Originally published in 2003 Realizing Qualitative Research into Higher Education, looks at how qualitative research in broad terms, confronts the question of the researcher's involvement in the production of knowledge. However, the method adopted even in highly positivist qualitative work has a history that bears on the research. This volume provides examples of engaging research work, outlining the key research process and examining the links between this and the final report.

Das System der Berufsorientierung bietet loesungsfahige Ansatze an, mit denen sich die Eignung fur einen bestimmten Beruf erschliessen lasst und so eine Entscheidungsfindung moeglich wird. Verbesserungen aktueller Berufsorientierungsangebote sind i.d.R. zwar vorbereitet, kommen aber uber ihre Singularitat nicht hinaus. Eine Vernachlassigung der Probleme fuhrt jedoch zu einer verfehlten Berufswahl. In diesem Zusammenhang wird die positive Auswirkung des Betriebspraktikums teilweise uberschatzt, obwohl es als erfolgssichernde Veranstaltung zentral bleibt. Ein fachfremder Personaleinsatz verstarkt dagegen die Probleme. Insgesamt gesehen wirken bei der Berufsorientierung die Agenturen fur Arbeit, die Schulen, die Betriebe und die Eltern zusammen. Dabei helfen die Agenturen fur Arbeit bei der an objektiven Gegebenheiten orientierten Berufswahl, ihre Berufsinformationszentren sind neben anderen Agenten und dem hilfreichen Internet Teil des Systems.

"A must-read for anyone in higher education, human resource development, or adult education. This impeccably researched book reflects an encyclopedic and intimate knowledge of innovative adult higher education programs and provides an impressive historical context for such programs. It will be a classic sourcebook for anyone in the field."

--Howard Y. Williams, professor emeritus, Human Resource Development and Adult Education, University of Minnesota

"A comprehensive, careful, and compelling study of adult learners and learning today. Lifelong Learning at Its Best demonstrates why education--from cradle to grave--is so important to our society in coping with the demands of burgeoning technology, addressing global competition, and recognizing the need for ongoing job retraining. It should be required reading for leaders in education, business and industry, and policymaking."

--C. Wayne Williams, president, Regents College

It is widely accepted that lifelong competency in today's world requires lifelong learning. Schools, colleges, and workplaces have responded to this new reality by implementing educational and training programs. But which programs really work?

Drawing from data gathered by the Commission for a Nation of Lifelong Learners--in a study directed by prestigious educational and business leaders--William Maehl offers strategies that have been most successful with adult learners across the nation. From Georgetown University to Toyota, he describes winning program models and all their components. Organized under such key learning objectives as competence, collaboration, and self-directedness, these success stories reveal the specific instructional, organizational, financial, and other program components that make the greatest difference in learning outcomes. For staff attempting to improve existing programs or for teams building new ones, this resource has all the practical ideas you need to design effective solutions.

How Non-Permanent Workers Learn and Develop is an empirically based exploration of the challenges and opportunities non-permanent workers face in accessing quality work, learning, developing occupational identities and striving for sustainable working lives. Based on a study of 100 non-permanent workers in Singapore, it offers a model to guide thinking about workers' learning and development in terms of an 'integrated practice' of craft, entrepreneurial and personal learning-to-learn skills. The book considers how strategies for continuing education and training can better fit with the realities of non-permanent work. Through its use of case studies, the book exams the significance of non-permanent work and its rise as a global phenomenon. It considers the reality of being a non-permanent worker and reactions to learning opportunities for these individuals. The book draws these aspects together to present a conceptual frame of 'integrated practices', challenging educational institutions and training providers to design and deliver learning and the enacted curriculum not as separate pieces of a puzzle, but as an integrated whole. With conclusions that have wider salience for public policy responses to the rise of non-permanent work, this book will be of great interest to academics and researchers in the fields of adult education, educational policy and lifelong learning.

