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Political insistence on implementing higher level National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) and General Vocational Qualifications (GNVQs) currently dominates the ideological high ground for professional development for the post‐compulsory sector. There is a widespread and mistaken belief that GNVQs might redress NVQs’ shortcomings by adding ‘underpinning knowledge’ and offering a broader view of a vocational area. There is evidence that NVQs are adapting to criticism; at higher levels, they appear to be appropriating many features that underpin existing approaches to professional development. This article argues that this apparent reforming of NVQs obscures how the underlying values and educational purposes of professional learning are being completely redefined as both NVQs and GNVQs strengthen their powerful ideological and technical hold over the education and training system. Externally defined and restrictive mechanisms for learning and assessment will eventually dominate teachers’ and learners’ views about the content, scope and purposes of education and training. Yet in posing alternatives, there are important flaws in existing models which weaken our critiques of competence‐based qualifications. In responses to these difficulties, there is a need to combine a rich body of recent research into professional development, pedagogic practice and education policy making, with a concerted debate about ideology and educational values. This would resist the current tendency for research and critique to focus on the technicalities of implementing NVQs and GNVQs. It would also effect a resurrection in research of what Grace (1994) has called ‘policy scholarship’ as part of an attempt to evolve a better system for continuing professional development in the post‐16 sector than the one we already have, or the impoverished competence‐based version currently on offer. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Cooperative apprenticeships are a form of structured workplace training in which (a) employers, government agencies, labor unions, or other community or groups join with community‐technical colleges to provide formal educational programs in which structured work‐based experiences are integral credit‐earning parts of instruction; (b) apprentices agree to work for employers for specified periods of time; and (c) employers agree to provide structured and formal training in specific fields or trades over these defined periods of time. These findings are the result of a 2‐year study. We used a case study method for this study, systematically identifying and reviewing factors influencing successful cooperative apprenticeship linkages. The article describes what has been found to work and why, and how these results can be replicated elsewhere by employers in partnership with community‐technical colleges. Dual enrollment of apprentices in associate degree programs is a practice worthy of promotion. Apprenticeships have proven to be more than a training tool. They are a mechanism for potentially bringing together, in a planned and cohesive manner, those human and capital resources within a community to solve human resource education and business training needs. They are a cost‐effective mechanism for employers and government, sometimes in cooperation with organized labor, to provide worker training cooperatively with community colleges. This study was funded in part by a PSC‐CUNY Research Grant, funds made available through collective bargaining by the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York for its faculty. © 1995 Taylor and Francis.

The article provides a critical evaluation of functional analysis and its centrality in the competence philosophy underpinning reform of the UK’s national system of vocational qualifications. Definitions and meanings of competence are examined to locate functional analysis in its theoretical context. The origins of the use and application of the term competence to the vocational qualification (VQ) system are also examined to provide an historical context. Finally, the conceptual model adopted to apply notions of competence and the process of functional analysis is evaluated as part of the critical appraisal. The theoretical and conceptual analysis is supported by the findings of a small piece of primary research and published evidence from other sources. Both the conceptual analysis and the empirical evidence, in the view of the authors, argue towards a serious questioning of the appropriateness of functional analysis. The results of applying functional analysis are argued to be technical and narrow specifications of competence which fail to address the broader skills and social contexts influencing performance in the workplace. © 1995, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

This article examines the difficulties of extending literacy training, adult education and vocational training to out-of-work youth within the context of Malawi. The central argument of this paper is that unless the mass of illiterate and semi-literate youths are given practical skills to enable them to earn a livelihood, their employment and earning prospects are bleak. Without gainful employment these out-of-school youths will be unable to escape the poverty trap. An apprenticeship scheme, linked to the functional literacy programme is advocated as a means for skills training. Under the scheme a learner would be attached to an experienced artisan or craftsman to learn a trade or craft by direct observation and practice. -Author

First, provides a background which considers the nature of apprenticeship and shows how it is different from schooling. Then discusses the necessary and vital ground work that should be done before a candidate is admitted to apprenticeship. The article describes the various stages in the apprentice's training, their rationale and their implications. Finally, the implications of this indigenous approach to manpower development for schooling and out-of-school educational programmes are considered. -from Author

