-the-job training included: the superiority of face-to-face training as opposed to other forms of delivery; the importance of the young people’s relationships with their off-the-job trainers; the ‘implicit contract’ of expectations of the parties to the training contract; the different viewpoints of the parties; and the dissatisfaction of those in traineeships with the lack of intellectual challenge in their competency-based curriculum. © 2002 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This article analyses the impact of e-learning on the higher education skills agenda. The main question addressed in the article is whether the e-learning environment meets the learning needs of the student to enable skill development to take place. Analysis is provided of face-toface versus on-line teaching of Edexcel common skills and Qualification Curriculum Authority (QCA) Key Skills and challenges the view that soft skills are difficult to develop on line. The conclusions highlight that the dismissal of e-learning from the skills agenda would be a mistake. The challenge to higher education is to utilise the advantages of e-learning to skills development in ways that balance on-line learning with face-to-face learning. © 2002 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

A number of recent inquiries into Australia's national training system have found it to be on the sick side. This article seeks the causes of this in the recent evolution of training policy, which commenced in the late 1980s. The article traces the demise of the first moderately interventionist National Training Reform Agenda, which union reformers played a role in shaping, through the increasing marketisation of training policy. Under the Liberal National Coalition, budget constraints and the short term interests of employers have increasingly driven training policy. The drift of policy is against the grain of prescriptions drawn from the international literature, which shows the need for interventionist measures to correct ‘market failure’, and to ensure adequate expenditure and the integrity of qualifications. © 2002, University of New South Wales. All rights reserved.