This is a core text for anyone training to be (or working as) an assessor in the further education and skills sector. Whether you are a new or an experienced assessor, this book will guide you through the relevant principles and practices to enable you to become an assessor; improve your job role; and/or work towards a relevant assessment qualification. The book takes you through all the information you need to know, opening up the topic for learning in a really accessible way. Interactive activities are included throughout, and real examples of assessment in practice are included. The book also includes examples of completed assessment documents. It is a comprehensive text, covering: * principles of assessment * planning for assessment * types and methods of assessment * assessment practice * giving feedback * recording progress and achievement * quality assurance * evaluation The updated 4th edition includes new content on: the assessor coach role end-point assessment the role of technology in assessment and quality assurance online assessment theories, principles and models of reflection and evaluation

Expanding Transformation Theory offers a deeper understanding of the philosophy, principles and major components of Transformation Theory, which was developed by Jack Mezirow. It provides a thorough comprehension of the affinities of the theory with other emancipatory theoretical views and provides the readers with an expanded insight of the core theoretical framework that will support their research and educational practice. The book juxtaposes Mezirow's perspective with those of ten major emancipatory educationalists - Dewey, Freire, Gould, Marsick, Socrates, Kegan, Greene, Argyris, Illeris, and Jarvis, respectively, who all share the idea of learning with the aim of changing problematic perceptions and behaviours. Such issues as convergences and divergences among the theoretical perspectives, as well as the impact of the theoretical ideas that Mezirow incorporated in his work, are addressed. The work of Mezirow is further reviewed in order to pinpoint the dimensions which appear to have been confirmed and endure over time, and, in turn, those that seem to need expansion or even revision. This book will be of great interest to researchers, academics, students, and adult educators who are interested in transformative learning theory and emancipatory education

This fascinating monograph explores lifelong learning in the context of development as it is used for low and middle income countries, particularly with reference to Africa and South Asia. Taking a broadly postcolonial and critical theory perspective, thus privileging texts from the 'global South' that highlight pre-colonial origins for lifelong learning, it critiques the discourse of development as it applies to education for low income countries, and explores relevant texts that apply lifelong learning principles to nation building and other development issues.
Professor Preece draws on the broader philosophical and sociological concerns of authors from low and middle income countries in order to highlight values, cultures and learning priorities that are often forgotten in the dominant and usually instrumentalist policy texts for lifelong learning. She includes reference to African Renaissance texts on African philosophies and education traditions, feminist theories on lifelong learning, Southern feminist approaches to gender issues, and comparative research literature that addresses the dangers of uncritical international transfer.

This book offers readers a comprehensive understanding of problem-based learning (PBL) in teacher education. Featuring the perspectives of experienced teacher educators, it details the strengths of problem-based learning pedagogy as well as identifies continuing challenges and future possibilities. The book explains the goals, content, processes and strategies of a successful and longstanding problem-based learning teacher education program at the University of British Columbia. It features contributions from tutors, faculty, school administrators, faculty advisors, school advisors, librarians and pre-service teachers who share their perspectives about problem-based learning as a robust and exciting approach for teaching and learning. Overall, the contributors to the book discuss the history of the program, its implementation and future directions. In the process, readers discover the ways that problem-based learning has succeeded in preparing educators to teach diverse learners and acquire the professional dispositions necessary for teaching in today's multilingual/multicultural classrooms.

The fusion of critical pedagogy, holistic (moral) education, and disability studies continues to be uncharted waters and, in some academic venues, a hotly contested topic. A discourse advocating for a liberating pedagogy for the disabled is still absent. Based on critical and moral pedagogy, The Moral Debate on Special Education is the self-narrative of a disabled special education teacher who is searching for the answers and spaces where this dialogue and narrative can take place. What started as mere research for social justice in education has morphed, unintentionally, into the moral quest for justice and equality in special education. Celebrating the legacy of Paulo Freire, Joe L. Kincheloe, Shirley Steinberg, David Purpel, Peter McLaren, Cameron White, Michael Connelly, Jean Clandinin, and other contemporaries, Bernardo E. Pohl, Jr. delves into the tensions, promises, and challenges of special education from the unique perspective of a disabled educator.

This book addresses the education and training of Members of Parliament (MPs). It examines existing training programs offered in various countries around the world, evaluates their strengths and weaknesses and makes recommendations for a new approach, which aligns the professional development of MPs to 21st century requirements. Contributors address the role of parliamentarians, how to prepare them for their multi-faceted functions, the importance of ethics in any program, the requirement for more sophisticated adult learning approaches, human resource implications and the need to reform existing education and training models. The book will appeal to scholars in the fields of political science, adult education and human resource management, as well as to parliamentarians interested in enhancing their skills so as to perform more efficiently and effectively.

