Vocational Education And The Future Of Workers Old And Young

Which non-American education systems best prepare young people for fulfilling jobs and successful adult lives? And what can the United States—where far too many young people currently enter adulthood without adequate preparation for the twenty-first-century job market—learn, adopt, and adapt from these other systems? In Schooling in the Workplace, Nancy Hoffman addresses these questions head on, arguing that “the smartest and quickest route to a wide variety of occupations for the majority of young people in the successful countries—not a default for failing students—is a vocational program that integrates work and learning.” As she notes, the programs that successfully integrate work and learning all share a fundamental commitment to helping young people find successful careers: “The purpose is not ‘college for all,’ as in the United States today, but rather to provide the education and training young people need to prepare for a career or calling.” Schooling in the Workplace explores the vocational education programs in a wide range of countries, focusing in rich and useful detail on six in particular: Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland. Framing these discussions, however, is a persistent focus on American circumstances and challenges. Far more than a survey of six “foreign” programs, this is a book prompted by and organized around the policy and practical challenges facing the United States.

Across the globe, vocational education and training is characterised by a number of over-arching trends, including the increasing use of technology, the growing importance of information and communications systems, and changes to national demographics. At the interface between the education and training system and the world of work, VET faces the challenge of tackling these changes, of making a constructive contribution to solving the problems posed by the transition from education to employment, and of ensuring that the next generation has the skills it – and the economy – needs. This volume comprises thirty individual contributions that together add up to a comprehensive overview of the current situation in vocational education and training, its strengths and weaknesses, and its prospects. VET experts from Canada, the USA, India, China, Japan and Korea, as well as from a number of European countries, focus on their national context and how it fits in to the bigger picture. The contributions combine theoretical discussions from various strands of VET research with evidence from country case studies and examples from current practice.

Many students across the globe seek further education for future employment opportunities. Vocational schools offer direct training to develop the skills needed for employment. New emphasis has been placed on reskilling the workforce as technology has infiltrated all aspects of business. Teachers must be prepared to teach these new skill requirements to allow students to directly enter the workforce with the necessary competences intact. As the labor market and industry are changing, it is essential to stay current with the best teaching practices within vocational education courses to provide the future workforce with the proper tools and knowledge. The Research Anthology on Vocational Education and Preparing Future Workers discusses the development, opportunities, and challenges of vocational education courses and how to best prepare students for future employment. It presents the best practices in curriculum development for vocational education courses and analyzes student outcomes. Covering topics such as industry-academia collaboration, student satisfaction, and competency-based education, this major reference work is an essential resource for academic administration, pre-service teachers, educators of vocational education, libraries, employers, government officials, researchers, and academicians.

This report considers developments in vocational education and training policy in Europe since the first Cedefop report (ISBN 9282880516), published in January 2000. Issues discussed include: the growth of the knowledge economy, ICT and lifelong learning programmes, moves towards greater European co-operation with the Bruges-Copenhagen process, the impact of EU enlargement, increasing participation levels in the sector, equal opportunities and social inclusion, reducing the skills gap, and future challenges involved in learning for employment.

Featuring a new preface for the 10th anniversary As did the national bestseller Nickel and Dimed, Mike Rose’s revelatory book demolishes the long-held notion that people who work with their hands make up a less intelligent class. He shows us waitresses making lightning-fast calculations, carpenters handling complex spatial mathematics, and hairdressers, plumbers, and electricians with their aesthetic and diagnostic acumen. Rose, an educator who is himself the son of a waitress, explores the intellectual repertory of everyday workers and the terrible social cost of undervaluing the work they do. Deftly combining research, interviews, and personal history, this is one of those rare books that has the capacity both to shape public policy and to illuminate general readers.

One of the committees of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) examined the vocational education and training policies of its member countries. The committee identified a number of significant policy directions that are emerging in OECD countries. Among these are an enhanced political commitment to providing vocational training, a strengthening of the economic and social roles of vocational education, and a raising of the quality of vocational education, training and skills of the labor force. Analysis of the vocational education and training policies of individual OECD-member countries reveals particular emphasis on the contributions vocational education can bring to innovation, to technology, to the supply of labor, and to productivity and economic development. In addition, many OECD-member countries are in the process of reforming their mechanisms for financing initial and further skills training. If these reforms are to succeed, the following key issues must be addressed: the share of costs among firms, and between the state and firms; the costs of combined work and training; and the development of financing arrangements that are flexible enough to respond to changes in work content and in the labor force. (MN)

Young adulthood - ages approximately 18 to 26 - is a critical period of development with long-lasting implications for a person's economic security, health and well-being. Young adults are key contributors to the nation's workforce and military services and, since many are parents, to the healthy development of the next generation. Although 'millennials' have received attention in the popular media in recent years, young adults are too rarely treated as a distinct population in policy, programs, and research. Instead, they are often grouped with adolescents or, more often, with all adults. Currently, the nation is experiencing economic restructuring, widening inequality, a rapidly rising ratio of older adults, and an increasingly diverse population. The possible transformative effects of these features make focus on young adults especially important. A systematic approach to understanding and responding to the unique circumstances and needs of today's young adults can help to pave the way to a more productive and equitable tomorrow for young adults in particular and our society at large. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults describes what is meant by the term young adulthood, who young adults are, what they are doing, and what they need. This study recommends actions that nonprofit programs and federal, state, and local agencies can take to help young adults make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. According to this report, young adults should be considered as a separate group from adolescents and older adults. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults makes the case that increased efforts to improve high school and college graduate rates and education and workforce development systems that are more closely tied to high-demand economic sectors will help this age group achieve greater opportunity and success. The report also discusses the health status of young adults and makes recommendations to develop evidence-based practices for young adults for medical and behavioral health, including preventions. What happens during the young adult years has profound implications for the rest of the life course, and the stability and progress of society at large depends on how any cohort of young adults fares as a whole. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults will provide a roadmap to improving outcomes for this age group as they transition from adolescence to adulthood.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, American reformers saw vocational education as a promising way to cure many of the nation's economic and social ills. But the ensuing educational reforms had disappointingly little effect on the problems they were supposed to solve. Today we are still distressed by the extent of unemployment among young people, especially blacks and other minorities, and our doubts about the effectiveness of schools in preparing young people for work have never been greater. Did vocational education go wrong? Or were the problems so deep-rooted that the schools could not solve them? These are the questions these nine essays address. They consider such topics as the changing economic and political context of vocational education, the role of federal legislation, the various ideas of early vocationalists, the growth of the idea of school as the primary route to employment, the theoretical relationship between schooling and work, the special problems of vocational education for blacks and women, and the directions that future research must take.