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The impacts of training and apprenticeship education towards building high-level technical and vocational skills that support human capital development and attracting foreign direct investment are being reshaped by global competition. This article draws on human capital theory to report on a qualitative study that explores skilled labour challenges within Ghana’s training and apprenticeship system through the lens of the demand side of employment perspective. The findings point to a training...

Nigeria aspires to become a major player in the world economy in line with her Vision 20-2020. To achieve this ambitious goal, the most crucial vehicle apart from power and infrastructure, is a skilled and competent workforce. This is necessary for the effective implementation of national development projects and for attracting necessary international investment by hi-tech industries. (NBTE, 2011). Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is used as a comprehensive term...

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: Africa's health systems rely on services provided by mid-level health workers (MLWs). Investment in their training is worthwhile since they are more likely to be retained in underserved areas, require shorter training courses and are less dependent on technology and investigations in their clinical practice than physicians. Their training programs and curricula need up-dating to be relevant to their practice and to reflect advances in health professional...

© 2018 African Federation for Emergency Medicine Introduction: Emergency nurses are usually the first to interact with critically ill patients and victims of violence and injuries, and require advanced skills and knowledge to manage such patients. Inadequate training prevents nurses from providing optimal emergency care, and it is important to investigate if there are any skills and competencies lacking in these emergency nurses. We sought to describe the self-perceived educational needs of...

Copyright © 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. The significant role entrepreneurial training plays in the success of entrepreneurs has been touted in the literature. This paper explores the idea of practical entrepreneurship training and skills development among African students. The primary objective is to establish the extent to which acquisition of practical entrepreneurial training in addition to the students’ course of study is beneficial to them. The findings revealed that practical...

Sustaining and Scaling Pedagogic Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Grounded Insights For Teacher Professional Development

Haßler, B., Hennessy, S., & Hofmann, R. - 2018 - Journal of Learning for Development, 5(1)

Developing sustainable and scalable educational initiatives is a key challenge in low-income countries where donor-funded short-term projects are limited by both contextual factors and programme design. In this commentary we examine some of the issues related to in-service teacher development in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, grounded predominantly in our work of over five years of iteratively developing, refining and evaluating an intensive school-based professional learning programme...

© 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: Entrepreneurship education thrives on the pillars of experiential education. Using the case of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, the purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurship clinic (EC) as a viable pedagogy for the promotion of experiential education in entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach: The paper relies on insider action research to analyse, within Joplin’s five-step model, the case of...

© 2017 African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development. An examination of the literature reveals that studies on new product development processes have been carried out mostly in western contexts using sequential models. This study was conducted using the innovation systems approach and a sequential model to analyze new product development processes in selected technical and vocational colleges in Nigeria. Using a questionnaire survey method, the sequential model revealed...

Using a randomized-control trial, this study evaluates a program designed to support Ghanaian kindergarten student-teachers during pre-service training through mentorship and in-classroom training. Several potential barriers to improved teaching quality and learning outcomes are examined. Findings show that the program improved knowledge and implementation of the national curriculum for individuals both when they were student-teachers and, the following year, when they became newly qualified...

© 2018 Elsevier Inc. In recent years, there has been an increase in the demand for and supply of early childhood education (ECE) in low- and middle-income countries. There is also growing awareness that unless ECE is of high quality, children may attend school but not learn. There is a large literature on the conceptualization and measurement of ECE quality in the United States that focuses on the nature of teacher-child interactions. Efforts to expand access to high quality ECE in low- and...

© 2017, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). All rights reserved. The 2014–2015 epidemic of Ebola virus disease in West Africa primarily affected Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Several countries, including Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal, experienced Ebola importations. Realizing the importance of a trained field epidemiology workforce in neighboring countries to respond to Ebola importations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Field Epidemiology Training Program unit...

The number of entrepreneurship education programs has grown worldwide in the last two decades. This has helped consolidate a fruitful line of research focusing on measuring the impact that these programs have on participating students' entrepreneurship potential. However, to date, these programs have almost exclusively centered on more developed countries. The present work, on the contrary, analyses the impact of an entrepreneurship promotion program carried out for a period of three years...

Abstract: As information and communication technology becomes a regular feature of the educational environment, it may be difficult for teaching and learning activities especially in TVET institutions to remain unchallenged. However, ICT application as a pedagogical tool in Nigerian TVET institutions is not a common practice and it also remains unclear how utilisation of ICT enhances pedagogy. This study is interested in the availability of electronic courses using ICT infrastructure in...

In recent years, organisations such as the African Development Bank (AfDB), and several African governments have conceded that TVET may have a positive impact on harnessing the youth dividend. There has been some progress in some countries, but there is still insufficient understanding of the place of TVET and youth skills development. The criticisms of TVET in the past, and attitudes toward it, coupled with a period of neglect by governments and donors have all resulted in insufficient...

This article describes a five country (Cameroun, Egypt, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania) study of ‘TVET Teacher Education in Africa’ that was commissioned in terms of an EU-South African collaboration in 2013. While the focus was on vocational teacher education, the contextual realities of each country‘s vocational systems was studied as this would impact on every aspect of vocational teacher development, for instance, what teachers would have to teach, who the students might be, how students...

This paper critically reviews the youth unemployment crisis in resource-rich Sub-Saharan Africa. Although the region has experienced continuous and a seemingly limitless flow of investment in all types of extractive industries in recent decades, this growth has not directly translated into significant poverty reduction. Its overdependence on natural resources economically seems to have had a negative impact on socioeconomic development overall, generating very few jobs for youth and...

Current instructional deliveries favour the use of mobile technology because of its inherent potentials and benefits such as portability, ease of use cost and others. Despite these benefits, many teachers especially in Sub-Saharan Africa still prefer the conventional method and use mobile phones for social engagements such as texting, chatting, callings and others. Though, these teachers use mobile phones for these social activities, using it for instruction is somewhat problematic for them...

This research sought to find out the challenges confronting the informal artisan training system in the Ghanaian construction industry and provide available opportunities to help improve the system. The study was limited to two regions namely Greater Accra and Volta regions of Ghana. In all, two hundred and thirty-three (233) artisans comprising of one hundred and thirteen (113) apprentices and one hundred and twenty (120) master artisans were used for the study. Questionnaires were the main...

Tablet use in schools: a critical review of the evidence for learning outcomes

Haßler, B., Major, L., & Hennessy, S. - 2016 - Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 32(2), 139–156

The increased popularity of tablets in general has led to uptake in education. We critically review the literature reporting use of tablets by primary and secondary school children across the curriculum, with a particular emphasis on learning outcomes. The systematic review methodology was used, and our literature search resulted in 33 relevant studies meeting the inclusion criteria. A total of 23 met the minimum quality criteria and were examined in detail (16 reporting positive learning...