APL: Equal Opportunities for All?


Book Description

Here, the authors explore practical ways of implementing APL for the benefit of individuals, employers and the community as a whole, showing how it can make a real contribution to equality of opportunity. Chapters look at the particular needs of various sectors of the community, and how APL can be used to meet those needs. For ethnic communities, those whose first language is not English, and those who arrive in Britain with qualifications from overseas, the APL process can be a vital stage in the search for education, employment and equality of experience. People with disabilities find that APL can help break through barriers and offer new breadth of opportunity, whilst for women it can lead to greater recognition and improved career progression. Through the use of case studies and practical examples the authors offer detailed guidance on methods of implementation, staff development and continuing support to help tutors, managers and senior staff make effective use of APL.




APL: Developing more flexible colleges


Book Description

The keystones for provision in the new era of Further Education will be flexibility of response, open access, equality of opportunity, and valuing and accrediting alternative ways of learning - all linked together within the concepts of providing life-long learning opportunities. The provision of APL, along with the support services needed to ensure its success, can be used as the `acid test' of whether a college is truly open and accessible to a variety of learners. Written by an experienced manager, this book offers invaluable advice for other managers and senior staff engaged in transforming their colleges to meet students' needs.




Making Sense of Lifelong Learning


Book Description

This book looks beyond the current rhetoric about lifelong learning and asks long overdue questions on the need of LLL, the motives of institutions, employers and the Government in promoting it, and who says what is or is not LLL.




APL


Book Description

Here, the authors explore practical ways of implementing APL for the benefit of individuals, employers and the community as a whole, showing how it can make a real contribution to equality of opportunity. Chapters look at the particular needs of various sectors of the community, and how APL can be used to meet those needs. For ethnic communities, those whose first language is not English, and those who arrive in Britain with qualifications from overseas, the APL process can be a vital stage in the search for education, employment and equality of experience. People with disabilities find that APL can help break through barriers and offer new breadth of opportunity, whilst for women it can lead to greater recognition and improved career progression. Through the use of case studies and practical examples the authors offer detailed guidance on methods of implementation, staff development and continuing support to help tutors, managers and senior staff make effective use of APL.




Curriculum Change in Secondary Schools, 1957-2004


Book Description

This book is about curriculum change in secondary schools and shows how the quality of education has been affected by increasing intervention from central government. Following the story of one secondary school between 1957 and 2004, Norman Evans looks at: * the school before and after the introduction of the National Curriculum * the changing role of LEAs and governors * the characteristics since 1992 of school inspections responsible for policing the operation of the national tests * predictions of results and examination results * nationally set targets * compliance with detailed prescription of school curricula. This is the back-story of today's educational climate, as seen through the eyes of seven successive head teachers and long-serving assistant staff who worked at the school during this momentous forty-year period. How did the changes affect what they sought to do as professionals? Where have these changes taken us, in terms of what happens in classrooms and what happens in the school as a whole? And what can be learned from the development of the curriculum over this time to inform future practice?




Portfolio Development and the Assessment of Prior Learning


Book Description

For over thirty years, portfolios have been used to help adult learners gain recognition for their prior learning and take greater control of their educational experiences. The portfolio has become a distinctive means of assessing such learning, serving as a meaningful alternative to conventional papers and standardized testing. Portfolio Development and the Assessment of Prior Learning: Perspectives, Models, and Practices provides a primer of flexible approaches to shaping and conducting portfolio-development courses. It offers practitioners in the field an extensive range of model assignments, readings, and classroom activities, each organized around a specific theme: Academic Orientation, The Meaning of Education, Personal Exploration, Learning from the Outsider Within, The World of Work and Careers, and Dimensions of Expertise. Twelve case studies by practitioners in the field then show how academics in the US and around the English-speaking world have adapted the portfolio to changing circumstances in order to deliver academically rich educational services for adults. These case studies highlight portfolio development in the context of web-based instruction, changing institutional imperatives, service to historically disenfranchised groups, partnerships with industry, and cross-institutional cooperation.In addition to serving as a valuable hands-on resource for practitioners, Portfolio Development and the Assessment of Prior Learning locates portfolios and assessment in a broad social and intellectual context. Thus, the authors also offer an historical overview of the usefulness of portfolios in the assessment of prior learning and then consider their use in the future, given current trends in higher education for adults. The book explores the implications of a changing educational landscape, in which new student populations, budgetary pressures, and understandings of knowledge both enrich and challenge student-centered approaches such as portfolios.The approaches and case studies are not only valuable to adult educators but, equally, to faculty in higher education concerned with the development of competency- and outcomes-based assessment.




Good Practice Accreditation of Prior Learning


Book Description

Starting with a discussion of the origins of Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL), this text proceeds to look at the variety of models through which candidates are able to offer testimony of their prior learning. It explores the theoretical principles first, then illustrates with case studies.




Introducing APEL


Book Description

The fact that learning accumulates and exists outside an education or training environment cannot be disputed. Yet traditionally, it is only institutional, certificated learning that carries any status. Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning systems seek to give positive credit for all learning, by placing it within a recognised accreditation framework. In the light of recent legislation, APEL systems offer the key towards more flexible and open delivery systems for futher education. Maggie Challis offers a detailed, practical introduction to the skills and processes of implementing an APEL system, exploring the seven key stages through which learners progress: * initial counselling * recognising and identifying skills * relating these skills to an agreed set of outcomes * gathering evidence of these skills * documentation of the evidence * assessment of the evidence * accreditation Detailed guidance is provided on setting up and monitoring services and tutors and managers alike will find advice on identifying appropriate learning programmes for students; access to higher education; redundancy counselling; and the transfer of professional qualifications gained overseas. Most importantly, Maggie Challis shows the potential for APEL across a wide range of learning contexts, in all areas of education and training.




Language and Literacy in Workplace Education


Book Description

Just as workers are confronting the rapidly changing practices of the restructured, technological workplace and the increasing convergence of working and learning, so those involved in any form of workplace education or training are also restructuring their focus, teaching methods and approaches. This book examines the conceptual and practical challenges facing education and training professionals in redefining their contribution to improving communication and learning at work. Interweaving theory and commentary with actual case-studies, the book explores a multifaceted approach to workplace education which aims to develop individual workers' skills as well as integrating learning, language and cross-cultural issues into work, communication and management practices. It is a strategic, practical approach which draws on a range of applied linguistic and educational traditions and is informed by related disciplines such as cognitive and social psychology and organisational behaviour. The book does not present formulae for success; rather it illustrates the complexities and challenges faced by educators as they learn to balance different, and often conflicting priorities. Language and Literacy in Workplace Education: Learning at Work has been written with a wide audience in mind, from language and literacy professionals, Human Resources staff, vocational trainers, managers, as well as students of education and linguistics. The book is clearly presented, and takes care to explain specific educational or organisational terminology making the study accessible to newcomers to the field.




Teaching and Learning in Further Education


Book Description

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.