Credentialling competency based education and training: a review of the literature

This paper summarises the results of a literature review conducted in late 1993 on issues related to the credentialling of competency based education and training. The credentialling review focused on seven major issues: describing the minimum requirments for a qualification; distinguishing different qualification levels; issuing statements and qualifications gained by the recognition of prior learning; using short courses to build a qualification; recording the results of competency based assessments; responsibility for keeping the records of individual achievement; and, whether the exact competencies held should be recorded on a qualification. The recent (1993) move by the National Training Board to abandon any general criteria for the determination of qualification levels and to rely solely on the advice of the relevant Competency Standards Body when determining the level of a qualification emerges as a significant development in Australian credentialling. This abandonment of general criteria,which mirrors a development in theUK system, may yet undermine the goal of achieving a more rational qualifications system in Australia. It was clear from the review that the issues and trends in the accreditation of competency based education and training in Australia, and the problems encountered, have broad parallels in the UK experience. It was also clear that much of the story is yet to unravel, and that many issues remain unresolved.     

Vocational Learning Outside Institutions: Online pedagogy and deschooling

This analysis of current developments in online learning for vocational education and training uses Ivan Illich's book Deschooling Society as a frame. Illich argued that formal educational institutions are flawed; that a mix of compulsion, indoctrination, certification and education creates an authoritarian atmosphere. Key benefits of online learning include its flexibility and its capacity to support dialogue between learners. On the basis of the capabilities of online technologies, and current developments in education, the authors predict that vocational learning will be profoundly changed. Inevitably, these developments will also challenge established colleges and universities, including their current dominance in major areas of vocational education and training. Education will probably become more pluralistic and more international. This paper calls for an inclusive approach?which makes the elements of an online course available to informal learners and free to people who cannot afford course fees.     

Mentoring and Professional Development in Rural Head Start Classrooms

The objective of this project was to develop and pilot a small-scale professional development program that incorporated substantial group and one-on-one mentoring aimed at preparing rurally based preschool teacher assistants to earn the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential. Using a framework that emphasized the relational, developmental, and contextual elements of mentoring, this qualitative case study examined both the participants’ and mentors’ perceptions of the program. Results of this study revealed overlapping themes across teacher assistants and their mentors, including readiness for the CDA credentialing process, mentoring support/relationship-building, and mutual respect.     

Participatory action research as pedagogy: investigating social and ecological justice learning within a teacher education program

A research collective comprised of teacher candidates, graduate students, and faculty set out to investigate the role and impact of social and ecological justice learning in a teacher education program. Amidst the tensions, negotiations, and articulations of the research design, the collective came to recognize the spaces of participatory action research as sites of growth and efficacy toward justice learning. And, each began to perceive themselves as both impacted by educational structures and as agents enacting their own visions of professional practice. These outcomes are discussed in the context of the growing body of participatory action research, emphasizing the dynamic learning precipitated within the intersections of the research collective. The empirical analysis, involving survey and interview data, brought to bear the rarity of events participants (teacher candidates) recognized as invoking meaningful social and ecological justice learning, and goes some way to describe such learning in terms of embodied experience. The paper closes with a selection of testimonials provided by members of the research collective, offering personal accounts of what was gained through participating in the research process.     

Greater São Paulo newer library automation

As a follow up to a 1981 on-site sabbatical study, automated projects or activities in academic, public and special libraries or information centers in the Greater Sao Paulo area that developed from 1981 to the end of 1987 are described. Among the 27 Greater Sao Paulo libraries and/or information centers that were surveyed, the Division of Information and Systems of the Institute of Technological Research of Sao Paulo State, the Division of Library, Documentation and Information of São Bernardo do Campo, the Regional Library of Medicine, and the System of Libraries of the University of São Paulo were among those answering the survey questionnaire which indicated having made further advancements in the aspects of functions, processes and/or routines in areas of librarianship. The Library of the Company of Data Processing of the State of Sao Paulo and the Sao Paulo School of Business Administration of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation reported automation in several of their library functions. The Library of the Institute of Energy and Nuclear Research, a library almost fully automated by the end of the 1970s, reported even newer automated efforts.     

Depressive Symptoms in Third‐Grade Teachers: Relations to Classroom Quality and Student Achievement

This study investigated associations among third‐grade teachers' (N = 27) symptoms of depression, quality of the classroom‐learning environment (CLE), and students' (N = 523, M_age = 8.6 years) math and literacy performance. teachers' depressive symptoms in the winter negatively predicted students' spring mathematics achievement. This depended on students' fall mathematics scores; students who began the year with weaker math skills and were in classrooms where teachers reported more depressive symptoms achieved smaller gains than did peers whose teachers reported fewer symptoms. teachers' depressive symptoms were negatively associated with quality of CLE, and quality of CLE mediated the association between depressive symptoms and student achievement. The findings point to the importance of teachers' mental health, with implications for policy and practice.     

The Impact of Gender on Types of Verbal Interactions in Corporate Training Sessions

This study describes verbal interactions in 13 selected training sessions across the United States using the INTERSECT instrument. More than two‐thirds of the interactions were found to be acceptance, the mere acknowledgment of a response by the instructor, with remediation accounting for about 21%, and praise, 11%. Criticism occurred only 4 times, or 18%. Male trainers provided more acceptance responses than female trainers at a statistically significant level. There were no differences in verbal classroom interactions based on gender equity during instruction.