This document contains five papers. "Vocational Teacher Education in U.S. Colleges and Universities and Its Responsiveness to the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act of 1990" (Richard L. Lynch) documents the trend toward decreasing enrollments in teacher training programs in virtually all vocational fields.…

The Virginia 1999-2000 Learning Disabilities Training and Dissemination (LDTD) project was undertaken to improve educational services to adults with learning disabilities. During the project, learners and tutors from six community-based literacy programs across Virginia volunteered to share their experiences as they participated in pilot testing…

The relationship between learning and continuity and change in adult life was explored in a study involving 140 in-depth biographical interviews of adult learners in 3 different areas of England and case studies of 6 adult learners. The study methodology was based on a triangular conceptualization according to which personal identity, human…

Participation in adult learning in the United Kingdom in 1996-2001 was analyzed by reviewing practitioners' views, the findings of national surveys conducted by the National Institute for Adult Continuing Education, and the findings from other surveys and research conducted over the past decade. The key conclusions analysis established that the…

A study examined whether Australia's technical and further education (TAFE) institutes are currently learning organizations or on the road to becoming learning organizations. Data were collected through a literature review and a questionnaire administered to staff at two dual-sector universities, two metropolitan TAFE institutes, and two…

This book examines the identity and schooling of working class women through the stories of 15 women from a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood and 15 women from southern rural communities who eventually moved to neighborhoods near Duke University in North Carolina. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the book and the study on which it is based.…

A study examined psychological and contextual influences on the courses of Australian women's lives and careers. Data were obtained from two sources: (1) the Career Development Project (CDP), a longitudinal study of 3,000 Australian men and women who were selected from an initial sample of 17-year-olds in 1973 and whose educational and career…

The questions of whether and how to make vocational education and training (VET) available to Australian adults studying for the Victoria Certificate of Education (VCE) were examined through a review of 14 pertinent documents and questionnaires sent to the following groups: adult VCE teachers, coordinators, and administrators; current adult VCE…

The Academic Bilingual and Career Upgrading System (Project ABACUS) was a federally-funded program in its fourth year at two Brooklyn and one Queens (New York) high schools. The program served 475 limited-English-speaking students who were native speakers of Chinese, Korean, and Spanish. Students received instruction in English as a second…

This set of five digests provides an overview of the issue of attaining excellence in vocational education. The first digest deals with effective schools research, characteristics of effective schools, implications of effective schools research for high school vocational education, and strategies for improving school effectiveness. Covered in the…

Teachers, especially home economics teachers, would be better prepared to evaluate subject matter and to separate fact and personal opinion if they had a better understanding of diverse student backgrounds. To find out such background information, a study was conducted to analyze attitudes and values held by junior and senior students in home…

The history of the United States is one of the contradictory traditions of human rights and intolerance. Although human rights, diversity, and dissidence are inherent concepts in our constitution and in the Supreme Court system, this tendency has been invariably accompanied by intolerant uses of power. The Salem witchcraft trials, the Alien and…

Korea's labor market was analyzed to inform efforts to develop a scheme to improve the utilization of vocational qualifications. The study examined the different meanings of qualifications in South Korea's labor market and how utilization of qualifications is influenced by factors such as types of human resource management, vocational training…

Learners' views on their progress and achievement in literacy and numeracy were examined in a study during which practitioners from eight further education colleges in England interviewed 70 adults (ages 16 to over 60 years) enrolled in literacy, numeracy, or English-for-speakers-of-other-languages programs. The metaphor of traveling on a learning…

The question of why some employers opt to lay off current workers and hire new workers with different skills while other employers retrain and retain their workers was examined. First, the literature on employer-provided training and the role of social capital in the workplace was reviewed. Next, data from a 1994 national employers survey of firms…