Assessing the need for a certification program for oceanographie professionals

The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center has developed a model for gathering information on the marine work force and providing educators and students with that information, along with educational experiences that help prepare students for ocean-related careers. One example of this model in action focuses on remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). With the help of professionals working in the field, the MATE Center has developed Knowledge and Skill Guidelines (KSGs) for ROV technicians. The Center has used its KSGs, and skill competencies identified from them, to guide the development of its subsea technology curricula, which includes the texts and accompanying instructor's handbook, "Introduction to Underwater Technology & Vehicle Design." The Mate Center has disseminated this curriculum to educators through faculty development institutes. These educators have incorporated their newly gained knowledge and experience into their classrooms, working with their students to design and build ROVs that many have entered into MATE-supported ROV competitions. These competitions are designed to provide students with real-world experience, highlight their learning, and connect them with employers and industry mentors. In this way, MATE's model is helping the Center to achieve its ultimate goal: to provide students with the skills and experiences to meet work force needs.

Despite our nation's increasing reliance on the ocean environment, students and educators are often unaware of ocean career opportunities and the knowledge and skills required to enter those careers (Sullivan et al., 2006; Sullivan, 2002). A consequence of this lack of awareness is a shortage of skilled individuals who can fill ocean workforce needs (MATE Forum, 1996; Zande & Sullivan, 2003). The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center and the Marine Technology Society's (MTS) ROV Committee created the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) competition to address this issue and bring ocean science and technology to students and educators across the U.S. and Canada. Since 2001, the MATE Center and the ROV Committee have engaged thousands of students and educators from middle schools through universities in developing ROVs for tasks based on real workplace situations. In doing so, the program has promoted ocean issues and careers, connected students and educators with employers and working professionals, and helped students to develop valuable technical, problem solving, and teamwork skills.

One of the most important changes in American higher education over the last 30 years has been the gradual shrinking of the old arts and sciences core of undergraduate education and the expansion of occupational and professional programs. Occupational fields have accounted for approximately 60% of bachelors’ degrees in recent years, up from 45% in the 1960s, and hundreds of institutions now award 80% or more of their degrees in these fields (Brint, 2001) The arts and sciences originated historically for the pursuit of knowledge “for its own sake” and, simultaneously, as the educational foundation for youths preparing to occupy positions of power and influence in society. They include the basic fields of science and scholarship, such as chemistry, economics, history, literature, mathematics, philosophy, and political science. By contrast, programs in occupational fields are designed to educate students for jobs—in business, education, engineering, nursing, public administration, and many others. These applied programs are often housed in their own professional schools or colleges distinct from colleges of arts and sciences. In this paper, we will sometimes refer to these programs collectively as the “practical arts,” a term

Statement of the problem. Improving the education system in Russia objectively acts as an essential part of the social policy of the state, as it influences the level and nature of social and personal life of each person, the formation of his/her conscious civic position and the formation of civil society as a whole. To date, the literature partially presents new experience in public administration of education and social partnership with the participation of education at the regional, municipal and secondary school levels. The main problems associated with the transition to public administration, in our opinion, are that there is a gap between the old institutional structure of the education system and new attempts to change educational institutions. The purpose of the article. The article is devoted to clarification of the nature of state and public administration in modern education in the context of the global goals enunciated in the “Forecast of long-term socio-economic development of the Russian Federation for the period till 2030” and indicators of the national project “Education” to find the means to improve administrative competence of heads of educational organizations in the field of public administration taking into account the requirements of the professional standard “PEDAGOG”. Research methodology. The research methodology is based on competence and system-activity approaches, the theory of public administration, the theory of social interaction and methods of scientific and pedagogical research: analysis, synthesis, systematization, generalization, and modeling. The article analyzes, systematizes and summarizes the Russian and foreign experience of public administration, identifies deficiencies in the training of heads of educational institutions for the implementation of public administration taking into account the requirements of professional standards. Theoretical and practice-oriented bases are defined for development of further professional programs (professional development and professional retraining) in KSPU named after V.P. Astafiev. Research results. Further professional programs are developed and tested for professional development of heads of educational organizations on state and public management implementation. Development of state and public cooperation on the basis of the secondary school system is to design, organize and develop the necessary institutions and forms of activity inside and outside the secondary school, in the selection of procedures for their successful functioning and development. The purpose of the further professional program “State and public management of preschool and general education organizations under transition to the Federal Education Standard and introduction of professional standards” is for students (i.e. management and teaching staff) to obtain competencies that ensure effective organization and activities of state and public administration to improve conditions for education and upbringing. Conclusion. Analyzing the results on assessment of further professional training programs for the heads of educational organizations on implementation of state and public administration, the authors come to the conclusion that their use in practice makes it possible to initiate and organize the management of an educational organization with participation of society, parents community, that provides openness, humanistic orientation, interested interaction and dialogue among the actors of the social and educational space.

