Self-directed learning is a core theoretical construct of adult learning. Importantly, self-directed learning represents a fundamental meta-competence for living and working in our increasingly complex and unpredictable world. Nonetheless, the construct of self-directed learning has become obfuscated. In order to redress this concern, this…

The rapid pace of change in medicine requires doctors to be effective conflict mediators and negotiators in the clinical workplace, and a multitude of research connects strong physician-patient communication to improved patient outcomes. Disparities in such skills exist among medical students and professionals, and are neither taught nor evaluated…

Courses: Intercultural Communication; any course with an intercultural communication unit. Objectives: Students will demonstrate the self-awareness imperative in intercultural communication, explore their own cultural identities, and reflect on others cultural identities in order to build their intercultural communication competence.

Courses: Communication Criticism, Rhetorical Criticism, Family and Communication, Gender and Communication, Popular Communication, and theory-based courses. Objectives: This activity engages students in dynamic, supportive, social discussion groups; helps them to identify and review the central ideas from the reading; and creates a record of their…

For many practitioners in schools and clinics, collecting data to show the effectiveness of an intervention is probably one of the most important yet challenging components of intervention implementation. This article provides practitioners with an example case study of how data can be organized and collected to determine the effectiveness of a…

The nation's PK-12 education ecosystem is poised to embrace programs intended to enhance soft skills. Soft skills are generally defined by exclusion as personal qualities other than the formal knowledge transmitted by schools that affect student adjustment, i.e., the effort that students put into their work and their social skills. Such soft…

The purpose of this presentation is to show how instructional technology can be exploited to effectively integrate Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) "Can Do" performance objectives (Council of Europe, 2001) into the syllabus and assessment of an advanced (B2) level course. The particular course that will be used for purposes…

This paper gives an overview of research on modelling science competence in German science education. Since the first national German educational standards for physics, chemistry and biology education were released in 2004 research projects dealing with competences have become prominent strands. Most of this research is about the structure of…

The didactic function of business games is often seen only in the development of sociocommunicative competences and general problem-solving strategies. An equally important aspect of business games lies in the acquirement of technical and problem-oriented knowledge, which is the focus of this article. Moreover, this knowledge dimension is further…

Human services educators must address the issue of students' bias toward older adults to encourage interest and meet the growing need for professionals in the field. The use of literature can challenge students' preconceptions of older adults while innovative teaching methods can guide their development of more tolerant views and introduce them to…

This document is a revised version of the National Consumer and Financial Literacy Framework (the Framework) originally developed in 2005. It articulates a rationale for consumer and financial education in Australian schools; describes essential consumer and financial capabilities that will support lifelong learning; and provides guidance on how…

A project is described that attempted to formulate a meaningful concept of adult performance levels, to devise instruments to measure performance at those levels, and to use those instruments to assess the functional competence of a representative sample of the population of the United States. Three levels of competence are defined in terms of…

Discusses the need for clear and measurable statements of the learning objectives in cross-cultural training and describes the process one training center used to address this need. The goal was to undertake a competency analysis of intercultural effectiveness to describe the performance expected of an interculturally effective person. (Author/LRW)

A major problem in competency-based education is the lack of clarity in defining competence. This monograph describes the levels of competence used in developing competency-based educational programs and provides a taxonomy that can be used in developing competency-based instruction. The taxonomy includes four levels. Level 1 includes specific…

Describes an on-the-job training program that contains seven major steps: obtain executive support, identify departments relevant to the target job, develop performance competency lists and measures, determine a training schedule for each trainee, assign a mentor to each trainee, develop a training manual, and develop a trainee and supervisor…