Background: Critical reflection is an essential curricular component for learning from experience that determines placement quality in postsecondary experiential learning placements. However, there are poor empirical connections between the use of critically reflective processes and learning outcomes. Purpose: This research explored reflective…

Variability is underemphasized in domains such as engineering. Statistics and data science education research offers a variety of frameworks for understanding variability, but new frameworks for domain applications are necessary. This study investigated the professional practices of working engineers to develop such a framework. The Neglected,…

Organizations advance and grow by solving problems one at a time, and management graduates should possess critical thinking and problem-solving capacities to be effective business managers and creative engineers. The problem was that critical thinking and creative problem solving are operationally ill-defined in engineering and management…

This article reports on a study investigating the link between education and work. Instead of looking at the labour outcomes of graduates, the study examined the qualifications held by workers in technician- and professional-level jobs from three types of occupational fields: regulated, applied, and general. The approach shifts the focus away from…

An extensive body of workplace learning literature documents the changing nature of professional learning, knowledge and work, but the tensions between the distinctive purposes and interests of professions and organizations have not received the same level of attention. The sociology of professions literature in contrast has paid an enormous…

Engineering education has traditionally focused on the development of technical skills and knowledge. Nowadays, the need for educating engineers in non-technical skills, such as reflective thinking, is being recognised internationally. This paper proposes that socio-cultural impacts of technology be studied together with the technology itself…

An engineering professor of a first-year thermodynamics course and a PhD student with a focus in engineering education in a large research university in Canada participated in an ethnographic action research study with the intention of increasing active learning in the classroom to enhance student engagement and learning. Unexpected findings…

Paul Ryan has brought together the writings of the most prominent British research into vocational preparation in Britain in comparison to the other advanced economies, primarily within the EEC. The book, originally published in 1991, documents various aspects of inadequacy in British practice at the time, concentrating upon intermediate skills,…

Professional accrediting and regulating bodies are increasingly trying to delineate the knowledge and skills needed for entry-to-practice for quality assurance and international labor mobility. The purpose of this study was to compare how professions describe and represent competence. Current, publicly accessible Canadian entry-to-practice…

A summative evaluation of the Foreign Credential Recognition Program (FCRP) funded by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) was conducted during the spring, summer and fall of 2008. The main objective of the evaluation was to measure the relevance, impacts, and cost-effectiveness of the program. Given the timing of the evaluation…

The generic skills studies in Canada have as their objectives the formulation of generic skills, the identification of their uses for certain occupational groups, and the preparation of specifications for instructional modules in an attempt to provide greater flexibility to workers, employers, and vocational training programs. Another objective of…

Data are provided on degrees awarded by Canadian universities by level (bachelor's and first professional, master's, and doctoral) and discipline (education, fine and applied arts, humanities and related, social science and related, agricultural and biological sciences, engineering and applied sciences, health professions and occupations, and…