This book explores and progresses the concept of negotiation as a means of describing and explaining individuals' learning in work. It challenges the undertheorised and generic use of the concept in contemporary work-learning research where the concept of negotiation is most often deployed as a taken for granted synonym for interaction, co-participation and collaboration and, hence, used to unproblematically account for workers' learning as engagement in social activity. Through a focus on workers' personal practice and based on extensive longitudinal empirical research, the book advances a conceptual framework, The Three Dimensions of Negotiation, to propose a more rigorous and work-learning specific understanding of the concept of negotiation. This framework enables workers' personal work practices and their contributions to the personal, organisational and occupational changes that evidence learning to be viewed as negotiations enacted and managed, within contexts that are in turn sets of premediate and concurrent negotiations that frame the transformations on and from which on-going negotiations of learning and practice ensue. The book does not seek to supplant understandings of the rich and valuable concept of negotiation. Rather, it seeks to develop and promote a more explicit use of the concept as a socio-personal learning concept at the same time as it opens alternative perspectives on its deployment as a metaphor for individual's learning in work.

This book focuses on a renewed interest in work based learning in higher education. Due to an increased emphasis on employability in the graduate population, supported by wider policy changes, work based learning is becoming an increasingly pressing issue in higher education. The authors detail innovations from a breadth of UK universities, where academics have creatively addressed changes in work based learning structure, pedagogy and support systems. These changes in turn recognise the impact of real-life learning experiences on student progression, on both an academic development and a personally transformative level. Encompassing a wide variety of topics, the examples within the book are supported by theory and carefully detailed practice pedagogy. This valuable edited collection will be of interest to practitioners and scholars of work based learning and higher education, as well as a useful practical guide for academic developers.

This book highlights the increasing need for people who will be working in professions such as teaching, health, engineering and business management to have the skills for living and working in a global society. Globalisation and the challenges resulting from recent political events in Europe and North America have given rise to a need for training and further and higher education programmes to address the skills young people all need to effectively engage in the current global society. Reviewing the range of theories and debates surrounding skills for the twenty-first century, the author suggests there is a need to directly address the real-world issues of today and move beyond abstract concepts such as team work, critical thinking and problem solving, as important as these concepts are. The author proposes a new framework for global skills using examples from international and national policy-makers and evidence from further and higher educational programmes and training courses. This pioneering yet practical book will be of value to students and scholars of global education as well as practitioners and policy makers.

This book leads you through the process of designing a learning-centered course. It is written as a "how-to" handbook, providing step-by-step guidance on creating a pathway to student learning, including 26 workboxes (also available free online) that lead you through each element of the course design process and promote a rich reflection process akin to being in a workshop setting. The authors prompt you to (1) consider the distinctive characteristics of your students; (2) clearly articulate your course learning goals; (3) create aligned summative assessments; (4) identify the specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes students will need in order to be successful; (5) craft effective learning experiences, informed by the well-documented research on how people learn; and (6) incorporate formative assessment to ensure you and your students are staying on track. Completion of the sequence of worksheets leads to a poster as a visual display of your course design. This graphic depiction of your course ties the components together, provides a clear map of action for teaching your course, for modifying as you evaluate the success of particular strategies or want to introduce new concepts, and for developing your syllabus. A rubric for evaluating course posters is included. For faculty developers, this book provides a proven and ready-made resource and text around which to design or redesign learner-centered course design workshops or multi-day course design retreats, replicating or modifying the renowned workshop that the authors have developed at the Air Force Academy for both faculty new to teaching and those with many years of teaching experience under their belt.

This volume provides a critical assessment of the mainstream western childhood constructions and their impact to the developing world. Using African feminist and indigenous epistemological frameworks, the volume decolonizes the understanding of childhood, children, and youth. Specifically, the volume presents Global South contestations to mainstream western constructions by exploring alternative notions to standardized universal understanding of childhood. The author further deliberates childhood as a human right, exploring how armed violence hinders realization of such rights assessing humanitarian assistance during armed violence. Besides childhood, the volume explores the complex intersectional nature of youthhood and its cultural relevance to formerly displaced communities and how this manifests in access to and use of humanitarian assistance.

This book explores the development of practical wisdom, or phronesis, within the stories of four mature students studying for degrees in art and design. Through an analysis informed by the ideas of Basil Bernstein and Aristotle, the authors propose that phronesis - or the ability to deliberate well - should be an intrinsic part of a democratic education. As a number of vocational and academic disciplines require deliberation and the ability to draw on knowledge, character and experience, it is essential that no student feels their experience puts them at a disadvantage. The authors argue that democratic education should allow each participant to feel enhanced, included and able to participate in order to create a constructive and reciprocal dialogue. This work will be of value to students and scholars interested in democratic education, the experiences of non-traditional students, and the sociology of education.

