Some students learn better if they can apply skills and knowledge to their lives. Youth apprenticeships are a way for students to work and gain skills in a chosen career field and earn money while still in high school. Youth apprenticeships are on a continuum of work-based learning that includes job shadowing and internships. Apprenticeships…

Current career pathways initiatives recapitulate in many ways both the issues motivating the school-to-work movement of the 1980s and 1990s and its recommended solutions, notably more work-based learning, especially apprenticeship. But that movement's energy dissipated in the face of college for all. Nonetheless, some of its achievements and many…

Educating high school students for both college and career is difficult. Teaching trade skills seems alien to the academic culture. But new research indicates that soft skills are quite important to judgments of employability and that youth learn many soft skills in traditional academic subjects (e.g., literature). A focus on soft skills allows…

The Swiss model of high school matches students with career employment, jobs, and education. The system offers lessons to how the U.S. might create partnerships between business and education and also make high school more interesting and engaging for students.

Dropouts have become an international problem, and it is useful to examine the solutions arrived at by other countries. A major difference is in vocational education. The United States, for example, uses vocational education mainly as a means to motivate uninterested students. Countries with low dropout rates have vocational education and training…

The past year has seen the emergence of a broad consensus on raising the standards for entering the teaching profession. The NEA, AFT, and Council of Chief State School Officers all have said they want higher entry standards. Such an exam would be modeled after other professions and is a potential game changer. If sufficiently rigorous, the exam…

Suggests that European apprenticeship programs are successful in preventing juvenile delinquency and promoting effective vocational education. (DW)

A teacher of "basics" for 14 and 15 year olds who have failed eighth grade questions the validity and relevance of this teaching approach. She stresses the importance of apprenticeships and internship programs to help students apply knowledge that is infrequently used and soon forgotten. (MLH)

Work-based learning is a way to increase students' engagement in learning and prepare them for employment. Inspired by the apprenticeship concept, the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act supports other types of work-based learning, including visits to workplaces, work-like experiences, and employment. Article notes youth apprenticeship…

The tradition of the active mind views knowledge as provisionally constructed by the mind in perpetual interaction with the world. There are no substitutes for students' and teachers' consistent application of intelligence and steady thinking. A problem-based-learning approach to teacher education exemplifies John Dewey's laboratory model.…

Like the United States, Great Britain has had problems with school-to-work transitions. Britain's experience with the Youth Training Scheme shows that youth apprenticeship programs can be created almost immediately if the right incentives are offered. The challenge is meshing higher-level job skills and standards with employers' quest for…

Responding to local businesses' negative comments about area graduates' capabilities, White Plains (New York) Public Schools initiated a pilot work-based-learning program that clearly specified connections between high-school and workplace learning. Five case studies illustrate program goals achieved via individualized apprenticeship plans…

Describes an apprenticeship program for high school juniors and seniors at the EHOVE Career Center in Milan, Ohio. Discusses the Federal Committee on Apprenticeships' suggested program components and the Office of Work-Based Learning's program development guidelines. School staff should consider area employment needs, define occupational targets,…

In Tulsa (Oklahoma), junior high school students had the opportunity, as apprentices to film director Francis Ford Coppola, to be involved in activities that enlarged their direct experience rather than in intense intellectual pursuits. Such activities are characterized by brain-growth experts as appropriate for this age group. (Author/MLF)

Tackles the "floundering period" between high school graduation and noncollege-bound students' first career-entry job. Blames age, an unfavorable labor market, and disjunctions between the labor market and the school system. Describes West Germany's system of apprenticeship and part-time schooling and advocates exploiting experiential…