Conventional apprenticeships and older methods of professional training are not providing enough skilled workers - governments, companies and colleges are now using open and distance learning to fill these gaps. Published in association with the Commonwealth of Learning, this unique review provides detailed analysis of worldwide experiences of vocational training and distance education. It looks at recent policy and practice at different levels - from transnational programmes and national policies to institutional and programme models. Offering guidance on how distance education and new technologies are being used to support vocational education and training, this book will help senior institutional managers and policy makers to understand and appreciate: * the role distance education can play in increasing skills levels in young people and the existing workforce * the challenges in using educational technologies, and distance education to deliver vocational education and training * how to devise effective policies to meet these challenges.

This text reviews the strategies adopted in a range of behaviourist approaches to the setting and realization of standards - identifying the background from which they emerged and ways in which they might be further developed.

The Encyclopedia of Female Pioneers of Online Learning is the first volume to explore the lives and scholarship of women who have prominently advanced online learning. From its humble origins as distance education courses conducted via postal correspondence to today’s advances in the design and delivery of dynamic, technology-enhanced instruction, the ever-evolving field of online learning continues to be informed by the seminal research and institutional leadership of women. This landmark book details 30 preeminent female academics, including some of the first to create online courses, design learning management systems, research innovative topics such as discourse analysis or open resources, and speak explicitly about gender parity in the field. Offering comprehensive career profiles, original interviews, and research analyses, these chapters are illuminating on their own right while amounting to an essential combination of reference material and primary source.

This book contributes extensively to a better understanding of how vocational education and training (VET) and practice-based learning and teaching is developed and designed. It presents examples of vocational education as an ongoing dialogue, continually refreshed through engagement between educators and learners, Māori, employers, industry, and others. It demonstrates how the needs of learners can be met through relevant models of delivery, and how organisations and individuals work towards equity of access and parity of outcomes for all. It details the origins, purposes and evolution of vocational organisations, initiatives supporting Māori and Pasifika success and women in traditionally male-dominated occupations, the roles, provisioning and impact of foundation VET across different contexts, innovations through Certificate, Diploma and Degree programmes of learning, the contribution of new technologies to learning approaches, and the efficacy of education and professional development for VET teachers. This collection of chapters illustrates how Aotearoa New Zealand’s VET system is responding to challenging and changing environments through new frameworks of practice, approaches, and models of delivery. As an overview of a system in change, it is of interest to VET educators, system managers, and policy makers.

Distance education is arguably one of the major developments in education during the 20th Century. This title explores the array of distance education theories and practices as they have been shaped by the late-20th Century and then positions these in terms of the contemporary circumstances of the 21st Century.

The intention of this book is to probe into a critical pedagogy of career education as a vital means to enhance vocationalization in an authentic sense. The book basically focuses on the need to re-structure the system and proposes the use of productive learning as a foundation for a well-rounded education that breaks down the dreadfully despicable dualisms of contemporary education, that is, the separation of theory from practice, individuals from collectivity and schools from community. It also aims at exposing students to three viable requirements: - the need for effective acquisition of skills - a critical pedagogy of occupational demands and - proper understanding of the potential resources for community development and prosperity. The implication is that creative activities ? productive behavior ? should move away from the single priority of economic advancement and profit toward the integration of developmental objectives for social and economic enlistment and effective mobilization.

In formal education, a curriculum (plural curricula) is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow and mature in becoming adults. Crucial to the curriculum is the definition of the course objectives that usually are expressed as learning outcomes and normally include the program's assessment strategy. These outcomes and assessments are grouped as units (or modules), and, therefore, the curriculum comprises a collection of such units, each, in turn, comprising a specialised, specific part of the curriculum. So, a typical curriculum includes communications, numeracy, information technology, and social skills units, with specific, specialised teaching of each. This book presents research on educational curricula from around the world.

This report, OECD Skills Strategy Lithuania: Assessment and Recommendations, identifies opportunities and makes recommendations for Lithuania to better equip young people with skills for work and life, raise adults’ and enterprises’ participation in learning, use people’s skills more effectively in workplaces, and strengthen the governance of skills policies.