Certification for Food Service Managers: A Survey of Current Opinion

Context:The Examination of Professional Degree Level document presented to the National Athletic Trainers' Association Board of Directors states that research in athletic training education has not investigated differences in the critical-thinking skills of professional athletic training students.Objective:Investigate the differences in critical thinking and other demographic variables across first-year athletic training students enrolled in professional bachelor's- and master's-degree programs.Design:Quantitative study.Setting:District 10 athletic training programs.Patients or Other Participants:Students (N = 40) enrolled within their first 6 months of a professional athletic training program were asked to complete the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST). Twelve first-year master's-degree students (8 female, 4 male) and 28 bachelor's-degree students (18 female, 10 male) completed the CCTST (age = 20.73 ± 3.09 years).Main Outcome Measure(s):Athletic training students in District 10 were asked to complete the CCTST during the first 6 months of their respective programs. Independent t tests were used to evaluate the difference in critical-thinking scores between professional master's- and bachelor's-degree athletic training students. A 1-way analysis of variance was conducted to determine differences in critical-thinking skills with regard to gender, age, and parental educational level.Results:There were no statistically significant differences in critical-thinking skills between bachelor's- and master's-degree athletic training students enrolled in a professional athletic training program (P = .991). Additionally, there were no statistically significant differences in critical-thinking skills with regard to gender (P = .156), age (P = .410), or parental education level (P = .156).Conclusions:The results suggest master's students do not have greater critical-thinking skills than professional bachelor's students before engaging in athletic training education. Therefore, as the professional degree of athletic training transitions to the graduate level, athletic training educators may need to investigate and use pedagogical practices that will graduate critically thinking athletic trainers.

Social marketing is an underused strategy that agricultural educators can employ to bring about behavior change. We designed an online certificate program for Extension professionals and other educators based on an identified need for social marketing professional development. The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) served as the conceptual framework and stages of concern explained changes in concerns among Cultivating Community Change online certificate program participants. The purpose of the study was to describe participants’ stages of concern profile before and after the certificate program and identify how participants’ perceptions changed as a result of involvement in the certificate program. We collected quantitative data using the stages of concern questionnaire and qualitative data from participants’ open-ended discussion answers. Participation in the certificate program moved participants to advanced stages of concerns for application of social marketing in their work. The certificate program helped to broaden participants’ understanding and application of this technique and changed their perceptions positively toward social marketing. We consider the certificate program successful, and we recommend agricultural education professionals use online certificate programs to build Extension professionals’ and other educators’ skills to change behavior of their target audiences.

