This report examines the current state of open and flexible technical-vocational education and training (TVET) in nine Pacific Commonwealth countries: Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has commissioned the Open Polytechnic to complete this report to…

As we move into being a knowledge society, the way an organisation learns can be key to its innovation and profitability. This literature review examines the nature of workplace learning, with a focus on nonprofessional occupations, including those closely associated with workplace training. It identifies the conditions that facilitate workplace…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to investigate factors that influence informal learning in the workplace and the types of informal learning activities people engage in at work. More specifically, the research examined: the relationship between informal learning engagement and the presence of learning organization characteristics; and…

Between 2000 and 2003, the Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project identified and implemented a diverse set of innovative models designed to promote employment stability and wage or earnings progression among low-income individuals, mostly current or former welfare recipients. The project's goal was to determine which strategies could…

The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) measures participant labor market outcomes to drive program performance. This article uses statistical analysis to examine the relationship between participant characteristics and key outcome measures in one large California local WIA program. This study also measures the impact of different training…

The field of special education has emerged as an area of significant research over the last decade. One area that has been targeted for study within the body of research relates to the high rates of attrition of staff. With the advent of the federal legislation requiring school districts to locate and employ highly qualified teachers, the need to…

E-learning has been widely adopted as a promising solution by many organizations to offer learning-on-demand opportunities to individual employees (learners) in order to reduce training time and cost. While successful information systems models have received much attention among researchers, little research has been conducted to assess the success…

The field of workplace learning lacks empirical studies that view workplace practices as places for learning and see these practices in a critical light. Accordingly, the aim of this study is, first, to describe examples of everyday shared practice and consider what kinds of various conflicting aims and demands exist in it. Second, the purpose is…

This study synthesized the findings of three program evaluations of teacher blended professional development programs from the perspective of situated design and implementation, development of community, changes in teacher practice, and impact on students. We found that the blended programs were effective in providing teachers with an opportunity…

The national imperative to improve postsecondary degree completion has led to various innovations within colleges and universities to improve student retention and academic success, particularly of non-traditional learners. One innovation that has been in use since the 1970s, but is often under-promoted and under-utilized within institutions, is…

Work practices in the meat-processing industry have changed in recent years. The industry has moved away from workers dressing a whole carcass towards a chain-based system, with each worker performing a single task along a moving production line. The nature of the meat-processing workforce has also changed. It is no longer dominated by seasonal…

Conducting a literature review is a vital part of any research. Library and information science (LIS) professionals often play a central role in supporting academics in their efforts to locate relevant publications and in teaching novice researchers skills associated with literature reviews. This paper examines literature review processes with the…

This phenomenological study describes seven stages of learning to teach at the university level. Through the use of narratives, twelve Canadian university professors reveal their beliefs and attitudes about teaching and learning as they struggle to become better teachers within various academic settings. The purpose of the study was to develop a…

Data were gathered from a sample of training professionals of an American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) chapter in the southern United States regarding best practices for supporting training transfer. Content analysis techniques, based on a rigorous methodology proposed by Insch, Moore, & Murphy (1997), were used to analyze the…

This paper was presented in Sydney in September 2008 at a seminar conducted by Skills Australia and the Academy of Social Sciences. It examines the demand for training. It concentrates on the factors that affect individual and employer demand, and points out that accredited vocational education and training (VET) need to be considered in the…