We are witnessing the most significantchanges in the nature of the relationship between nursing education and higher education. However, there has yet to be a more philosophical explanation of what it would mean for our aims and practices as nurse educators if we were to take seriously the notion of nursing education within the context of higher education. This paper analyses the role of the university and raises the questions: What should higher education mean today? What should higher education mean for nursing? In response to the former question it is suggested there cannot be a total distinction between the concept 'higher education' and the socio-political context. Higher education has to be realized in particular historical societies and there is likely to be much controversy over how this should be done. In response to the latter question it is suggested that to warrant the title nursing 'higher education' the process should promise a freeing of the mind but also beyond, to bring about a new level of self-empowerment in the individual student. In essence, it should contain an emancipatory element. It is the articulation of normative aspirations such as these, that is so strikingly absent from so much of the debate relating to nursing education merging with higher education. Nursing education must not however fall victim to 'academic drift' which has often been regarded as a distinctive and persistent feature of higher education. It might be proposed that student nurses who move from an educational to a practice setting are subjected to 'a competing paradigm of occupational vocationalism'. Criticisms such as these have led to a reconceptualization of the theory-practice dichotomy and partnership in training and education between the 'trainers' and practising professionals. What is needed is a new model of nursing education. A model which is an amalgam of both the liberal and vocational educational traditions. Implementations of such a model would demand that the curriculum is organised around problem-based learning. This means adopting a curriculum in which 'knowing how' and 'knowing that' forms of knowledge are equally emphasized. Simultaneously, student' and practitiones' contextual knowledge would be advanced by collaborative research between educationalists and practitiones. The implication is for nursing education to be based more in the reality of practice. © 1995 Pearson Professional Ltd.

Several moldmakers organizations collaborated to develop a model curriculum for the training of moldmakers. Their objective was two-fold; (a) to develop a national training curriculum that would help to assure that a moldmaker trained in California could bring his/her credentials to New England and the potential employer would know the training he/she received, and (b) to provide guidance to school curriculums and vocational training programs to bring them in as partners in future moldmaker training. This article presents the curriculum and shows how it is implemented.

Background and Objectives: This study was designed to determine whether medical school graduates who completed undergraduate degrees in particular college majors were more likely to enter primary care residencies. John L. Holland's theory of vocational personalities and work environments was used to cluster undergraduate disciplines sharing distinctive qualities. These clusters were evaluated to determine if graduates from similar fields were more likely to pursue residencies in family practice, general internal medicine, or general pediatrics. Methods: Students who graduated from US and Puerto Rican medical schools in 1987 were eligible for the study; college majors of 2,661 graduates entering primary care specialties were analyzed. Results: Students completing undergraduate studies in the following majors selected primary care residencies by a twofold difference over the expected frequency: agriculture, black studies, civil engineering, general studies, literature, occupational therapy, and speech. Chi-square tests revealed no differences across Holland types in the frequency with which science and nonscience students selected primary care residencies. Conclusions: Primary care specialties tend to accommodate students from varied academic backgrounds and appear to be tolerant of individuals who have completed undergraduate course work in either bioscientific or biosocial nonscience disciplines.

Background This study investigates the subsequent careers of the Senior House Officers (SHOs) who have passed through the Leicestershire SHO training scheme in public health medicine since its inception in 1981 and their views of the scheme.Methods Postal questionnaires were sent to past and current SHOs, using addresses compiled from personnel records, the Medical Directory and the General Medical Council Medical Register. One reminder letter was sent to non-responders.Results Of the 21 past SHOs, one is now a consultant and four are currently trainees in public health medicine. Other past SHOs have followed diverse careers but the largest group are now in general practice. The four past SHOs who are now trainees in public health gained no further clinical experience before obtaining registrar or lecturer posts. All past SHOs responded favourably when asked about the benefits of the scheme regardless of their subsequent career choice.Conclusion The continuing need for high-calibre recruits to the specialty and the favourable response from past SHO trainees suggests that this scheme, and no doubt other similar schemes, should be making their benefits known to a wider audience. © 1994 Oxford University Press.

This article describes a principled approach to the design of computer-based tools for use in collaborative instruction. We argue that a project should progress through four steps: (a) making explicit the instructional requirements that serve as design goals for the project; (b) performing a detailed study of current educational practice with regard to these goals; (c) developing a specification based on the identified requirements/limitations of the instructional setting and the known capabilities of the technology; and (d) producing an implementation that allows for local adaptation to instructional practice. We propose six principles of effective learning and instruction, which we view to be the critical features of learning in complex and ill-structured fields. Next, a detailed case study is presented based on the preclinical training given to medical students in the first 2 years of medical school. The problems of providing adequate instruction in the preclinical years are described, as is an instructional method known as problem-based learning (PBL) that has been introduced to redress some of these problems. The product of this design process is a set of specifications for technical augmentations that we believe will serve not only the needs of PBL but also those of other methods of instruction that depend on collaborative, case-based, or student-centered learning. © 1994, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.