Reviewed by: Acting in the Academy: The History of Professional Actor Training in US Higher Education by Peter Zazzali Chase Bringardner Acting in the Academy: The History of Professional Actor Training in US Higher Education. By Peter Zazzali. New York: Routledge, 2016; pp. 236. In Acting in the Academy: The History of Professional Actor Training in US Higher Education, Peter Zazzali offers a critical contribution to ongoing discourse on the role, structure, and purpose of acting training programs located within US academic institutions. Relying upon an extensive archive of materials, he traces the rise and significance of the League of Professional Theatre Training Programs, and uses this rich historical context to argue for curricular change. Specifically, Zazzali calls on contemporary acting programs to embrace a different, more entrepreneurial model that empowers actors within the “given circumstances” of this particular contemporary moment. Zazzali’s book is both a groundbreaking historical work and a future-looking treatise that will be an invaluable resource for professors and acting students alike as they seek to determine the trajectories of acting training for the next fifty years. As the author states in his introduction, this book is primarily a history of the “‘professional’ training of actors in US higher education,” an underrepresented chapter in the larger history of acting technique in the United States (5). Throughout the work Zazzali strengthens his argument by consistently reminding his readers of the parameters of his study. He asserts the league’s legacy as the most important to the development of acting technique in the country since the Group Theatre of the 1930s. He thus places the league and its professional training programs within the larger narrative both of acting training in higher education and the development of US acting technique in general. Zazzali bookends the core of his historical analysis with more polemic chapters. His opening chapter on the challenges facing actor training today establishes the stakes for his examination, while his concluding chapter suggests a pathway forward for acting programs to consider for the future. While he is careful to note that his work does not “substantially address important issues regarding race, gender, age, social class, disabilities, and sexual identity relative to American acting training” (5), he does couch his assessment of contemporary actor training and call for change within some economic and social systems. For example, he discusses the impact of celebrity on standards or measures of actor success. Zazzali skillfully positions these concerns as a result of a continued reliance upon a league-training approach that fails to take into account the realities or “given circumstances” of the contemporary performance landscape. These concerns lead him ultimately to argue for an emphasis on entrepreneurship as a way of cultivating skills in young actors to empower them to create their own opportunities, defy the celebrity system, and redefine the very measures of a successful career. To arrive at these conclusions, Zazzali investigates US actor training from various angles. In the second chapter he examines the creation of the league out of the seeds of the Stanislavski system. The league focused on a psychophysical approach that combined the psychological approaches of Stanislavski with the physical training found in Barba or Growtowski. The newly formed league schools of the early 1970s became crucibles for the teaching of these techniques and the creation of a generation of actors prepared for work in regional theatres. Yet, as Zazzali importantly reminds us, this relationship between the league and regional theatres was often not simpatico. To illustrate this uneasy relationship, he uses chapter 3 to place the league within the sociohistorical context of the 1960s in order to provide the groundwork for the fraught relationship between professional training programs and the US university system. Specifically, he details specific moments, such as conferences, speeches, and grants awarded, to show the incremental steps that led to the standards and practices established for these emerging programs. After establishing that the newly formed league (in 1971) created eleven programs in its first year as an incorporated body, Zazzali transitions in chapter 4 to specific case studies of three disparate representative models of the league: Carnegie Mellon, Julliard, and American Conservatory Theater. These case studies represent an appropriate...

The past few decades have seen a growing interest in teacher leadership development worldwide. However, there is a need for more empirical research to understand how professional certification programs make teachers leaders, what roles teacher leaders play and what challenges they encounter. This study addresses these questions by examining the perceptions of eight professionally certified teachers working at a Government College in Bangladesh. As a qualitative study, participants were selected through purposive and snowball sampling, and a self-developed semi-structured interview schedule was used to collect the data. Data were then analyzed thematically. The findings reveal that professional certification programs significantly contribute to making teachers as leaders, enhancing their pedagogical, professional, research, and collaborative skills compared to their prior positions. In addition, these professionally certified teacher leaders motivate students for better careers and organize seminars, symposiums, and workshops to improve their achievement, inspire colleagues to pursue higher degrees, exchange innovative teaching approaches with them for their professional development, and work on academic committees and research cells, provide valuable insights for overall college improvement. However, the study found that professionally certified teachers face challenges such as a top-down leadership approach, a lack of collaborative college culture, external political pressure, limited financial incentives for pursuing degrees, and a lack of desirable postings to complete the professional certification programs. In contrast to previous literature, the study did not find a lack of time among the professionally certified teachers to perform leadership roles. This study sheds new light on developing teacher leadership through professional certification programs and providing insights for principals and policymakers on how certified teachers contribute to overall college improvement. Future research should focus on the impact of teacher professional certifications on student achievement, colleagues’ professional development, and overall college improvement from students’, colleagues’ and principals’ perspectives.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to build a theoretical model of how and what clinical psychologists learn from service user and carer involvement in their training. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative research design was adopted, and verbatim transcripts of semi-structured interviews conducted with 12 clinical psychologists were analysed using grounded theory methodology. Findings – Findings indicated that clinical psychologists learned from service user and carer involvement in a variety of ways and a preliminary model was proposed, encompassing four main categories: “mechanisms of learning”, “relational and contextual factors facilitating learning”, “relational and contextual factors hindering learning” and “impact”. Research limitations/implications – Further research is required to establish to what extent the current findings may be transferrable to learning from service user and carer involvement in the context of educating professionals from other disciplines. Additionally, participants had limited experiences of carer involvement, and more research in this area specifically would be useful. Practical implications – This study advocates for service user and carer involvement in clinical psychology training, and specific recommendations are discussed, including service user perspectives. Originality/value – Service user and carer involvement has become mandatory in Health Care Professional Council-approved training programmes for mental health professionals, yet if and how learning occurs is poorly understood in this context. This study makes an important contribution in evaluating outcomes of service user and carer involvement in clinical psychology training by advancing theoretical understanding of the learning processes involved. The authors are unaware of similar work.

