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To meet the school-to-work goal of moving from isolated programs to a system that assists large numbers of students to successfully transition to work, all school personnel must understand, support, and contribute to the effort. This study will examine the attitudes, expertise, and knowledge that teachers in collaboration with others, both in the schools and in the workplace, must have to establish and sustain long-term links with employers that facilitate students' transition to work. Information about teacher involvement in and contributions to the facilitation of school-to-work transition will be gathered via community studies.
This field-based research will provide teachers with valuable information about the attitudes, expertise, and knowledge they will need to successfully fulfill their responsibilities in school-to-work programs. The study results will also benefit policymakers, teacher educators, corporate training managers, and others by providing useful information about strategies that teachers can use to link schools and workplaces for effective STW transition.
Deliverables
Dissemination activities will focus on making the NCRVE's clients aware of the project research report and the practitioner guide. These products will be made available through the NCRVE Materials Distribution Service. Products will be advertised through various channels such as CenterWork, electronic networks, and related professional organization newsletters. The products will be described at relevant national STW conferences and workshops. Additionally, project-related presentations will be made at national conferences such as the American Vocational Association convention and the American Educational Research Association meeting.
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Teachers and administrators at postsecondary vocational institutions play a pivotal role as change agents in successfully promoting and implementing reforms. Building on previous NCRVE work, this study will gather new data via a nationally representative survey of postsecondary vocational and academic teachers, and through case studies of several community colleges in different stages of implementing vocational education reforms. Practitioner input will help guide this research design. The focus is on the level and nature of faculty connections to local labor markets, and the individual and institutional factors that hinder or facilitate connectivity. The project contains specific development activities designed to assist community college practitioners in promoting reform.
A technical report will detail the project's methodology, including survey instruments. It will present a quantitative and qualitative analysis of survey and case study data. Project conclusions and recommendations for development activities will be made. One or two articles will be submitted to academic journals based on the technical report.
A policy brief will summarize the project's findings, oriented towards postsecondary instructors and designed to assist in the effective implementation of reform through concrete suggestions of how to achieve strong links to local labor markets.
The deliverables will be widely distributed to state-level officials; appropriate national groups such as the American Association of Community Colleges, the League for Innovation in Community Colleges, American Vocational Association; and possibly to community colleges themselves. In addition, we will present our findings at professional meetings such as that of the American Educational Research Association.
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In response to the call for educational reform in high schools, mounting concern has been expressed regarding the role of teacher education and professional development in sustaining these reforms. To date, relatively little attention has been given to this matter in vocational-technical education and school-to-work efforts. In this two-year project, NCRVE investigators will undertake a series of synthesis, dissemination, and field-based inquiry activities focused on clarifying and articulating the multiple roles of teacher education programs. More specifically, the activities will examine and synthesize the extant research, current initiatives in teacher education/professional development, and selected innovative practices aimed at improving the repertoire of both practicing and future teachers to work effectively in STW systems.
Deliverables
In 1996, the following dissemination efforts will occur:
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The development of a national system of voluntary industry skill standards has become a central element in education reform. The purpose of this project is to develop a conceptual framework/typology which encompasses the different approaches to skill standards development, both in the United States and abroad. The many approaches that exist now can undoubtedly be simplified and categorized into a number of basic approaches.
Such a classification effort has several benefits. It forces the analyst to differentiate the core components of an approach from the more peripheral ones, and establishes a smaller number of models to greatly facilitate diffusion and evaluation.
The project will be based on an analysis of existing skill standards systems in the United States, including the current pilot projects from the Departments of Labor and Education. In conjunction with that work, David Finegold at RAND will review experience with skill standards in Europe and possibly other countries.
In developing and disseminating the results of this project, we expect to work closely with the National Industry Skill Standards Board. Indeed, our goal is to develop a framework that the board can use in its work. In addition, we expect that the results of this project will be useful for any practitioner or policymaker involved with the development and implementation of industry skill standards. These include staff at the Departments of Education and Labor who will be working with the board and overseeing the pilot projects, state-level employees working on standards, and local-level program operators putting programs into practice.
A draft report will be developed for the NCRVE conference on skill standards planned for May 1996. (The draft will be revised and incorporated into the report produced for the skill standards conference, which is described in "Other Dissemination and Training Projects.") In addition, a report on the international perspective will be produced in 1996.
This project will make extensive use of group and conference/meeting discussions in an effort to share and gather information. We will utilize current contacts and relationships with industry and union representatives, policymakers, substantive experts, and educators in our efforts to disseminate our results. The final report will be distributed to interested project directors involved in the federal skill standards initiatives as well as policymakers, academic and research staff members, and education practitioners.
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The goals of this study are (1) to investigate the potential of various forms of alternative assessment to meet the needs of vocational educators, and (2) to provide vocational educators with useful procedures for judging the applicability of alternative assessments in their own setting. The study will combine reviews of relevant literature with empirical investigations of portfolios, performance events, and other educational assessments.
A project report will be produced describing the strengths and weaknesses of assessment alternatives, and presenting profiles of the alternative assessments studied.
