Work-based postcompulsory education has been hindered by association with discredited youth training programs. Interviews with 381 British apprentices (55.7% response) show how this form of work-based education overcomes disadvantages of full-time education, has liberating potential, and is an attractive means of acquiring further education and…

Discusses the search of many postsecondary educational institutions to find acceptable ways to grant credit for out-of-school learning. Describes sources of potential credit, assessment approaches, and structuring of the credit granting process. (JH)

School-to-work transition for non-college-bound youth can best be accomplished through an apprenticeship model that blends vocational and academic education in high school, gives students meaningful work experiences, and continues job training after graduation. (SK)

The author, a 40-year-old quadriplegic, discusses his positive experiences as a cooperative education student in the field of writing. (CH)

Tech prep is a series of courses and work experiences that prepare students for postsecondary education or work; often, two years of secondary and two years of postsecondary education are involved. Existing programs show increases in achievement, lower dropout rates, and higher enrollment in community colleges. (SK)

The unemployment rate for Native Americans is 49% nationwide and 54% in Arizona. The Job Training Partnership Act (JPTA) program at the Phoenix Indian Center trains Native American adults to enter the urban work force. The Center offers work orientation programs, individual counseling, and work experience programs. The majority of the participants…

Sources of financial support for 16-18-year-olds in the United Kingdom are summarized. The underlying assumptions of such programs are analyzed and a schematic list of alternative models of financial support is provided, categorized by party-political attitudes, including cost estimates. (Author/JMF)

The definition of work has undergone a massive transition within the last decade, and this trend has major implications for vocational education. Earlier ideas of work included that it was full-time, permanent, and for life; in addition, work provided opportunities for career development, a clearly-defined employer-worker relationship, and clear…

Cost effectiveness of on-the-job training (OJT) can be determined by measures of effectiveness and by cost assessing the relationship between output and input. Defining effectiveness to be a measure of what an activity produces leaves two main groups of problems unresolved: hierarchies of effectiveness and multiple outcomes. The most significant…

The Core Skills Project has developed in the "core skills" an instrument that can be used in the analysis of occupational competence. Any development of accreditation of work-based learning entails assessment of learning in the workplace. The success of such assessment depends on identifying the outcomes of experience in terms of…

Traditionally, the road to good jobs for young persons in West Germany has been the "dual system" of vocational education and training (VET), similar to apprenticeships in the United States, but practiced on a much wider scale. A large percentage of West German youth usually enter such programs after high school in order to prepare for…

Curricular domains relevant to work experience programs are motivation, sequencing, and goals. A case study of a project of institutional collaboration on peer counseling for work experience students (forming a consortium between a city school board of education and a community college) was made through data generated from the Youthwork National…

An alliance between apprenticeship and vocational education could accomplish more than either system could achieve on its own. An understanding of the system is important prior to working effectively with apprenticeship programs. They are sponsored by single employers or groups of employers acting singly or jointly with a union. Union interest…

This paper reports on the effectiveness of Australian schools in preparing young people for the workplace with particular emphasis on literacy and numeracy. Section 1 summarizes the contents. Section 2 notes current interest in assessing school effectiveness. The issue of standards of literacy and numeracy is then considered. Reference is made to…

A series of articles examines aspects of supervised occupational experience programs (SOEP) in agricultural mechanics, including production agriculture, horticulture, technical institute programs, mechanized agriculture, safety education, point guide system for developing competencies, and teacher education's responsibility. (SK)