Is Bologna working? Employer and graduate reflections of the quality, value and relevance of business and management education in four European Union countries

This article focuses on the relevance of undergraduate business and management higher education from the perspectives of recent graduates and graduate employers in four European countries. Drawing upon the findings of an empirical qualitative study in which data was collated and analysed using grounded theory research techniques, the paper draws attention to graduates' and employers' perceptions of the value of higher education in equipping students with discipline-specific skills and knowledge as well as softer 'generic' skills. It also highlights the importance of formal 'work-based' learning within undergraduate curricula in providing students with the skills and experiences required by employers operating within a global workplace

Health visitor education for today's britain: Messages from a narrative review of the health visitor literature

Highlights •An aspirational ‘orientation to practice’ underpins all health visitors' work •Practice focuses on home visiting, forming relationships and needs assessments •Health visitors' knowledge, skills and abilities are central to effective practice •The large amount of the learning needed is not well covered by current preparation •A radical re-think of health visitor education is needed to accommodate the depth and breadth of knowledge skills and abilities required for practice Objectives This paper draws on a narrative review of the literature, commissioned to support the Health Visitor Implementation Plan (DH, 2011a), and aimed at identifying messages about the knowledge, skills and abilities needed by health visitors to work within the current system of health care provision. Design The scoping study and narrative review used three complementary approaches: a broad search, a structured search and a seminal paper search to identify empirical papers from the health visitor literature for review. The key inclusion criteria were messages of relevance for practice. Data Sources 378 papers were reviewed. These included empirical papers from the United Kingdom (UK) from 2004 – February 2012, older research identified in the seminal paper search and international literature from 2000- January 2016. Review Methods The review papers were read by members of the multi-disciplinary research team which included health visitor academics, social scientists and a clinical psychologist managed the international literature. Thematic content analysis was used to identify main messages. These were tabulated and shared between researchers in order to compare emergent findings and to confirm dominant themes. Results The analysis identified an ‘orientation to practice’ based on salutogenesis (health creation), human valuing (person-centred care) and viewing the person in situation (human ecology) as the aspirational core of health visitors' work. This was realised through home visiting, needs assessment and relationship formation at different levels of service provision. A wide range of knowledge, skills and abilities were required, including knowledge of health as a process and skills in engagement, building trust and making professional judgments. These are currently difficult to impart within a 45 week health visitor programme and are facilitated through ad hoc post registration education and training. The international literature reported both similarities and differences between the working practices of health visitors in the UK and public health nurses worldwide. Challenges related to the education of each were identified. Conclusions The breadth and scope of knowledge, skills and abilities required by health visitors makes a review of current educational provision desirable. Three potential models for health visitor education are described

Developing a conceptual framework : the case of MAGICC

This paper reports the steps taken to develop the conceptual framework of the MAGICC project (2013), which aimed to provide action-oriented descriptions of multilingual and multicultural academic and professional communication competence, instructional designs to promote these in higher education language teaching, and multidimensional forms of assessment aligned with the learning outcomes established – all presented in an academic ePortfolio that expands the features of the existing European Language Portfolio (ELP) to the higher education level. “Starting with systematic desk research into the existing conceptualisations of multi/plurilingual and multi/ intercultural competences as well as lifelong learning and employability skills, the next step was to collect and analyse the data gathered from all partner institutions and existing national and European projects on descriptors already in place for academic level competences, practices and assessment. […] To ensure the social relevance of the framework, the third step was to develop questionnaires for students, faculty, and employers and ask them to rank the synthesised skill and competence descriptors in terms of their importance for the academic and professional competences graduates would need for study purposes as well as for the global labour market. The first draft of the conceptual framework was revised on the basis of this stakeholder consultation and led to the version presented to a new group of selected stakeholders in a consultation seminar” (Räsänen 2014: 66–67).peerReviewe

Innovative approaches to teaching engineering drawing at tertiary institutions

This paper arises from our concern for the level of teaching of engineering drawing at tertiary institutions in Australia. Little attention is paid to teaching hand drawing and tolerancing. Teaching of engineering drawing is usually limited to computer-aided design (CAD) using AutoCAD or one of the solid-modelling packages. As a result, many engineering graduates have diffi culties in understanding how views are produced in different projection angles, are unable to produce engineering drawings of professional quality, or read engineering drawings, and unable to select fits and limits or surface roughness. In the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering at the Queensland University of Technology new approaches to teaching engineering drawing have been introduced. In this paper the results of these innovative approaches are examined through surveys and other research methods

A Computing Perspective on the Bologna Process

The Bologna process is intended to culminate in the formation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by 2010. Its aim is to facilitate the mobility of people, the transparency and recognition of qualifications, quality and development of a European dimension to higher education, and the attractiveness of European institutions for third country students. This paper provides an overview of progress towards implementation in EHEA member states using official documents and interview data from faculty teaching computing in countries represented at the ITiCSE 2006 meeting. The key areas where the structures established by the Bologna process are problematic for computing education arise from the rapidly changing nature of the curriculum. It seems that the maturity and capability criteria, as well as the manner in which learning outcomes are specified, being developed within the Bologna process are too general. This endangers the properties of transparency and mobility that the process intends to promote. Progression and prerequisite knowledge in computing degrees can be very specific. For instance, generic learning outcomes for an introductory programming course quite rightly will not specify the programming language, or languages, used to implement algorithms. However, suppose a student intends to study an advanced algorithms and data structures course in which Java is the language of implementation which has an introductory course in programming as a prerequisite. If the introductory course language was Standard ML it is not clear that the prerequisite course actually provides the student with a suitable background. These types of complexities are typical of computing, where early subject curricula are not standardised nationally or internationally, and create significant hurdles for realising the Bologna objectives

Institutional Autonomy and the Attractiveness of the European Higher Education Area – Facts or Tokenistic Discourse?

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University autonomy, agenda setting and the construction of agency: The case of the European university association in the European higher education area

This article analyses the ways in which a policy actor constructs its agency through the production of knowledge. Taking the example of the concept of 'autonomy' as constructed in the discourse of the European University Association (EUA), the article draws on the theory of discursive framing and agenda setting, as well as on Meyer and Jepperson's heuristic of agentic actors, to show how the practice of knowledge production can shape the European higher education policy. The article offers a contribution to the debate aiming to develop a more critical perspective on the development of the European Higher Education Area, which sees the process as constituted through the activities of, and the negotiations between, different political actors.peerReviewe