Employability credentials: A key to successful youth transition to work

Conclusion Employers place considerable emphasis on credentials. The assumption that a high school diploma can be used to screen for competencies is problematic. First, it leaves much of the translation of what a high school diploma means, in terms of skills, knowledge, and attitudes, with the employer. Second, it fails to differentiate among youth because the diploma does little more than signify that high school has been completed. Finally it places young people without diplomas (dropouts) at a great disadvantage.Although a high school diploma may demonstrate a certain level of maturity, motivation, perseverance, and some specific academic skills, it does not provide an adequate picture of the employability or marketable skills, knowledge, and competencies that an individual possesses. In order for youth to make successful transitions to work they need more than their high school diplomas. They need an employability credential that identifies and documents the array of their developmental experiences and translates these into component competencies—a credential that employers will respect and youth will value. A credential that is more than a document. One that represents a process that helps youth understand themselves and their marketability and provides them with a sense of self-worth and future direction.Ivan Charner is the Director of Research and Development at the National Institute for Work and Learning, Washington, D.C.     

Models of the vocational counsellor's work performance: A polish perspective

In the article I describe five models of vocationalcounsellor's work performance or role: (a) an expert,(b) an informant, (c) a consultant, (d) a reliableguardian, and (e) a laissez-faireist. Moreover, Iplace these models along a continuum of counsellingthat is based on the Polish counselling literature. An expert guides the counselee by providing him or herwith ready-made solutions, diagnosing the counselee'sattributes, and matching them with the most``appropriate' vocation. An informant deals mainlywith information about the possibilities of employmentand recommends vocations, which are ``the best' for thecounselee. A consultant treats a counselee as apartner, shows new aspects of activity, and givesinspiration to establish new aims. A reliableguardian treats a counselee as needing strength,suggests new solutions, provides support in makingdecisions, does not impose his or her own opinionunless asked, and does not resign from giving advice. A laissez-faireist accompanies counselee in theprocess of vocational choice, stimulates theacquisition of self-knowledge, and sheds light on theproblem, avoids giving advice.     

Institutions influencing mathematics students' private work: A factor of academic achievement

The aim of the research presented in this paper is to contribute to our knowledge about problem solving in mathematics. My purpose in this paper is to compare, from this point of view, two very different institutions in the French tertiary education system, with the intention to interpret the chronic inequality of performance in problem solving between populations of mathematics students coming from these institutions. Problem solving knowledge and skills are not an explicit objective of teaching and their development depends largely on the student's private mathematical activity. This hypothesis is the reason why the inquiry aims at comparing mathematics students' ways of working as they study in both institutions. The results of the research are interpreted, on the institutional level, as effects of differences between the two teaching systems. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Relation between work stress and job performance in nursing: A comparison of models

Multilevel covariance structure analysis was used to compare two theoretical models that have been proposed to explain the relation between job demand and job control on nursing performance. A key feature of both models is that high job demand and low job control influences the nurses mood state (or state of stress), and this results in reduced nursing performance. Objective measures of job demand and level of control were collected at the level of the hospital ward; measures of perceived job demand, job control, mood state, and nursing performance related to individual nurses within each ward. The modeling provided evidence that both perceived job demand and perceived job control influenced both anxiety and emotional exhaustion, enabling us to reject 1 of the proposed models.     

The key to organizational performance improvement: A perspective of organizational knowledge creation

The primary purpose of this research is to explore the impacts of knowledge creation practices on organizational performance improvement. Research has been empirically assessed on the basis of the collected data from three Korean private organizations. The concept of knowledge creation theory was adapted as the theoretical framework of this research (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Structural equation modeling has been used in order to assess the fit of the hypothesized model with the collected data. The result of the confirmatory factor analysis suggests that the hypothesized measurement model is a reliable and valid construct in the Korean context; multiple regression analysis reveals that knowledge creation practices have a positive and strong influence on performance improvement. Conclusions, limitations, and implications for human resource development are discussed.     

