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The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the intersection between institutional requirements for reflection and students' actual reflection initiatives in the social and health care education programs. A situated perspective makes it possible to illuminate individuals' commitment, curiosity and uncertainty as bases for understanding reflective actions, which can be either supported or constrained by the social environment in which they are enacted. The analysis is based on an ethnographic field study of boundary-crossing activities at a social and healthcare college and the elder care centres where students work as trainees. The paper adds to the creation of a shared language among educators by suggesting a model based on four factors labelled: (i) 'salient experiences', (ii) 'reflection objects', (iii) 'reflection zones' and (iv) 'reflection facilitators'.

A key finding is that students initiate reflection in a range of ways. Yet, these reflections can be overlooked if they do not fit into the required methods. When educators pay attention to these reflective starting points, they can expand their role as reflection facilitators, and the students' potentials for learning through reflection can be enhanced. The paper adds to previous research on boundary crossing in vocational education and highlights the notion of visible reflection.

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The world of commerce requires graduates able to demonstrate a range of practical skills as well as knowledge and understanding which underpins effective performance. One significant intention of the work placement year is to offer this developmental opportunity. The objectives were to test the practical aspects and identify problems for future implementation thus enabling National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) to play more of a role in student development. This paper considers that higher level NVQs offer a unique opportunity for students to put into practice academic knowledge and understanding in a vocational setting within the context of a separate national award. Show less

This paper aims to discuss the findings of a longitudinal study that investigated the experiences of a group of nurses studying on a two year open learning (OL) course. The findings of the pilot phase of this study were published in ‘Open learning’ journal in April 2000 (Dearnley & Matthew, 2000) [article indexed at TD/TNC 62.838]. That initial small-scale study indicated that the OL modality had been influential on the positive outcomes of the course. The main study, discussed in this paper, built upon those outcomes and drew upon earlier works, such as Maslow (1962, 1968, 1970), Perry (1970), Carper (1978) and Belenky et al. (1986) to explore and explain the changing ways of knowing and nursing experienced by the participants.

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Linno Rhodes, the Fellow, has worked with adult literacy learners for over 15 years and through her experience, recognises that learners often have a host of other issues that impact on their ability to participate, engage and thrive in the adult learning environment. The reasons adults may not have 'functional literacy skills' are diverse and differ from person to person. They may be multi-layered and involve a diagnosed learning disability or not. The reasons could include missing a lot of school as a child due to health issues, being a carer for a sick parent, living in a family with addiction issues, moving frequently or they may have experienced trauma that impacted their learning.

The Fellowship focussed on the exploration of various areas of neuroscience that can help to address these issues. Within the field of psychology there are key theories that offer an insight into the way people learn, our memory function, behaviours, perception and consciousness. These theories are grounded in neuroscience and the Fellow chose to investigate the specific areas of - attachment theory, mindsight, mindset, regulation of emotional responses and mirror neurons in order to increase teachers capacity to work with adult literacy learners to benefit both learners and teachers.

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Collaboration between teaching and library staff at the Arts and Media faculty of the Hunter Institute - TAFE NSW has led to new approaches in the teaching of art theory and history. Incorporating digital and online technology, this process has built an alliance between teachers, the library, and faculty administration. This experience is outlined and possible relevance for other art libraries discussed.

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Despite the fact that some studies have shown a connection between learning efficiency and instructional time, there is limited research carried out within the Technical Vocational Education and Training sector with a particular focus on National Certificate Vocational programmes. To fill this gap, the current study utilised WhatsApp, an instance of a Mobile Social Network, in extending instructional time beyond the normal lecturing timetables with the objective of improving learning efficiency for learners studying Computer Programming as a subject. To achieve the research objective, a participatory action research project was carried out following a pragmatic approach, collecting qualitative and quantitative data concurrently in three phases using semi-structured interviews, questionnaire and documents. Thematic and statistical approaches were used to analyse the data collected from five colleges in the Western Cape Province of South Africa.

