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Objectives To ascertain the requirements in restorative dentistry that undergraduate dental students have to fulfil in order to sit the finals examinations in dental schools in the UK and Ireland and to compare those requirements with the competencies stipulated by the GDC in The first five years.Methods Fifteen anonymised questionnaires, of open and closed question design, were sent by post to academics in the university departments of restorative dentistry in each of the undergraduate dental schools in the UK and Ireland. The first section concerned numerical information regarding total numbers of procedures that were required to be completed in undergraduate restorative dentistry. The second section was designed to ascertain information as to how decisions are made with respect to an undergraduate's readiness to sit the finals examination in restorative dentistry (such as continual assessment and/or competency assessments).Results A total of 15 replies were received for analysis, a 100% response rate. Several institutions emphasised that they do not have 'requirements', but provide guidelines as to what should be achieved. Six institutions did not have set numerical requirements for direct placement restorations or bridges. The number of direct placement restorations required at the other nine institutions ranged from 50 to 160. Five institutions did not have numerical requirements for dentures; four institutions did not set numerical targets for crowns, veneers, inlays/onlays or endodontics. In institutions where numerical requirements were not used, forms of competency assessments were completed. The requirements across all institutions for periodontology, integrated treatment planning and completed cases were ill-defined.Conclusions This study shows that there is a wide disparity amongst institutions in the UK and Ireland with regards to finals requirements in restorative dentistry. Ideally, such requirements should be similar between institutions and should be closely mapped to the GDC's required learning outcomes (The first five years) for the UK institutions. © 2007 Nature Publishing Group.

Young people about to leave high school argue that they are determining their own destinies. Scholarly debates also suggest that the influence of structural factors such as social class on an individual's life course is decreasing. Wolfgang Lehmann challenges this view and offers a detailed comparative analysis of the inter-relationships between social class, institutional structures, and individual educational and career choices. Through a qualitative study of academic-track high school students and participants in youth apprenticeships in Germany and Canada, Lehmann shows how the range of available school-work transition options are defined by both gender and social class. Highlighting the importance of the institutional context in understanding school-work transitions, particularly in relation to Germany's celebrated apprenticeship system, which rests on highly streamed secondary schooling and a stratified labour market, Lehmann argues that social inequalities are maintained in part by the choices made by young people, rather than simply by structural forces. Choosing to Labour? concludes with an exploration of how public policy can meet the dual challenge of providing young people with meaningful and equitable educational experiences, while simultaneously fulfilling the need for a skilled workforce. © McGill-Queen's University Press 2007.

The development of professional identity amongst lecturers training to teach in further education (FE) colleges in England involves processes of adaptation. These partly take place during teaching placement in FE, as trainees navigate between their own anticipated professional identity and the identities which they feel under pressure to assume as they engage in their work with students. This article explores these processes of development, focusing in particular on the identities that trainee lecturers develop in their work with disengaged 16-19 year-old students. Using case studies of two trainee lecturers, the article explores the way in which they are pushed towards adopting what they see as a 'pedagogic', 'teacherly' identity, which they had previously associated with schoolteachers, in their work with such students. The article suggests that the notion of 'schooling' identities and cultures, whilst contrasting with the vocational habitus proposed by others, is a useful way to explore how cultures and identities in general FE are created through similar processes of identity construction and reconstruction.

This paper presents the results of a study comparing student learning in an inquiry-based and a traditional course in biotransport. Collaborating learning scientists and biomedical engineers designed and implemented an inquiry-based method of instruction that followed learning principles presented in the National Research Council report "How People Learn" (HPL). In this study, the intervention group was taught a core biomedical engineering course in biotransport following the HPL method. The control group was taught by traditional didactic lecture methods. A primary objective of the study was to identify instructional methods that facilitate the early development of adaptive expertise (AE). AE requires a combination of two types of engineering skills: subject knowledge and the ability to think innovatively in new contexts. Therefore, student learning in biotransport was measured in two dimensions: A pre and posttest measured knowledge acquisition in the domain and development of innovative problem-solving abilities. HPL and traditional students' test scores were compared. Results show that HPL and traditional students made equivalent knowledge gains, but that HPL students demonstrated significantly greater improvement in innovative thinking abilities. We discuss these results in terms of their implications for improving undergraduate engineering education. © 2007 Biomedical Engineering Society.

This article provides a conceptual account and empirical analyses of the development of boundary-crossing competencethe ability to function competently in multiple contextsusing representative cases from two after-school programs with immigrant and low-socioeconomic status students. Our findings suggest that organizational designs that create networks of related communities of practice can provide opportunities for nondominant students to develop boundary-crossing competences through participation in expanded, horizontalrather than hierarchalsystems of what Moll and colleagues have called networked expertise. These new directions in understanding competence have important implications for improving learning designs for nondominant students.

Background and Purpose: Graduates of physical therapist education programs should be expected to function as competent clinicians. Instead, the benchmark for many clinical performance assessment tools has been "as good as an entry-level graduate." The authors developed the Clinical Internship Evaluation Tool (CIET), which measures clinical performance of the student relative to a "competent clinician." The purpose of this study was to provide evidence for validity of the tool. Subjects and Methods: The CIET was used to evaluate physical therapist student clinical performance from 1999 to 2003. Data from 228 student evaluations, a survey of 26 clinical instructors (CIs), and an item review by 7 faculty members were used to collect validity evidence. The relevance of items on the CIET was examined by the survey and the item review. Coefficient alpha was calculated to estimate internal consistency among the items. A Spearman correlation was used to examine the relationship between 2 measures of clinical competence. A repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) compared the student scores at each clinical time frame to confirm expected improvements in performance longitudinally. Evidence for practicality was collected by the CI survey. Results: Based on the faculty item review and the CI survey, all items were representative of skills and behaviors considered important for a clinically competent physical therapist. The internal consistency (alpha) was .98 for the patient management items. The average correlation of the 2 measures of clinical competence was .76. The repeated-measures ANOVA was significant and demonstrated improved patient management scores as the student progressed through the program. The CI survey results indicated that 96% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the instrument was short and easy to use. Discussion and Conclusion: The results of the study suggest that the CIET is representative of skills and behaviors necessary for students to perform at the level of a competent therapist and that the instrument is practical to use for busy clinicians. The CIET appears to be a valid tool for measuring student clinical performance and can be a time-efficient alternative for CIs in today's demanding clinical environment. © 2007 American Physical Therapy Association.

Alitex and AnTech are offering vocational training and apprenticeship in collaboration with educational organizations. Alitex, leading upmarket glasshouses manufacturer, conducts lectures, educational tour as a part of their 'relationship building' with educational organizations. These activities includes courses, apprenticeship, vocational training on quality systems. The company has begun its second knowledge transfer partnership in which university researchers work within the company on specific problems that also help towards their postgraduate studies. AnTech's version of the Robson technique employs young people on real projects to advance its technology. The Year in Industry scheme provide work experience to gap-year students. AnTech has also developed a lecture by Shini Somarathne with the help of its engineers and schools, to help teachers on giving career guidance to pupils.

This article explores how to enrich scaffolding processes among university students using specific Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) software. A longitudinal case study was designed, in which 18 students participated in a 12-month learning project. During this period the students followed an instructional process, using the CSCL software to support and improve their interaction processes, in particular the processes of giving and receiving assistance. The research analysed the evolution of the quality of the students' interaction processes and their learning results. The effects of the students' participation in the CSCL environment are described in terms of their development of affective, cognitive and metacognitive learning processes. The results showed that the specific activities that students performed while working with the CSCL system triggered specific learning processes, which had a positive incidence on their learning results.