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"Students"

The Bologna Declaration has put in motion a series of reforms aimed at making European Higher Education more compatible and comparable, competitive and attractive for Europeans and for students and scholars from other continents. The result is to be a European Higher Education Area in which by the year 2010 students can choose from a wide and transparent range of high-quality courses. Reform, it is argued, was needed then, and it is still needed today, if Europe is to match the performance of the American and Asian systems. The European Commission was not directly involved in the initial work of the Bologna process though the Commission has since become directly involved in the process, through hosting meetings, providing consultations, and working documents as well as grant support for projects in the area of standardization of degree offerings, benchmarking, and quality assurance. As part of the Bologna process, the Commission now supports a large number of European projects (e.g. TEEP project) connected to quality assurance, standards, promotion of university offerings. The outcomes may make it easier for countries and institutions to recognize one another's degrees and promote their own. The EU has also promoted a specific way of interacting with member states and institutions-the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). We argue in this chapter that the Commission should focus less on standardization and explore more ways of communally constructing knowledge in a European context. What the Bologna process is setting out to undertake, in our opinion, is to create limits on education, whereas the Open Method of Communication could, instead, liberate systems of education and move them forward. We look to three case studies of elearning experiments to provide lessons for learning across European borders. © 2009 Springer Netherlands.

This article concentrates on the question which aspects of a learning environment, directed to career development of students, contribute to the use of career competences by students in prevocational and secondary vocational education in The Netherlands. The learning environment is measured by the methods and instruments for career guidance used in schools, and by the extent in which the educational programme and the guidance provided is focused on career development. Three competences are distinguished: career reflection, career shaping and networking. The relation between aspects of the learning environment and the development of career competences is studied using a survey among 3,499 students and 166 teachers of 226 classes in 34 schools. The results show that a 'career learning environment' consists mainly of a dialogue with the student about his/her experiences in placements in relation to his/her future. This dialogue contributes to the use of career competences by students; methods and instruments do hardly show any relationship with career competences of students. Also, student centered education does not contribute to career learning, if this dialogue is absent.

With the purpose of combining current extensive E-learning with classroom teaching, a learning content management system on Engineering Hydrology curriculum (hydro-LCMS) is introduced in this paper. Considering the engineering and practical characteristics of comprehensive training courses on hydrology and with the help of hydro- LCMS, this paper proposes a complete project which is throughout teaching process and a project-oriented teaching practice in which E-learning environment is applied as the carrier so as to fulfill project teaching tasks. The system provides students with better training in vocational awareness and the ability to solve practical problems. © 2009 IEEE.

This paper examines if and to what extent educational opportunities of immigrant and native youth are affected by the regional proportion of firm- versus school-based vocational education and training (VET) in Germany and Switzerland. As school-based VET systems, compared to training firms, select their applicants on grounds of school grades rather than ascriptive attributes, educational opportunities of immigrant students are expected to be higher in areas with a more school-based VET system. This assumption should at least hold true on condition that they provide sufficient secondary school certificates. The hypothesis is empirically tested using microcensus data from Germany and census as well as TREE data from Switzerland. The results point to complex structures of occasionally ethnic disadvantage fabricated through the VET system: Whereas immigrant students, particularly males, tend to be excluded in highly firm-based VET systems, they face problems to access more school-based VET systems because they can't provide the required school certificates. © VS-Verlag 2009.

The education of health professions students is rooted historically in time-honored and silo-bound traditions of pedagogy and content not easily influenced by outside forces. However, the quality chasm work of the Institute of Medicine, Institute of Healthcare Improvement, Quality and Safety Education for Nurses, and other groups has led to a remarkable willingness to change at one academic health sciences university. This article describes one university's strategies, challenges, and successes in delivering interprofessional educational programs. Four interprofessional learning activities, developed using a plan-do-study-act model and focused on teamwork, quality, and safety, are presented. Challenges and successes encountered are described as well as a curricular framework to enhance sustainability.

This study was aimed at determining how job demand and emotional awareness affect the job satisfaction of students. Internships are vital for hospitality students because they allow them to experience real job situations while they are in school, thus providing them with realistic expectations about their careers. Participants were 632 Taiwanese undergraduates of hospitality internships who were recruited using a mailed questionnaire survey. The model and hypotheses were tested using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. Results indicated that emotional job demand and emotional awareness were positively associated with emotional display rules, and emotional display rules were positively associated with job satisfaction, with social support playing a moderating role. © Society for Personality Research (Inc.).