The project also will produce training materials to help vocational educators evaluate or develop alternative assessments.
The beneficiaries of this work include vocational educators at the local level as well as educational policymakers at the state and national levels. For those at the local level, the project will provide helpful guidance about the use of alternative assessments. For state and national policymakers, the project will evaluate the applicability of promising assessment options to the vocational setting and will offer some critical judgments about current vocational assessment prototypes.
The result of this project will be disseminated in the form of written materials and training workshops. In addition, we will make one or more presentations at national conferences.
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This project will consist of two related case studies--one in accounting and one in aviation. The accounting case study will be carried out under the direction of Thomas Bailey at Teachers College, while the aviation case study will be the responsibility of Gary Hoachlander at MPR Associates, Inc. Each of these case studies is described below.
Industry Skill Standards in Accounting
An expanded system of industry skill standards is one feature of the school-to-work initiative that sets it apart from previous school reform models. Although there is widespread support for skill standards, many practical and implementation issues have not been resolved.
The United States already has an extensive system of professional education that includes skill standards and certification systems as well as widespread employer participation. The goal of this project is to study one case of professional education--the training and certification of accountants--in search of lessons for the school-to-work model concerning skill standards and employer participation.
Studying professional training and certification in an occupation such as accounting will provide guidance in resolving many of the previously mentioned implementation issues as they relate to current School-to-Work initiatives.
This project will help to support and inform a companion project in this theme area, Developing a Typology of Skill Standards Models (Project RVI.1).
A draft report will be available by March 1996, and a final report will be completed by the end of 1996.
The audience for this project will be the diverse group of individuals, educators (researchers and academics as well as practitioners), trade and professional associations, employers, unions, and policymakers, as well as other governmental regulatory and oversight agencies involved in the skill standards movement. We will utilize our initial findings in group discussions consisting of the above-mentioned participants to disclose any applications for professional training experiences in current efforts involving skill standards, certification, work-based education, and the broader context of STW reform. The general dissemination plans for this project will also be developed as part of the broader strategy of dissemination for the collection of NCRVE skill standards projects now under development.
Industry Skill Standards in Aviation
GOALS 2000 established a National Skill Standards Board to oversee the development of national standards for American industry. An initial task of the board is to develop a framework for building a national system, including guidelines for the types of standards that are needed and how they might be implemented.
Ironically, much of the development effort has proceeded thus far on the mistaken assumption that America has no experience with industry standards. Indeed, one of the best examples of national standards developed in partnership between industry and government is the U.S. aviation industry. Over the past 50 years, a comprehensive and detailed set of standards have emerged for pilots, air traffic controllers, airframe and power mechanics, and others. This experience, uniquely American, provides a rich history, which, if carefully mined, could yield important insights into the development of a national system of industry skill standards.
The primary purpose of this study is to use findings from the study of a major American industry with a long history of public/private development of skill standards to generalize about the kind of national system that would best suit a wide range of economic activity. Thus, the project is not about aviation per se, but rather the relevance of the development and use of standards in aviation to a more general system of national industry standards. We are especially interested in distinguishing the public and private purposes served by skill standards; the degree of occupational specificity that is appropriate; the kinds of standards needed; and ongoing processes for ensuring that standards are relevant, fair, and able to be assessed reliably and consistently.
This project will help to support and inform a companion project in this theme area, Developing a Typology of Skill Standards Models (Project RVI.1).
The study will produce an interim report by April 1996 and a final report by December 1996.
The audience for this project is primarily state and national policymakers concerned with the development of industry skill standards. The project director is available to work with the National Skill Standards Board as the agenda of that group begins to take shape during the coming years. The project's deliverables will be distributed to this board, as well as to related state-level groups working on industry skill standards. The results of the study should also be of interest to those working on various aspects of "alternative" assessment, especially performance testing, which has long been the cornerstone of certification in aviation. The project director will also participate in NCRVE-sponsored conferences on skill standards and make presentations at relevant sessions of national organizations, including the American Vocational Association, American Education Research Association, and related groups.
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Section 404(b)(2) of the 1990 Amendments to the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act requires that the National Center for Research in Vocational Education "annually prepare a study on the research conducted on approaches that lead to effective articulation for the education-to-work transition." This activity will fulfill that requirement.
This study will also provide an initial description of local and state activities pursuant to the School to Work Opportunities Act of 1994.
Three distinct kinds of information will be included in the 1996 report: (1) a description of local and state activities under the School-to-Work Opportunities Act; (2) a synthesis of evaluation results from youth apprenticeship pilot projects; and (3) an update of significant new research on other school-to-work programs.
The main product of this study will be the 1995 report to the federal authorities as required by the 1990 Perkins Amendments. It will be published as a report by NCRVE. It may subsequently be published by a commercial publisher as a book or monograph.
In addition to the distribution required by law (i.e., the Secretaries of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services, the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, and the House Committee on Education and Labor), complimentary copies of the report will be sent to a list of approximately 100 high-level state and federal officials and leading researchers in the field. The report will also be available for sale from the NCRVE Materials Distribution Service.