VET Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Professional Roles and Responsibilities in International Education

An Online Game for the Digital Electronics Course for Vocational Education and Training (VET) Students

Abstract: The officially instituted curriculum of the Specialties of Vocational Education Training (VET) in Greece involves a wide set of various teaching models. The aim of these models is to introduce technical and technological education to the students of VET. The learning models implemented in VET as well as their respective teaching scenarios are of many types and are constantly being improved through a loosely defined curriculum development process. In our work, we propose a micro-activity (μ-activity) based on both the inductive image-word model and the learning based on an online game. As a case study, we have implemented a teaching addendum to the chapter Digital Electronics from the lesson “Principles of Electronics” that can be used as a first didactic approach to the subject of Digital Gates.

Language Difficulties of International Students in Australia: The Effects of Prior Learning Experience.

Abstract: Globalisation has placed a growing importance on English language speaking and listening. Prior research indicates that many international students from Asia, studying in Australia, face serious learning difficulties and lack confidence in speaking and taking a proactive role in classrooms. The paper reports on data gathered in interviews with students from five Asian nations, which suggest that these learning difficulties are grounded in weaknesses in students’ prior learning experiences – focused on grammar and reading skills in teacher-centred classrooms, not conversational skills – and in beliefs about language learning instilled during schooling. The paper proposes strategies for overcoming these problems.

International Student Security

Abstract: More than three million students globally are on the move each year, crossing borders for their tertiary education. Many travel from Asia and Africa to English speaking countries, led by the United States, including the UK, Australia and New Zealand where students pay tuition fees at commercial rates and prop up an education export sector that has become lucrative for the provider nations. But the 'no frills' commercial form of tertiary education, designed to minimise costs and maximise revenues, leaves many international students inadequately protected and less than satisfied. International Student Security draws on a close study of international students in Australia, and exposes opportunity, difficulty, danger and courage on a massive scale in the global student market. It works through many unresolved issues confronting students and their families, including personal safety, language proficiency, finances, sub-standard housing, loneliness and racism.

Vocational Education: Purposes, Traditions and Prospects

Abstract: This book discusses what constitutes vocational education as well as its key purposes, objects, formation and practices. In short, it seeks to outline and elaborate the nature of the project of vocational education. It addresses a significant gap in the available literature by providing a single text that elaborates the scope and diversity of the sector, its key objectives (i.e. vocations and occupations), its formation and development as an education sector, and the scope of its purposes and considerations in the curriculum. The volume achieves these objectives by discussing and defining the concept of vocational education as being that form of education that seeks to advise individuals about, prepare them for, and further develop their capacities to perform the kinds of occupations that societies require and individuals need to participate in-and through which they often come to define themselves. In particular, it discusses the distinctions between occupations as a largely social fact and vocations as being a socially shaped outcome assented to by individuals. As people identify closely with the kinds of occupations they engage in, the standing of, and the effectiveness of vocational education is central to individuals' well-being, competence and progress. Ultimately, this book argues that the provision of vocational education needs to realise important personal and social goals.

From training reform to training packages

Abstract: This book is an updated version of 'Making sense of training reform and competency-based training' (TD/TNC 54.08), which was published in 1997 by the same authors and was intended to explain the vocational education and training (VET) sector to those involved in it, or about to enter it, as practitioners.