Suchergebnisse

This book provides a fresh account of the changing nature of work and how workers are changing as result of the requirements of contemporary working life. It explores the implications for preparing individuals for work and maintaining their skills throughout working life. This is done by examining the relations between the changing requirements for working life and how individuals engage in work.

There is growing interest in work-based experiences being part of vocational education and training (VET) provisions for young people to assist their readiness for work and working. To understand the range of factors promoting or inhibiting such provisions, cross country comparisons are often instructive. In this paper, the findings from a review of work-based learning VET programs in nine Arab region countries are presented and summarised. Comparing these educational provisions across countries within the same region, albeit with diverse institutional arrangements, sometimes turbulent recent histories and economic transformations permits illustrations and elaborations of such factors. The findings illuminated the complex of factors, characterised by interdependence, that reform efforts and government and societal initiatives need to consider these factors as being collective and interrelated, rather than only being addressed in isolation. Implications for the European context include an elaboration of factors that shape the provision of work-based learning for young people in vocational education. A salient finding is also the apparent mismatch between models of work-based learning that are proposed by sponsoring countries and their fit with these nine countries.

Governments are currently mobilising their national workforces to compete effectively in a globalised economy where being export-effective and import-competitive are necessary to secure national economic and social goals. Australia is no exception here. Yet, in this country, as in others, similar mobilisations occurred in earlier times, most noticeably during wartime. This article describes and discusses two particular measures during and after the Second World War: the Commonwealth Technical Training Scheme and the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme. Beyond providing an historical account of these two national schemes for skilling Australians, the paper identifies the importance of securing a national consensus and the engagement of all parties, and showing sensitivity towards those who participate in such programs. Particularly salient is that although national-focussed, the success of these programs was premised on effective localised arrangements, where diligent administrators and educators seemingly worked closely with local employers and unions to realise their effective implementation. ; Full Text

In 1990, Australia implemented an employer training levy, the Training Guarantee Scheme. The Training Guarantee was abolished by the incoming Coalition federal government in 1996 after much negative publicity about its impact, particularly on small business. Recently, there have been calls to revive the notion of an employer training levy as a result of statistical evidence that employer expenditure training has declined since 1996. In this context, employer training expenditure has been taken as a proxy for employer commitment to training. This article considers the statistical evidence on employer training in Australia and concludes that the case against Australian employers is far from clear cut. Data from a variety of sources suggests strongly that Australian employers provide a similar level of training to their employees as employers in other developed countries. The paper proposes that it is the distribution of employer training expenditure that is important to long term skills formation rather then the total expenditure.

This volume considers, rethinks and reorganizes how support for learning across working life can be best conceptualized, organized and enacted. It considers educational and learning support processes that include approaches that fit well within working lives and workplaces, and support work and learning as a co-occurrence. These are the key focuses for individual and collective contributions to this edited volume, which provide discussions about what constitutes learning across working lives and how this differs from lifelong learning and lifelong education. Accounts of learning across the working lives of social workers, doctors working in hospitals and in general practice, teaching, aviation, nursing, mining, aged care and more. These accounts advance a range of ways in which workers' learning across working lives is being supported and how this support is also linked to other changes, such as to the occupational practice in which they engage.

This book focuses on relations among subjectivity, work and learning that represent a point of convergence for diverse disciplinary traditions and practices. There are contributions from leading scholars in the field. They provide emerging perspectives that are elaborating the complex relations among subjectivity, work and learning, and circumstances in which they are played out

The standing of vocational education is often perceived to be low, compared with other education sectors, albeit more so in some countries than others. The consequences of this standing can be profound. They include how governments, industry, enterprises and communities sponsor vocational education, and what constitutes its purposes, form and its administration. These perceptions also shape how individuals engage with it, parents advise about it and employers' willingness to engage with its provisions. Over time, also it has been the voices and sentiments of powerful others (e.g. aristocrats, theocrats, bureaucrats and academics) that have shaped the discourses about the standing of occupations and their preparation (Billett, 2014). In many instances, this privileging has and continues to come at a cost to the standing, processes of and goals for this important educational sector. The symposium will comprise four country perspectives and a brief discussion, from Denmark (Vibe Aakrog), Finland (Petri Nokelainen), Norway (Hilde Hiim) and Switzerland (Barbara Stalder), each of which will outline factors associated with the standing of vocational education and ways in which it has or might be enhanced.

Leaving school, whether to move on to training, work or education, is a fundamental rite of passage the world over. This volume draws on a wealth of international sources and studies in its analysis of the 'transitions' young students make as they move on from their secondary schooling. It identifies how these transitions are planned for by policymakers, enacted by school staff and engaged with by students themselves. With data from a range of nations with advanced industrial economies, the book delineates how the policies relating to these transitions need to be conceived and implemented, how the transitions themselves are negotiated by young people, and how they might be shaped to meet the varied needs of the students they are designed to help. The authors argue that the relationship, often complex, between what schools provide in the way of preparation, and the ways in which students take up what is on offer, is the crucial nexus for understanding the experience of transitions by young people, and for enhancing that experience. With a host of case studies of transition policies themselves, as well as evaluative data on how they were received by the school leavers whom they were designed for, this valuable addition to the educational literature deserves to be read by all those with roles in preparing the young for their journey into a complex adult world full of pitfalls as well as opportunity.