Korea's developmental skill formation system was shaped in the 1970s by the Korean developmental state that proactively sought rapid Heavy and Chemical Industrialisation as the nation's overarching goal. Vocational education at the upper secondary level and post-school in-company training in particular were strategically nurtured and…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of limited English proficiency on employee performance in manufacturing companies to help explain the degree to which employers are willing to invest in ESL or other initiatives designed to overcome language barriers. Design/methodology/approach: While the primary emphasis of this study…

The authors present a comparative study of 2 in-company educational programs aimed at developing frontline operator capabilities in forensic methods. They discuss the relationship between the application of various forensic tools and conceptual techniques, the process (i.e., curriculum) for developing employee knowledge and capability, and the…

The implementation of e-learning by companies in France is ongoing. One of their issues is to improve the learning experience of their employees. From our point of view, this implies that they must better understand the learning experience of the employees. This paper suggests a qualitative approach to learning in order to identify the diversity…

This paper explores the impact that SCORM conformance has had on workplace e-learning. The author describes a project in which she was requested to "repurpose" some materials that had originally been designed for the face-to-face teaching of English as a Foreign Language, into SCORM conformant e-learning materials. The rationale for this request…

The concept of Educational Ambassadors is embedded within the so-called "Danish model" of industrial relations. The Danish industrial relations system is characterised by strong collective organisations with national coverage, which conclude the collective agreements for various industries or sectors and which are mostly grouped under central…

This paper defines and explains action learning and suggests some ideas and resources for putting action learning into practice. The paper is organized in eight sections of about one page each. The sections cover the following topics: (1) what action learning is; (2) how action learning works; (3) action learning and training--key differences; (4)…

A study compared test scores obtained by adult learners taught oral, written, and/or interpersonal communication skills by four different methods over two different lengths of time. The learners and those in a control group, which was not taught at all, were 171 bank employees. The teaching methods were executive coaching (one tutor and one…

This paper presents specific steps elected officials, program managers, and other policymakers can take to craft a more effective workforce development system intended to give workers the tools they need to succeed in the new economy. First, the new labor market and work systems are discussed. The paper then lays out eight principles for all…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explain the rationale for designing and implementing an action learning and research process to significantly transform the work behaviour of tradition-bound bakers to embrace leading ideas of a new workplace culture in order to diversify the product range of the moon cake and generally improve the…

Recent Australian and overseas studies on evaluation of enterprises' return on training investment (ROTI) were reviewed to identify key issues in encouraging increased evaluation of training benefits by enterprises and successful approaches that may inform future "enterprise-friendly" studies of ROTI. It was concluded that more practical,…

This conference proceedings contains 65 presentations and 3 colloquiums from a conference that dealt with knowledge at work and knowledge that works and with how education can be successfully integrated into work and work into education. The papers are "Reading the Contexts of Complex Incidents of Adult Education Practice" (Apte); "Models of Work…

Questions about work and learning have arisen from the growing emphasis on learning throughout life and beyond formal educational settings. Technical and further education and technological universities are seen as being in crisis, partly as a consequence of the emergence of new knowledge discourses that have disturbed traditional ideas about what…

This paper provides a summary of four projects currently funded through Australia's National Center for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), including what they propose to achieve and their preliminary findings to date. After an introduction, an overview of preliminary findings from the four projects is presented. The following barriers to…

The focus in recent studies of workplace learning has been on "communities of practice" and the ways that learning is shaped by such communities. In the process, there has been a downplaying of the importance of broader institutional arrangements, including the impact of organisational structures and management practice, as well as national…