In Finnish VET, students' work experience is explicitly defined as workplace learning, instead of the practice of already learnt skills. Therefore, vocational students' learning periods in the workplace are goal-oriented, guided and assessed. This paper examines the characteristics of students' workplace learning and compares them with the characteristics of employees' workplace learning. The data were collected with an Internet questionnaire from final-year vocational students (N = 3106). In total, 1603 students (52 %) answered the questionnaire. The data were analysed using quantitative methods. The results indicate that features typical of employees' workplace learning can also be found in student learning as well. However, VET-related workplace learning has a number of characteristics that have not been brought to light in research on employees' workplace learning thus far. We suggest that in developing educational practices it would be useful to draw on some of the features of workplace learning such as the use of collaboration and shared practices; conversely for workplace practices it would be useful to draw on some of the features of educational practices. For example, by utilising the structures of students' workplace learning system presented in this study, learning at work could be transformed towards more goal-directed, guided and assessed activity. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic review of the secondary transition correlational literature to identify in-school predictors of improved postschool outcomes in the areas of education, employment, and/or independent living for students with disabilities. Based on results of this review, 16 evidence-based, in-school predictors of postschool outcomes were identified. Of the 16 predictors, 4 (25%) predicted improved outcomes in all three postschool outcome areas, 7 (43.8%) predicted improved outcomes for only postschool education and employment, and 5 (31.3%) predicted improved outcomes for employment only. Limitations and implications for future research and practice are discussed. © 2009 Hammill Institute on Disabilities.

Within the context of a Europe-wide project UNITE, a number of European partners set out to design, implement and validate a pedagogical framework (PF) for e- and m-Learning in secondary schools. The process of formulating and testing the PF was an evolutionary one that reflected the experiences and skills of the various European partners and secondary schools involved in the project. The framework involved pedagogies which underpin the teaching of subject matter in a number of European secondary schools as well as the ways in which learning is delivered and assessed. The PF represents an essential part of the e-Learning system conceptualization and development and offers sound concepts for the development of learning scenarios in order to enhance the learning experience of students in secondary schools. A five-component framework which, by means of its constituents, drives and guides the creation of e-Learning scenarios was designed and tested. It is composed of the pedagogical framework context, pedagogical approaches, assessment techniques, teacher education and national specifics and current pedagogical practices implemented in national curricula. A series of learning scenarios were created to test the PF in classrooms. A detailed exemplar of a scenario in practice is offered. An evaluation of the scenarios based on [Reeves, T. C., 1994. Evaluating what really matters in computer-based education. In M. Wild, D. Kirkpatrick (Eds.), Computer education: new perspectives (pp. 219-246). Perth, Australia: MASTEC] pedagogical dimensions revealed that UNITE is based on constructivist and cognitive foundations. With increased experience of the system the teachers' implementation of the pedagogical framework developed into increased mastery in the school context. Teachers from the second validation phase became more confident in their application of the framework principles and evaluated more positively the outcomes. This helped them to become more aware of the opportunities offered by the framework in their secondary school teaching. In order to bring this about the supports for change were put into place at the levels of pedagogical design, administrative support and the provision of the required resources and appropriate continuing professional development. The project has sought to create this support structure to ensure maximal benefits of the system for teaching and learning. Such a pedagogical support PF has offered scope for both collaborative and autonomous learning which have brought about value-added teaching and learning effects in the Europe-wide network of schools. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper presents the IPS-I-model: a model that describes the process of information problem solving (IPS) in which the Internet (I) is used to search information. The IPS-I-model is based on three studies, in which students in secondary and (post) higher education were asked to solve information problems, while thinking aloud. In-depth analyses of the thinking-aloud protocols revealed that the IPS-process consists of five constituent skills: (a) defining information problem, (b) searching information, (c) scanning information, (d) processing information, and (e) organizing and presenting information. Further, the studies revealed that regulation skills prove to be crucial for the on-going IPS-process. The IPS-I-model depicts the constituent skills, regulation skills, and important conditional skills. The model gives an initial impetus for designing IPS-instruction. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.