Suchergebnisse

Social competences are crucial parts of vocational education and training (VET) competences. As part of a development project preparing unskilled young people for VET, an action research project was conducted with the aim of developing a schema for assessing and grading social competences. The development included defining the social competences as well as three levels for assessing these competences. The schema was developed in cooperation with the assessors, i.e., representatives from workplaces, municipal youth guidance centres, and VET colleges. There were two main findings. First, the definitions of the competences and the levels for assessing the competences are related to the context in which the competences should be developed. Second, even though the definitions should be related to the specific contexts, to be manageable they should not be too elaborate. The aim of the project being to develop a schema that practitioners in general can use for assessing young peoples' social competences in relation to work-based training, the study concludes that further research is needed to clarify whether the schema can be used without instruction or training.

The article deals about the results of a study of school-based Assessment
of Prior Learning of adults who have enrolled as students in a VET college in order
to qualify for occupations as skilled workers. Based on examples of VET teachers'
methods for assessing the students' prior learning in the programs for gastronomes,
respectively child care assistants the article discusses two issues in relation to Assessment
of Prior Learing: the encounter of practical experience and school-based
knowledge and the validity and reliability of the assessment procedures. Through
focusing on the students' knowing that and knowing why the assessment is based on
a scholastic perception of the students' needs for training, reflecting one of the most
important challenges in Assessment of Prior Learning: how can practical experience
be transformed into credits for the knowledge parts of the programs? The study
shows that by combining several Assessment of Prior Learning methods and comparing
the teachers' assessments the teachers respond to the issues of validity and
reliability. However, validity and reliability might be even further strengthened, if
the competencies are well defined, if the education system is aware of securing a
reasonable balance between knowing how, knowing that, and knowing why, and if
the teachers are adequately trained for the assessment procedures.

Context: Aiming at gaining knowledge about students' thoughts and actions in deciding to stay in or drop out of an educational programme, an empirical study was conducted on dropout among 18-24-year-old students in VET and basic general adult learning. Approach: In order to pursue this aim, the study combined two sets of data: weekly student surveys and interviews with these same students. While the surveys provide a weekly snapshot of the students' thoughts regarding the probability of them continuing in the programme, their satisfaction with the educational programme as a whole, the specific lessons they attend, and the atmosphere at the school, the interviews contribute with detailed descriptions of the students' thoughts on the same matters. Findings: Based on the students' answers over an eight-week period, it was possible to trace a graph illustrating changes in the students' attitudes. These graphs can be placed within four categories of development: the stable, the positive, the unstable, and the negative. The latter can furthermore be differentiated as reflecting a stable decline, a fluctuating decline, or a sudden decline. In the interviews, the aim was to elicit the individual students' thoughts and actions at the points when their graphs took a turn. Conclusions: The findings show that the students' thoughts and actions concern matters both inside and outside the school. Furthermore, seemingly trivial matters in the students' lives are shown to have a potentially decisive influence on the students' thoughts about staying in or dropping out of a programme. These findings confirm the importance of focusing on students' decision-making processes in research on dropout. However, further research is needed to increase understanding of processes leading to decisions to drop out of education, including the qualification of methods to capture these processes.