The authors report the results of a three-year longitudinal study of retention among undergraduate engineering students enrolled at four major universities. The study demonstrates that self-efficacy can be a critical factor in student persistence and can be broken down into three components: work, career, and academic self-efficacy. The authors…

The changing role of universities in society includes the increasing expectation that academic institutions should engage in collaboration with companies. Industrial PhD programmes are educational tools for building bridges between the academic sector and industry. In these programmes, the PhD student studies and carries out research while being…

The 4-H Program within Cooperative Extension is more than 100 years old. As we celebrate 100 years of Cooperative Extension, the foundation built by the 4-H Program serves as grounds to meet the needs of today's youth. The diversity of the youth who participate continues to grow, families continue to become less traditional, potential…

In this paper we examine theoretical perspectives on assessment in cooperative education placements. As assessment is linked to student learning, we focus briefly on the purposes of assessment. We then consider a range of learning theories that have been, and are more recently, explored as ways to explain the process of learning on cooperative…

Historically, characteristics of student persistence and graduation completion were most often linked to strategies which honored the full-time residential younger undergraduate. Adult students have been viewed as high-risk and typically problematic students for continuous enrollment and degree completion. This article explores the key paradoxical…

The Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University was the first higher education institution in Germany to combine on-the-job training and academic studies. The study model integrates theory and practice, both being components of cooperative education. The success of this university is based on its cooperation with over 10,000 companies.…

This study discusses and tests a conceptual model of co-op work-term quality from a student perspective. Drawing from an earlier exploration of co-op students' perceptions of work-term quality, variables related to role characteristics, interpersonal dynamics, and organizational elements were used in a multiple linear regression analysis to…

Innovative talent training is an important task of postgraduate education. From the survey of innovative postgraduate training in China, we conclude that there is still much room for improvement in the innovative postgraduate cultivation. The survey shows that insufficient professional practice, simplex training mode and a mismatch between…

Within a learning family, every member is a lifelong learner. A family literacy and learning approach is more likely to break the intergenerational cycle of low education and inadequate literacy skills, particularly among disadvantaged families and communities. The selection of case studies presented in this compilation show that for an…

This paper examines higher education quality policy developments internationally (U.K., U.S.) and in Australia with respect to the role of learning standards and assessment in work-integrated learning. Whilst remaining located primarily within the Australian higher education context, the paper briefly identifies some of the more influential global…

In this article the issues of validity and reliability in the assessment of the learning outcomes of WIL curricula are considered. An argument is made that there are three classes of learning outcome for WIL curricula: experience of the work-world; the development or refinement of skills; and the application of disciplinary knowledge in work…

Debates have been taking place in higher education communities in Canada and other Anglo-American contexts between defenders of liberal education and promoters of neoliberalism. One development not addressed is the growth of co-operative education (co-op). The origins of co-op may reside in John Dewey's (1939, 1966) ideas about experience and…

Numerous countries suffer from a shortage of technicians and skilled workers, particularly in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), due to a mismatch between the skills and interests of the students graduating from or leaving the current education system and the needs of the labor market. Often, parents and students…

This report is based on the 2016-17 survey "Career and Technical Education Programs in Public School Districts" and provides nationally representative data on career and technical education (CTE) programs. The survey defines a CTE program as a sequence of courses at the high school level that provides students with the academic and…

Uptake of new scopes of practice by pharmacists has been slow and inconsistent, which the literature suggests may be related to disconnects between pharmacists' established professional identities and the identities needed to adopt these new practices. This study evaluated the use of coaches to help pharmacy students during their cooperative…