Designing and Developing a Work Experience Component for a Vocational Education Curriculum.

Overview & Synopsis

A work experience component for vocational educator teacher education based on demonstrated competence is proposed. Its basis is research concerning vocational education; sociometric conditions and needs; analyses of the past, present, and future of vocational education; and the current state of the art relative to curriculum systems. This competency-based model utilizes the research effort of Groneman, including the ten purposes of occupational experience and thirty-two teaching competencies developed through occupational experience. These purposes and competencies are correlated with a list of the ten major factors in the role of the vocational teacher as taken from performance-based teacher education materials developed at The Ohio State University by the National Center for Research in Vocational Education. (This chart is provided.) The competency-based work experience component proposed integrates course work and field application into a unified comprehensive program. Basic programming principles should be used for each phase of the work experience component's development. They are (1) knowledge of specific outcomes, (2) entry assessment, (3) simulations/work situations, (4) progress monitoring, and (5) recycling. (A model/chart is provided to illustrate the overall components of this vocational education competency-based work experience model. Other attachments delineate the undergraduate, graduate, and in-service components highlighting the instructional content needed to make them a viable part of the vocational educational curriculum.) (YLB)