This book is an arresting interdisciplinary publication on Christian education, comprising works by leading scholars, professionals and practitioners from around the globe. It focuses on the integrated approaches to Christian education that are both theoretically sound and practically beneficial, and identifies innovative pedagogical methods and tools that have been field-tested and practice-approved. It discusses topics such as exploring programmes and courses through different lenses; learning challenges and opportunities within organisational management; theology of business; Christian models of teaching in different contexts; job preparedness; developing different interpretive or meaning-making frameworks for working with social justice, people with disability, non-profit community organisations and in developing country contexts. It offers graduate students, teachers, school administrators, organisational leaders, theologians, researchers and education practitioners a fresh and inspiring reimagining of Christian education perspectives and practices and the ramifications of their application to life-long learning.

Winner of the AAACE Cyril O. Houle Award This book constructs a deepening, interdisciplinary understanding of adult learning and imaginatively reframes its transformative aspects. The authors explore the tension at the heart of current understanding of 'transformative' adult learning: that while it can be framed as both easy and imperative, personal transformation is in fact rooted in the context in which we live, our stories and relationships. At its core, transformation is never easy - nor always desirable - and the authors thus draw on interdisciplinary and auto/biographical inquiry to explore what it means to change our presuppositions and frames of meaning that guide our thinking. Using their linguistic, gendered, academic and cultural differences, the authors illuminate how the social, contextual, cultural, cognitive and psychological dimensions of transformation intertwine. In doing so, they emphasise the importance of transformation as a contingent struggle for meaning and recognition, social justice, fraternity, and the pursuit of truth. This engaging book will be of interest to students and scholars of transformative learning and education.

This book represents the first extensive introduction to the emerging construct of Educational Self. The new concept describes a specific dimension of the Self, which is elaborated in the course of a person's school life and is reactivated anytime the person is involved in an educational activity, whether as a student, teacher or parent. The Educational Self (ES) approach was created by the volume editors and is currently being developed at various universities in Europe and Latin America as a way of understanding and operating in educational contexts. The book presents the theoretical framework and the empirical developments of the construct, paving the way for further applications in education. The main locations of the empirical studies are Denmark, Italy, Brazil, Portugal and Colombia, but the research network is steadily expanding to other countries, so that the concept here can be generalized to different cultural contexts. The book addresses a range of contexts and moments in school life. The editors' introduction presents the construct of ES, the opportunities for further theoretical and empirical developments of the concept, and its potential applications in educational practices. In the remainder of the volume, ES is explored for different age groups (from children to adolescents to higher education), different actors (peers, teachers, parents and their interactions), different contexts (formal education, special institutions, school-family relationships) and different phenomena (disruptive behavior, special needs, value orientation, school failure, etc.). All the studies share a qualitative idiographic approach, which is characteristic of the perspective of cultural psychology in which the ES construct was elaborated.

This book examines professional learning and relates it to the acquisition of expertise, and the influence of individuals. Professional learning, as discussed in the book, comprises all kinds of occupational domains because employment and paid work usually follow the achievement principle, i.e. workers are expected to perform efficiently. The book suggests that the perspective of expertise research is an appropriate lens to use for gaining insight in how individuals can be prepared and enabled to autonomously master the requirements of daily working life. Expertise is understood as the capacity to reliably perform on an extraordinary level, and the basic assumption is that experts are best prepared to successfully cope with future challenges at workplaces. The book comprehensively discusses issues of expertise research and explores the nature of a successful individual and an impeded individual. It proposes an integrated model of individual and social components of expertise development, the i-PPP model. The model provides insight in and an understanding of how individuals can be enabled to develop and maintain professional expertise in the context of daily work. Across all paradigms, researchers, policy-makers, employers and trade unionists agree that working conditions undergo permanent change through economic, societal, and technological developments. Recently, the digitalisation of (working) life became a hot topic of scientific and societal discourses. Workplaces, thus, provide challenges for individuals who have to be able to cope with workplace changes. Accordingly, new challenges emerge for an adequate understanding of learning for work as well as learning during work.

The breakneck speed of change in today's societies creates enormous challenges for educational institutions at all levels. This volume explores ways how to manage change in educational processes and contexts, focusing, in particular, on the concepts of transition and transformation. How do we educate a skilled workforce, sensitive professionals and responsive citizens who are able not only to cope with change but also to adopt required roles as agents of change? How do we prepare students and employees to cope adequately with changes and transitions in their careers and personal lives?