The findings of the study highlighted multiple issues: Firstly, awareness of instructional time phenomena was minimal from the lecturers and the learners. Secondly, there were no formal interventions in place to recover or extend instructional time beyond the traditional college boundaries. In overall, the implementation of WhatsApp to extend instructional time was accepted at the five locations. However, statistical results from the five locations after implementation of WhatsApp intervention opposed each other. Test results indicated an overall pass rate of 69.2 per cent (n=54) of the total number of learners (N=78) who sat for the final examination. While the pass rate at each of the other four locations was above 50 per cent, the pass rate of the fifth location was considerably low (37 per cent).

The study generated three contributions to the body of knowledge: practical, theoretical and methodological. Firstly, through the study, practical interventions were generated to assist learners outside the classrooms. Secondly, the study generated propositions and an integrated Mobile Social Network framework that is expected to be a useful course of action for lecturers who want to improve learning efficiency through extending instructional time. A key methodological contribution has been the application of mixed methods choices in the collection, analyses of data and interpretation of results.

Author's abstract. Show less

The way industrial work has functioned as a source of learning for millions of women and men is still, in good measure, a mystery. This is a brief overview of the relationship between learning processes and industrial work over the last two centuries. The role played by informal agencies and by occasional factors have been highlighted, but up until now there are few historical works shedding light on the real processes that have had a real influence on day to day training for the majority of the population. There is a lot of work still to be done before a history of learning processes directly connected to the experience of industrial work in the last two centuries can be written. Show less

In this chapter, Shaw and Christie describe a course called Certificate in Broadcast Training, jointly developed and taught by the Northern Territory University (NTU) based in Darwin, Australia and the Asia-Pacific Institute of Broadcasting Development (AIBD) centred in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. AIBD is an inter-government institute taking its members from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Shaw and Christie describe the history of collaboration between the University and AIBD. They outline its beginning in 1988 and its aims of developing the skills of broadcasters, script writers and producers in the Asia and Pacific Rim region. It is a joint program modelling international and institutional cooperation. There is consultation over all aspects of course delivery and responsibilities for the theoretical and practicum components of the course and its management are jointly planned and apportioned. Each institution is signatory to final awards. The authors describe the nature of the institutions’ cooperation, the apportioning of roles and tasks, recruitment, management and assessment. They address cultural considerations which became apparent at individual and institutional levels and comment on issues relating to globalisation and marketing of courses across borders. Shaw and Christie cover other issues and difficulties relating to access to computers and the Internet by course members in diverse geographical locations. Like many other educators involved in computer assisted courses, they are challenged by how best to use new technologies to enhance and transform existing courses.

The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/NT 66.01. Individual chapters are indexed from TD/NT 67.01 to TD/NT 67.20. Show less

Several competence theories have been developed, and much competence research has been conducted during the last decades. Various competence solutions emerged at conceptual, strategic and operational level in the fields of corporate strategy, human resource management, education, training, and the development of personal effectiveness. Furthermore, the competence-based education philosophy has deeply entered the vocational education and training sector worldwide. Despite much criticism in certain countries, the competence-based vocational education and training (CBVET) philosophy has been attractive to many stakeholders in this field. This attractiveness can be easily explained, since CBVET addresses some perennial challenges in VET: the alignment with requirements of the labor market and entrepreneurship (including self-employment), the inclusion of applying knowledge and skills in practice, the hybridization of work and learning, the attention for the attitudinal dimension in professional identity, the focus on increased self-regulated learning, and the shift from final exams to portfolio development and formative and authentic assessment. Without the pretention of being exhaustive, this chapter, on the foundations of competence-based vocational education and training, gives a review of eight theoretical views on competence, which emphasize performance, self-determination, alignment, professional knowledge, shaping, effective instruction, capability, and human development. The chapter then reviews the current states of affairs regarding competence practices, characteristics of mature CBE systems, and discussions about definitions. The chapter is concluded with an outlook on competence for the future. Amongst all future-oriented competencies, learning competence remains most important. The development of all other competencies is depending on that.

Published abstract.

The volume from which this chapter is taken is available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 137.1084. Show less