Collaborations between business and academia provide valuable opportunities for students to connect classroom learning with practical work experience. To effectively reach a significant number of students, one approach is to meld a real-world business project and classroom assignment into a realistic business scenario that can be addressed by…

While some groups of young people may negotiate successful transitions to work, others are unable or unlikely to do so. The concept of "fair exchange" is pertinent to understanding youth transitions in their formative stages through educational experiences. Patterns of disrupted education challenge the education-work nexus not only…

Recognizing that lasting change is possible when organizations form a partnership, public policy increasingly drives active sharing of resources and mutual commitment to accountability and heightened productivity. Legislation that emphasizes aligning and improving the educational system; supporting the transition from high school to college and…

Dominant conceptions of the world infuse educational experiences for young people in implicit rather than explicit ways--through becoming, as Stuart Hall argues, "the horizon of the taken-for-granted". In this article we explore these horizons as experienced by New Zealand's neo-liberal generation, currently "in transition"…

This study frames the quality transition of Romanian business education embracing the role of students as clients and customers. In the first part of the study, responses from ninety-four fourth-year Romanian students provided a statistically significant gap between the level of importance of business competences and their level of preparation.…

To give states the information they need to sustain hard-fought education reform effectively, Achieve conducted research on state education reforms that have been sustained successfully for over a decade or more. Funded by the GE Foundation, Achieve hopes this work will help other state leaders, wherever they may be on their road to reform,…

Findings from an evaluation of a workplace literacy program funded by the State of Indiana are presented. Working with employers, providers were given considerable latitude to design their own training regimens. The state awarded certificates to workers who achieved certain levels of proficiency in reading, math, critical thinking, problem solving…

This booklet looks at a specific part of the diversity of students in school-to-work (STW) programs--gender in a multicultural context--to help educators, private industry, parents, and policy makers incorporate equity into their STW programs. After a brief overview of STW, the booklet outlines the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, explains the…

Video Job Shadows encourages students to develop questions about a job and offers them the chance to videotape a business person answering those questions about his or her job. The program can be an effective method of teaching high school students about the world of work and the specific requirements and responsibilities of some jobs in their…

External inefficiency in education--inequity between the characteristics of graduates and the job market--is a problem in Indonesia and many other countries. Job markets at the junior secondary level are very tight in Indonesia with low levels of unemployment at all ages, short job-search times, and high real rates of return. Unemployment,…

This annotated bibliography describes in brief approximately 60 resources on transition of individuals with disabilities. It is organized into five sections: (1) transitions in the early childhood years; (2) transitions in the public school years; (3) transitions after school; (4) transitions across the lifespan, and (5) general support resources.…

Companies have high expectations of the 440 colleges of further education, which will be the largest source of the skilled middle-range staff on whom industrial efficiency and innovation depend. Colleges look to employers to play four distinct roles--as customers, as places of learning, as advisors, and as joint planners in the regional or local…

This report contains 17 profiles that illustrate the successful strategies, environments, and activities taking place within the School to Work/Vocational Technical Education arena in Arizona. (Currently, there are 130,908 students in 251 schools in the state participating in these programs.) The profiles include many types of activities, from a…

A forum focused on ways to implement the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, which requires work-based learning, school-based learning, and activities which connect the two. Participants described the act as follows: (1) a great step forward and based upon enduring principles, (2) a collaborative career education system supported by…

This report describes the third year of Wisconsin's Integrated and Applied Curricula project. The mission was to provide information, technical assistance, and a summer conference to help expand team members' competencies in developing integrated and applied curricula, training of high school and technical college educators. The cadre of teachers…