Search Results for
"Teaching"

An overview is given of occupational safety and health and of training in the construction sector, summarizing the findings of different researchers. The studies discussed emphasize safety instruction and on the job training at sites, especially the teaching of first aid skills and accident prevention. Construction workers regard occupational training as important in maintaining work ability. Present developments of vocational training with new flexible pathways are described. Rehabilitation needs are found to be a further important target of work ability promotion. The study provides support for comprehensive occupational health and safety measures. New feedback safety measures (LIIKKUVA, TR - safety audit), which are based on goal setting and a follow up in collaboration, seem to improve considerably both the safety and the development of construction work. © 1999 E & FN Spon.

Vocational education has become the instrument in Australia to create a more effective workforce in an age of technological change and intense international competition. Policies have been introduced which have focused narrowly upon competency-based training (CBT), the end product, with empirical research revealing that CBT has not been effective or effectively introduced. The importance of processes, particularly effective learning and curriculum, and teacher pedagogical and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986), as well as implementation issues, have been ignored. There has also been failure to recognise that many vocational education and training (VET) teachers/ trainers have received minimal or no teacher training and even those formally trained have not been exposed to sufficient educational psychology, especially more recent research on skill learning and the development of expertise, transfer of learning and lifelong learning, key areas for effective learning in VET. Good curriculum documents can help maintain content knowledge currency and increase teaching capability through incorporation of knowledge from these key areas of psychology. Some implications for curriculum of these key areas are explored. Increased efficiency in the workplace can only be achieved through recognition of the importance of learning and serious efforts to develop curricula which provide adequate guidance and in-service education for teachers/ trainers. © 1999 Journal of Vocational Education and Training All rights reserved.

Technology education has undergone extraordinary changes in the last decade. Educators and educational policy makers have become aware of the importance of technology in the basic formation of today's educated person. At the same time rapid and continuous change in technology itself poses serious challenges in regards education and training in this field. Thus technology related contents, skills and teaching strategies for all specialization levels are being reconsidered and redefined for educating both the technologically literate person and the expert practitioner. In an attempt to examine the learning process of technological problem solving (TPS), we suggest and define an appropriate conceptual framework, encompassing all components of the process, i.e., knowledge, skills, and cognitive models. First the background to our proposal is presented, followed by the description of the two main components of the model: the Learning Space and the Technological Primitives repertoire.

Why should instructors in traditional higher education institutions consider the re-design of their courses? The paper begins with a defense of four compelling reasons for changes in didactics: a review of some key principles of good teaching and learning, the increasing diversity of student characteristics and associated needs, the strategic and educational rationales for five types of flexibility increase in our current courses, and the particular need for instructors in faculties of education to provide leadership and models. Given the why, the next question is how? The remainder of the paper discusses the how in terms of a conceptually grounded approach to the pedagogical re-engineering of existing courses so that they become more flexible, with more student engagement, more-targetted communication, and more-attuned instructor scaffolding of increased student responsibility for his or her own learning. These concepts are made concrete through the extension of six standard sets of course-related tasks into redesigned sets involving the new didactics and WWW-based course-support functionalities. Examples from current practice at the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology at the University of Twente are used to illustrate the new didactical categories and their use of WWW-based course environments. The paper concludes with a consideration of key challenges that will confront the implementation of such new didactics in practice. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

[No abstract available]

As more teachers move into new areas such as enterprise-based workplace education, concerns have been expressed regarding the deprofessionalisation of their work. This article explores an approach to workplace education, within a manufacturing environment, which not only re-defines the work of teachers In ways which utilise, enhance and extend their skills, but also values the role of professional educators in advising industry personnel on matters relating to learning and assisting in the development of learning frameworks. It is argued that when competence is contextualised and viewed holistically, and the subsequent training program is based on the complex reality of the particular workplace, all the professional skills of teachers are required to design effective learning strategies. If the resultant educational program is also to be responsive to the needs of the learners and sufficiently flexible to encompass changes in the workplace as they occur, its development and implementation will pose a unique challenge to teachers.

A Staff Development Forum for the post-16 sector has recently been established. It will examine the need for a more coherent approach to staff training and professional development, including the introduction of ‘national standards’ in the form of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). This paper argues that there is, indeed, an urgent need to consider the case for some form of consensus about what constitutes best practice in teaching. But a proper consideration must begin from a conceptualisation of teaching as professional practice. Three typical characteristics of professional practice are examined for their relevance to teaching: ethical values, autonomous pragmatism and the pursuit of expertise, together with the question of whether current NVQs can provide an account of these characteristics. The conclusion drawn is that methodological inadequacies of a conceptual, psychological and epistemological nature prevent them from doing so, and that these inadequacies derive from the role of competence-based qualifications in New Right social and educational policy. The potential effect of devising qualifications using the current competence-based approach is a reconceptualisation of teaching and learning as technical procedures, and of teachers as technicians. Unless resisted, this will achieve the ideological intention of subordinating the practice of teachers to direct political and managerial control, thus rendering teachers and learners less independent and autonomous, more impotent. © 1996 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

To understand the nature of learning in workplaces and how this learning might be improved, it is useful to view the activities that learners engage in as key units of curriculum. These learning experiences, which workers engage in as part of everyday work practice, should be conceptualised as goal-directed activity shaped by the context and requirement of the particular community of practice in which those activities occur. This paper draws upon current theorising and empirical work in order to provide an initial model of a workplace learning curriculum. The model suggests that learning rather than teaching should be at the core of concepts of curriculum. Commencing with a review of goals for vocational expertise, learning through goal-directed activity and a synthesis of some recent research into learning in workplaces a tentative model of workplace learning is advanced. Features of this model include guided participation in the everyday activities of the workplace with explicit interventions aimed at providing access to forms of knowledge which remain opaque and also the development of procedures. The overall structure of the learning arrangements is referred to as the learning curriculum with activities being advanced as key components of the curriculum model. Although founded within workplace communities of practice, this model may well have wider applications. © 1996, Taylor and Francis Inc. All rights reserved.

This paper describes the development and structure of a pilot programme of professional development for new graduates initiated by the New Zealand Dental Association, the Dental Council of New Zealand, and the Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Otago. The programme consisted of a series of monthly evening seminars, co-ordinated by a facilitator, and led by experienced practitioners. Initially provided in Auckland, the programme subsequently extended to Wellington, Christchurch, and Waikato-Bay of Plenty. The award of a New Zealand Dental Association Travelling Fellowship enabled the author to observe the United Kingdom Vocational Training Scheme, and attendance at the 1994 meeting of the Fédération Dentaire Internationale provided opportunity to study systems used in other countries. The pilot programme has now been replaced by the ongoing Graduate Professional Development Programme Dentistry, a programme which extends beyond the recent graduate, but remaining based on the concepts developed in the pilot programme.

Pass rates in courses for vocational (re)schooling of adults are generally low. Lack of mathematical skills is one of the factors that can be responsible. To enhance pass rates, most courses supply additional mathematics schooling. The present study investigated whether the effectiveness of additional mathematics schooling can be improved by new materialsfor the students and interactive teaching. Subjects involved in this study were female students following a business administration course. The results support the expectation that proper use of the newly developed materials help to improve the application of mathematics knowledge in job-related situations. © 1995, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.