We also have a research group working on school to work transitions. The UK
legislation is like that of the US, full of contradictions. What seems to be
happening in both the US and the UK is that employers are pushing what would
have been considered to be legitimate training functions surrounding the
induction of workers back into the schooling system in a highly mechanistic
way. Thus, employers that I work with are very fond of the term 'hitting the
ground running' when they describe their ideal recruit. They appear to have
little understanding of the sorts of situational knowledge that young people
entering work places have to work with in order to function effectively. In
the UK we are currently going through another round of what have now become
known as 'key skills', for example, which in previous incarnations were
termed core or generic skills. These have been identified as communication,
IT, application of number, problem solving, improving your own learning and
performance, and team working. I will leave it to your imagination what the
content of these qualifications might be. They are assessed, at least in the
case of the first three, by written examinations and they are of course
thought to be transferable. Thus, a failure of a young person to demonstrate
their communicative competence upon entry to the workplace is prima facie
evidence of a failure of the school/university system.
In our work we are trying to unpick these ideas both philosophically and
empirically. Currently, we are particularly interested in ideas of
communicative competence and what that might mean in different workplaces,
especially in relation to the use of Information Technology. We are
approaching this largely using a sociocultural lens and trying to develop
ideas about learner identity. Ultimately, we hope, through working with both
business firms and teachers, to be able to provide advice both to policy
makers and suggestions for practice for practitioners in schools and
universities, and HR professionals in companies, struggling to 'deliver'
this stuff about more sensible models and pedagogies.
If anyone is interested in knowing more then please let me know. Ongoing
discussions on XMCA are very helpful.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Cole" <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2002 5:18 PM
Subject: school/work
>
> Eric-- I am sure the legislation is full of contradictions. Helen W
> is working on the ground in this area and can hopefully enlighten further
> on whether ANY useful openinng in this area of practice would reward
> investigation for understanding links between education, work, class, etc.
> mike
>
>
>
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