Search Results for
"learning"

This paper offers a strategy for the development of successful work‐based learning programmes within higher education. It identifies and addresses the key challenges facing such development. Firstly, whether it is possible to develop a work‐based learning programme which provides an effective learning experience at higher education level and which draws upon opportunities within the workplace. Secondly, whether work‐based learning programmes are an appropriate vehicle for structuring and accrediting the continuing development of the workforce. In addressing these challenges, we examine the design and quality assurance of a work‐based learning programme for qualified social workers, placing particular emphasis on the development of an appropriate learning model. We consider some of the criticisms levelled at competence‐based education and argue that work‐based learning programmes composed of learning outcomes achieved entirely through practice can be compatible with the aims of higher education. © 1995 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This paper supports the notion of incorporating developmental, concerns‐based models and reflective models together, to provide a suitable framework for vocational preparation. However, it emphasises the importance of the learning group as the milieu in which reflection may be most powerfully enabled (or repressed) and the need to assist people in some reframing of their concerns, through critical reflection, before these can be adequately addressed. Data from an action research study, with mature‐age, male tradespeople in an internship system of training as Technology Studies teachers in secondary schools, are drawn upon to illustrate these points. This study indicates that people become reflective when: Current actions are recognised as inappropriate; conditions are created in which stress may be openly acknowledged and addressed through group support, and thinking is challenged. A reflective, developmental model for adult learners is presented, relevant to learning situations in which changes of identity are required. © 1995 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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.

[No abstract available]

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.

As America's occupational society moves from a low skills to a high wages nature, the popularity of both work‐based learning in general and youth apprenticeship in particular is growing rapidly. Both counseling and counselors in educational settings are currently being downplayed, and job mentors are being played up by leaders in the youth apprenticeship movement. The need to counsel persons regarding a variety of forms of postsecondary education is growing rapidly. The counseling profession should become actively involved in meeting this need with respect to all forms of work‐based learning. The challenges are especially great with respect to youth apprenticeship programs. 1994 National Career Development Association

This paper describes the results of the program-development phase of the Vocational Training Facility (VTF) taking place at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Medical Center Rehabilitation Research and Development Center. The VTF staff has developed a self-paced, multimedia curriculum comprised of adapted training packages, interactive videos, and additional training and testing materials designed to teach entry-level desktop publishing and reasonable accommodation skills to individuals with spinal cord injuries. The curriculum is taught via the Macintosh computer to allow independent, “hands-oif” access to training materials. Each student is given an integrated workstation that is equipped with the Desktop Vocational Assistant Robot (De VAR); a set of low-and high-technology assistive hardware, software, and devices; and ergonomic furniture and adaptations customized to fit individual learning and access needs. Each student completes a 12-week, full-time training program followed by a 3-month internship with a local corporate sponsor. This paper summarizes the evaluation results of the VTF program by the first nine students, with spinal cord injuries ranging paraplegia to high-level quadriplegia, who have completed the program. © 1994 Butterworth-Heinemann.

This paper summarises the results of a literature review conducted in late 1993 on issues related to the credentialling of competency based education and training. The credentialling review focused on seven major issues: describing the minimum requirements for a qulification; distinguishing different qualification levels; issuing statements and qualifications gained by the recognition of prior learning; using short courses to build a qualification; recording the results of competency based assessments; responsibility for keeping the records of individual achievement; and, whether the exact competencies held should be recorded on a qualification. The recent (1993) move by the National Training Board to abandon any general criteria for the determination of qualification levels and to rely solely on the advice of the relevant Competency Standards Body when determining the level of a qualification emerges as a significant development in Australian credentialling. This abandonment of general criteria, which mirrors a development in the UK system, may yet undermine the goal of achieving a more rational qualifications system in Australia. It was clear from the review that the issues and trends in the accreditation of competency based education and training in Australia, and the problems encountered, have broad parallels in the UK experience. It was also clear that much of the story is yet to unravel, and that many issues remain unresolved. © 1994, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

The debate concerning quality assurance in higher education is frequently conducted in terms originating outside the culture of academic institutions, such as fitness for purpose' and ‘meeting customer expectations’, which are often experienced as jarring with traditional conceptions of higher education. However, quality assurance issues surrounding the accreditation of work-based learning within academic awards suggest how these terms may serve to pose some useful general challenges to current modes of assessment. In particular, the recognition of the need to be as precise as possible about anticipated learning outcomes, characteristic of procedures for accrediting work-based learning, offers some useful lessons in managing the quality of traditionally taught courses. © 1994, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Three major elements in the Australian national workplace reform agenda are the introduction of key/generic workplace competencies, national occupational employment standards and a competency‐based education‐training system that recognises prior learning and assures development of identified competencies, both generic and occupationally specific. Attempts to develop effective and efficient assessment schemes to determine participant competence are underway. A continuing major concern, however, is how best to report information to potential employers. While employers need sufficient relevant information to make informed hiring decisions there is the distinct danger of providing too much detailed information in a competency‐based education system that it is not able to be used in a timely and efficient fashion. This paper reviews the merits of selected reporting schemes being considered, and then presents questions for further research about employers' reactions to reporting of competency information. © 1994 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.