The first of this book's three sections deals with the conceptual and theoretical aspects of transition, transformational processes and human development. It defines these concepts and examines the ways in which educational theory and praxis understand concepts of change and development. The second section presents empirical studies that offer differing perspectives on educational transitions, covering the lifespan from early years education to lifelong learning. The third part of the volume focuses on issues of learning and pedagogy and argues that educational practices should change with the changing world. With numerous concrete examples included in the analysis, and with studies taking a range of forms from personal histories to large-scale surveys, this new book is a major addition to the literature in a field that has key implications for our future.

The first of this book's three sections deals with the conceptual and theoretical aspects of transition, transformational processes and human development. It defines these concepts and examines the ways in which educational theory and praxis understand concepts of change and development. The second section presents empirical studies that offer differing perspectives on educational transitions, covering the lifespan from early years education to lifelong learning. The third part of the volume focuses on issues of learning and pedagogy and argues that educational practices should change with the changing world. With numerous concrete examples included in the analysis, and with studies taking a range of forms from personal histories to large-scale surveys, this new book is a major addition to the literature in a field that has key implications for our future."

This volume focuses on resilience in educational contexts which has emerged as an important field of research, with recent investigation into resilience of school students teachers, and post-secondary students and staff. The book integrates theoretically diverse viewpoints and research advancing relevant theory. It furthermore presents interventions which aim enhancing resilience in the educational context. The interplay between more basic research and actual practice in the classroom, university or workplace enriches relevant theory and research. Each chapter includes an explanation of how resilience is conceptualized in the research and the methods used to examine resilience. The chapters also provide a description of the context in which the research was conducted and how particular aspects of context influence the resilience process. Innovative approaches to exploring resilience are highlighted as well as directions for future research.

Based on an ethnographic study involving three families who live on a Midlands council housing estate, this book presents portraits of everyday lives - and the literacy practices that are part of them - as a way to explore the complex relationship between literacy and social justice. Each portrait focuses on a different aspect of literacy in everyday life: drawing on perspectives offered by the long and diverse tradition of literacy studies, each is followed by discussion of a different way of looking at literacy and what this means for social justice. The lens of literacy allows us to see the challenges faced by many families and communities as a result of social policy, and how a narrow view of literacy is often implicated within these challenges. It also illustrates the ways in which literacy practices are powerful resources in the creative and collaborative navigation of everyday lives. Arguing for the importance of looking carefully at everyday literacy in order to understand the intertwining factors that threaten justice, this book positions literary research and education as central to the struggle for wider social change. It will be of interest and value to researchers, educators and students of literacy for social justice.

This book promotes the idea that professionalism among teachers should be marked by democratic relations, rather than by managerialism and performance management. It provides a thorough investigation of issues around the participation of trainee teachers in the Lifelong Learning Sector, by reflecting on their experiences and questioning how well initial teacher education prepares teachers as professional practitioners in the sector. The reflexive nature of the book promotes a deep discussion of the nature of professionalism, drawing upon the works of John Dewey, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, and places initial teacher education in the Lifelong Learning Sector firmly within the policy and ideological context of regulation, audit and control. It also illuminates pertinent discussions around teacher agency through a consideration of confidence, excellence, and routinised practices. Finally, the book takes us 'through the looking glass' to reveal the tensions within the teacher education curriculum as it prepares trainee teachers for a ready-made world, whilst at the same time attempting to encourage principles of social justice, inclusive practice and education as a democratic endeavour. It will be compelling reading for students and researchers working in Education and Sociology, particularly those with an interest in lifelong learning and teacher training.

The premise that intercultural contact produces intercultural competence underpins much rationalization of backpacker tourism and in-country language education. However, if insufficiently problematized, pre-existing constructions of cultural 'otherness' may hinder intercultural competence development. This is nowhere truer than in contexts in which wide disparities of power, wealth, and privilege exist, and where such positionings may go unproblematized. This study contributes to theoretical understandings of how intercultural competence develops through intercultural contact situations through a detailed, multiple case study of three conceptually comparable contexts in which Western backpackers study Spanish in Latin America. This experience, often 'bundled' with home-stay, volunteer work, social, and tourist experiences, offers a rich set of empirical data within which to understand the nature of intercultural competence and the processes through which it may be developed. Models of a single, context-free, transferable intercultural competence are rejected. Instead, suggestions are made as to how educators might help prepare intercultural sojourners by scaffolding their intercultural reflections and problematizing their own intersectional identities and their assumptions. The study is a critical ethnography with elements of autoethnographic reflection. The book therefore also contributes to development of this qualitative research methodology and provides an empirical example of its application.