Njala University, as one of the leading higher education institutions in Sierra Leone, stands at the forefront of fostering innovation and entrepreneurship within its academic framework. This paper explores how Njala University can enhance its role in empowering students through targeted skills development, trade education, and entrepreneurial…

Concerns about the poor outcomes from school-based vocational education, which is heavily concentrated in schools serving disadvantaged communities, has led the State Government of Victoria, Australia, to implement major reforms, including abolishing the Victoria Certificate of Applied Learning. Instead, from 2023, learning in vocational education…

The skilled trades have long been ignored and under-valued in society. This article explores the potential problem with maintaining the status quo and the impacts it will have on future generations. It considers the steps educational institutions and leaders can make in addressing the skilled trades shortage and how changes to the current…

Skilled Technical Sciences (STS) programs prepare students for success through academic integration and technical skill development. This fact sheet from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of College and Career Readiness, Skilled Technical Sciences provides information on these programs.

Community colleges always have played an integral role in training workers for infrastructure- and transportation-related fields like truck driving, construction, welding and electrical work. If the $1 trillion infrastructure package proposed by President Donald Trump comes to pass, these fields will grow significantly, at least for a while, which…

Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College's (MGCCC) long-term commitment to providing workforce training in a post-Katrina environment became a catalyst for designing short-term flexible educational opportunities. Providing nationally recognized skills training for the recovery/rebuilding of communities challenged the college to develop innovative,…

A career education program for visually impaired elementary school children is presented. The rationale and brief descriptions of units in foods, construction, hand tools, entertainment projects, and other careers are included. (Author/PHR)

The objectives of the 4-year Laborers-Associated General Contractors (AGC) Business and Education Standards Project are: (1) generate world-class standards for construction craft occupations; (2) develop and promote a certification program for construction craft laborers (this objective was deleted because of negative reaction); (3) promote the…

A program at Indian Hills Community College (Ottumwa, Iowa) consisted of a sex equity component aimed to prepare women to enter nontraditional occupations and a building trades component to enable electrical workers to upgrade their skills. Both of the targeted groups underwent assessment and upgrading coordinated through the college's SUCCESS…

This document contains summaries of five workshops, each with several speakers, held at a conference on competency-based training (CBT) in Australia. The following are included in Session 1, Developing and Delivering CBT Programs: "Developing and Delivering CBT Programs--Opening Speech" (Steve McDonald); "Competency Standards and…

The Generic Skills studies were designed to provide training specifications that will enable graduates of trades training programs to compete for job placement in a range of occupations rather than in a single occupation. The studies identified a number of trade families, classified on the basis of skills used in work performance, and also…

A two-phase curriculum project was undertaken in Illinois to develop, test, and implement a two-year competency-based model for the education of secondary school building construction teachers in the area of residential structures. During the first contract period, skill and knowledge competencies were identified and validated for thirteen units…

The Learning Enrichment Foundation (LEF) in Toronto, Ontario (Canada) offers 12 targeted training programs that have successfully helped "hard-to-serve" clients return to the workforce. Compared with traditional training, targeted training has a much narrower focus and adapts quickly to industry trends to meet employers' changing…