跨文化交际的关键因素——生理音

生理音在语言学上属于副语言的范畴,是日常交际中很常见的一种功能性的发声,它指的是人的非语言发声,例如人们表达情感情绪的笑声、哭声、叹气声、尖叫声等,还有纯粹因生理需要发出的声音如打嗝声、打喷嚏声、打哈欠声、咳嗽声、咀嚼声等等,本文基于中西方对于生活中常见的生理音现象的反应及生理音的控制在文化层面上与传统概念下的中西方文化差异之间的矛盾揭示以生理音的控制为变量的中西差别与传统概念下的中西方文化差异之间存在的矛盾及该矛盾的深层次的原因。     

Designing for communication at work: A case for technology-enhanced boundary objects

In this article we conceptualise the challenges of communication between a mortgage company and its customers in terms of crossing boundaries between communities. Through an ethnographic study we first address the question: what are the challenges of communication between sales agents and customers of a mortgage company around mathematical artefacts? Insight into these challenges formed the basis for an intervention in which we designed technology-enhanced boundary objects (TEBOs) that were reconfigurations of problematic symbolic artefacts. Secondly, we ask what the sales agents learned from the intervention. The data suggest that the intervention with the TEBOs helped employees to develop a better understanding of the mathematics behind the mortgages they sold, and to improve communication with their customers.     

Transformations at work: identity and learning

This paper examines how identity and learning are constituted and transformed at work. Its central concern is how individuals engage agentically in and learn through workplace practices, and in ways that transform work. Drawing upon recent research into work and participation in workplaces, the negotiated and contested relationship between workplace practices and individuals' identity and intentionality, and learning is illuminated and discussed. For instance, aged care workers and coal miners acquire work injuries that are almost emblematic of their work identity. Only particularly dramatic events (i.e. serious illness or workplace accidents) wholly transform their identity and views about work practice—their subjectivities. However, it is through the agentic actions of these individuals that workplace practices can be transformed. Yet individuals' agentic action is not necessarily directed to the abstracted and de‐contextualized economic and civic goals privileged in lifelong learning policies. Instead, there is relational interdependency between the individual and work that can act to sustain or transform both self and their work. Individuals' agentic action is exercised within these relations in ways directed by their subjectivities. So these relations and that agentic action have policy and practice implications for the conduct of work and learning through and for work.     

A tentative return to experience in researching learning at work

This paper explores possibilities for more democratic approaches to researching learning in and through everyday workplace practices. This links with a concern with who is able to speak in representations of learning at work, what is able to be spoken about and how knowing, learning and experience are inscribed in theories of workplace learning. I propose that Rancière’s notion of ‘the distribution of the sensible’, which draws attention to an aesthetic dimension of experience, knowledge and politics, provides a useful way of exploring learning in and through everyday workplace practices. The approach points to the possibility of knowledge without hierarchies and a shift from a knowledge – ignorance binary. An understanding of experience as aesthetic enables accounts of learning which counter the story of destiny in literature on learning in and through everyday practice. It also points to a very different way of doing academic research. The presupposition of equality is the point of departure in this approach and the purpose of research is the verification of equality (rather than the verification of oppression). The paper makes a significant contribution to literature on learning in and through everyday workplace practices by disrupting a prevailing view that knowledge is necessarily tied to identity.     

Faculty at work: Focus on teaching

Within the framework of cognitive motivation theory, selected personal and environmental motivational variables for faculty in English, chemistry, and psychology from community colleges, comprehensive colleges and universities, and research universities were regressed against faculty allocation of work effort given to teaching. The data came from a 1988 national survey. Gender (sociodemographic); quality of graduate school attended, career age, and rank (career); self-competence, self-efficacy, institutional commitment, personal interest in teaching, and percent time preferred to give to teaching (self-valuations); and institutional preference, consensus and support, and colleague commitment to teaching (perception of the environment) were entered into regressions.R ² were generally strong (.86 for community college chemists) and significant. For all institutional types, self-valuation and perception of the environment motivators significantly accounted for the explained variance whereas sociodemographic and career variables did not.     

Children at work: The home workplace

Young children's early experiences with the adult work world have generally been ignored by researchers. Consequently, little research base exists for understanding children's conceptions of the adult work world. This study, part of a larger investigation of families who work at home for income rather than in separate workplaces, focuses on children's experiences with work in such families. Twenty-seven children ages 7 months to 18 years were observed or interviewed in the family work setting. Findings indicate that all the verbal children held concrete knowledge of their parents' work, as was evidenced by their ability to label jobs, describe procedures, and name tools. Furthermore, all the children were involved with their parents' work in a developmental progression: (1) playing and watching, (2) simple tasks, (3) regular assistance, paid or unpaid, (4) regular paid work. Their experiences suggest that home-working parents play a powerful role in their children's work socialization.