Over the last decades educational researchers and politicians have shown a growing interest in the concept of learning in practice, i.e. learning in the workplace. Learning in practice plays an important role in connection with lifelong learning, as the workplace is an obvious setting for realizing this aim. Theories about learning in practice…

A Nation at Risk (NAR; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) had a tremendous impact on what schools do and has since spawned other reforms that attest to the report's ongoing influence. Coming in the wake of a decade of economic stagnation and import pressures from overseas producers, the authors of NAR blamed these problems on…

This paper argues that Christopher Winch's contribution to the debate on the aims of education contains some significant errors and omissions. His definition of work is problematic and leads to the conclusion that education should be directed towards very narrow vocational targets. His argument makes unstated and contestable assumptions about the…

The central theme of the paper is the question of whether graduates of business administration (BA) are better prepared for supervisory positions than non-BA economics graduates and consequently have a greater chance of acquiring supervisory positions and, when they have such positions, earn more. In order to answer this question, we use a…

On Groundhog Day, more than one million young people will have an opportunity to explore their possible future careers, according to the Job Shadow Coalition. However, with its components of career exploration, school-to-career training and cooperative learning experiences, career and technical education programs may include job shadowing for…

Understanding the dynamics of school-to-work transition processes is of major interest for individuals involved in these processes, for guidance and counselling institutions, and for education policy. This knowledge is particularly important in order to assess the relevance of education inequality correction policies implemented in most countries…

In this paper we test the hypothesis advanced by Weiss ("J. Economic Perspectives" 9(4)(1995)133) that under sorting models the return to schooling across identical twins would decline over time compared to the return for the population as a whole. The analyses undertaken on a relatively large sample of Australian twins are consistent…

We use cohort data from 11 European countries to study whether experience-earnings profiles differ by educational attainment. We find evidence that employees with tertiary education have steeper experience-earnings profiles than employees with upper secondary or lower education. Hence, education provides not only an initial labor market advantage…

The current emphasis that organisations are placing upon knowledge and the corresponding attention that workplace epistemological values are receiving within the educational community has resulted in an interesting convergence of discourses--school-based and work-based. Even as workplaces are tending toward abstraction over practice-based knowing,…

The aim of this article is to examine the interplay between learning in school and learning in the workplace--and its problems. Historically, education and work have become separated and each developed its own rationale--a school rationale and a production rationale, both of which may form the foundation for interplay. Concurrently with this, the…

High school students in North America, namely, the United States and Canada, encounter the challenge of the school-to-school and school-to-work transition, and they need considerable help for career guidance and counselling. Yet, the guidance and counselling resources of the school system are often stretched to their limits. This article proposes…

Liu Li, a graduate of the food engineering program at Beijing Agricultural College, has been out in the world for four years, principally seeking what was on the market, continually readjusting her job goals, and increasing her knowledge through study in order to have the essential skills that the market wants. This article describes her personal…

This issue of "The Progress of Education Reform" will address the following three questions: (1) What are the challenges that developmental education programs face that affect their success? (2) Are developmental education programs an effective strategy for increasing college attainment rates? and (3) How can state policy improve the…

Reports consistently demonstrate that the attainment of a high school diploma is not simply of value to the individual student, but that the benefit of a high school diploma is reaped by the graduate's community as well. Most educators readily acknowledge the importance of dropout prevention and the significance of a high school diploma. A…

Many countries mandate affirmative action in university admissions for traditionally disadvantaged groups. Little is known about either the efficacy or costs of these programs. This paper examines affirmative action in engineering colleges in India for "lower-caste" groups. We find that it successfully targets the financially…