Is there an optimum age to be an apprentice? For most people, their image of an apprentice would be a teenage school leaver. Yet, in England, the majority of apprentices are over the age of 19 when they start their apprenticeship, and 40 per cent are 25 or over. This would be very unusual in other European countries. In this article, the authors…

This article describes the various aspects of human resources development and highlights the intersections and the differences between what are often mistakenly viewed as interchangeable concepts. It argues that, while it is generally accepted that developing staff is fundamental to good organisational health and business outcomes, a clear…

The author, chair of the new improvement organization for further education and skills, shares her optimism on what the emerging agency can achieve, but she is aware of the challenges facing a sector struggling to keep pace with inspectors' expectations. These struggles include: (1) The slow delivery of curriculum; (2) The sector's struggle to…

This paper is a critique of the initial teacher education (ITE) of further and adult education teachers in the UK. It argues that the employer-led, national standards model in the UK is not the basis for ITE and professional development because it takes no account of learning in the workplace, disregards the multi-specialist and professional…

As the Chinese economy opens up to the outside world, the decision to engage in joint ventures with foreign capital is among the most important national policies. Significant direct consequences of joint ventures are the influx of foreign capital, expanding exports, and employment creation. However, the great importance of joint ventures lies in…

Discusses corporations such as Sears, Motorola, Saturn, and Intel that have created their own corporate universities to train and retrain their workers. Highlights Motorola, the largest of the corporate universities. (JOW)

"Learning for Life--a New Framework for Adult Skills," a thought-provoking report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), manages to be both passionate and well argued. Resulting, in part, from a series of policy seminars during 2006, it makes an interesting contribution to current debates. Simone Delorenzi advocates the…

This is a congressional hearing to evaluate the administration and effectiveness of Public Law 98-77, the Emergency Veterans' Job Training Act of 1983. (The purpose of the program established by Public Law 98-77 is to create new on-the-job training opportunities for Vietnam-era and Korean conflict veterans by providing incentives for employers to…

The Center for Employment Training (CET) in Alexandria, Virginia, is one of 45 CET locations nationwide. CET network clients are among the hardest to serve--low income, often with little schooling, training, or work experience. Since 1967, the network has trained and nurtured 70,000 clients, many of whom have flourished on the job. (JOW)

Describes the provisions of the Re-employment Act of 1994 and looks at why it has not passed in Congress. Reasons include an objection to a temporary unemployment payroll tax becoming permanent and the lack of consolidation of current programs. (JOW)

Process control is a way of training managers in business and industry to plan, monitor, and communicate the instructional development process of training projects. Two simple and useful tools that managers use in controlling the process of instructional development are the Process Control Planning Sheet and the Process Control Record. The Process…

On-the-job training (OJT) is enjoying a surge of interest because of ISO 9000, the certification standards of the European Community. Negotiating a balance between training staff and frontline supervisors who are often made responsible for OJT is one way to improve it. (JOW)

Describes and provides an orientation to nonformal vocational training (vestibule training, on-the-job training, apprenticeships, training for unemployed persons) and increases awareness of the potential and the legitimacy of out-of-school vocational training efforts. (JOW)

Offers suggestions for improving the interaction of videotapes used for training: discussion during and after viewing, case studies, searching and skipping, and support materials. Describes features of interactive videodiscs: Socratic method, role playing, freeze-framing, random access, and customization. (SK)

This article argues that discourse analysis can be utilized in conjunction with other forms of analysis to develop a more critical teaching and research agenda for Human Resource Development (HRD); in particular this article suggests that the introduction of a discourse analysis perspective can support and facilitate the development of critically…