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"Higher education"

Introduces the traditional German apprenticeship training approach which has been received favourably in US governments (federal and state) and in industry, but suggests that certain conditions in America do not favour heavy investment in such training. Shows that the educational transfer of the apprenticeship model may be facilitated by German firms investing and operating in the United States, as proved by the electronic giant Siemens which is committed to implementing the proven apprenticeship model in its US subsidiaries. Shows that the apprenticeship model alone may be insufficient, and may need to be supplemented by a higher level, dual system education which integrates theory and practice. Proposes that the Vocational Academy programme, illustrated by the Mercedes-Benz experience, may fill this gap - not to supplant the apprenticeship training, but to supplement it. Suggests that both the apprenticeship model and the Vocational Academy model, may fill an important need for an educational joint venture approach, not only in the United States but also in other countries, by making business and government organizations more competitive in the global market. © 1996, MCB UP Limited

1996 marks the 10th anniversary of the National Council for Vocational Qualifications, the body responsible for a national framework of competency-based education and training in the United Kingdom. Concurrently, the qualifications are being highlighted as they are developed at professional levels 4 and 5.The anniversary was preceded by a plethora of reports. Beaumont flagged up issues of validity, reliability and quality control in relation to the organisational structure of the framework. The Institute of Employment Studies noted that there had only been a marginal increase in the number of employers implementing the qualifications and the higher education Quality Council began the process of persuading the higher education sector by noting the positive contributions that competency-based assessment processes could make. However, there remain very real issues to debate. Whether knowledge and understanding can be ‘inferred’ from performance. Whether the qualifications are suitable for the complexities of professional performance. Above all, whether policy-making over the last decade has been thinking along the right lines. This paper explores those issues. © 1996 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

It is the thesis of this paper that the time has come for business schools to rethink the purpose of their establishment. They need to reflect upon the professional foundations of management education through rethinking a new philosophy of knowledge which is suitable for professional education and through reviving it at a higher status than vocational training. The future of management education, we believe, depends upon a rethinking of the theory of knowledge that guides the increasing interests in managerial learning and training.

This article provides a rationale for exploring ways in which science educators can structure learning activities that more accurately reflect the scientific inquiry processes used by practicing research scientists. Science learning activities based on the experiential model are better able to promote student construction of scientific knowledge and provoke students into making the transition from naive to higher-order, scientific ways of thinking. The conclusion is drawn that experiential education strategies will strengthen school science performance, particularly among students from underrepresented groups, and create an increased pool of scientific and technical workers.

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.

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 examines ways in which interrelationships between knowledge and skills can lead to important links between education and training to the considerable benefit of each. In particular it reviews the variety of ways in which the acquisition of knowledge (in the widest sense of the term) can contribute to the development of competences and conversely the variety of ways in which the development of a broad range of skills (including competences) can contribute to the acquisition of knowledge. © 1995, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

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.

In Australia and elsewhere, a sometimes heated debate is taking place about the significance for higher education of the adoption of competency standards by professions and other occupations. To many in the higher education sector, it is self-evident that competency standards cannot do justice to the professional aspects of an occupation. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that this conclusion is too hasty. There are various ways of conceptualising occupational competence. The paper argues that one of them does do justice to the variety and richness of the professional aspects of job performance. This conception of competence is shown to meet the more considered objections to competency standards in the philosophical literature, as well as various less well-articulated criticisms that have appeared in recent debate in Australia. The implications of this richer conception of competence for higher education are discussed. © 1994, © 1994 Australian Council for Educational Research.