Healthcare professionals often encounter moral dilemmas in clinical practice that require increased responsibility and accountability for ethical decision‐making. This paper reports the results of a 6‐year longitudinal study that explored changes in moral judgement of five consecutive cohorts of occupational therapy (OT) and physical therapy (PT) students over the course of their professional training. The training programme included an ethics education component. The Defining Issues Test (DIT) developed at the University of Minnesota was used to measure moral judgement. A total of 548 students participated in the study. At entry into their professional training, the DIT scores of the OT and PT students were similar but higher overall than the norms established for college level students or for graduates from professional programmes in the DIT standardization sample. At the time of graduation, results showed no significant differences in moral judgement scores between males and females, their chosen programme of study (OT or PT), year of entry, or previous education. Comparing entry scores to exit scores from both programmes for 288 students who provided data at both times, we found that moral judgement scores increased significantly in both OT and PT students over the 2‐year programme of study. No differences were found in scores across gender, programme, year of entry, or previous education. Implications are discussed for including a formal ethics education component in the curricula of all health professional training programmes. Recommendations for future research are outlined.

The author of this article characterizes the role of selective educational components in the professional training of future teachers of the Ukrainian language and literature in the master’s degree. It was found that one of the ways of forming the individual educational trajectory of a student is the mastering of selective educational components aimed at improving general and professional competencies defined in the educational and professional program. The procedures for the development and selection of the specified educational components are outlined in university regulations, in particular, it is stated that they should cover 25% of the total volume of ECTS credits planned by the relevant educational and professional program. Analysis of educational activities for the implementation of the educational and professional program 014.01 Secondary education. Ukrainian language and literature in the master’s program of the T. H. Shevchenko National University «Chernihiv Colehium» made it possible to characterize selective components from cycles of general and professional training. It was established that those seeking higher education should master three academic disciplines of the cycle of general training and five academic disciplines of the cycle of professional training, which are evenly distributed within three semesters. The author of the article characterizes those educational disciplines that are particularly popular among future teachers of the Ukrainian language and literature, in particular: “Pedagogical rhetoric”, “Basics of academic integrity”, “Artistic systems in Ukrainian literature of the 20th-21st centuries”, “Literature of the Siver region in historical-typological context”, “Technologies of studying theoretical and literary concepts in high school”, “Ukrainian language in scientific and pedagogical communication”. It has been established that educational disciplines that have a practical direction and may be needed during professional activities are particularly popular among future teachers. It is noted that teachers of university in the process of developing selective educational components try to take into account branch and regional aspects. Key words: professional training, educational component, educational and professional program, educational discipline, future teachers of the Ukrainian language and literature, master’s degree.

PurposeThis study aims to explore and identify potential challenges and prospects for conducting the professional shariah audit training programme via an e-learning approach during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaires were administered to 296 participants who were enrolled in the professional shariah audit training programme via e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020. These participants were final-year students from selected Malaysian public universities.FindingsFindings show that several main challenges are faced in adopting an e-learning approach for conducting the professional shariah audit training programme such as the inability to do more hands-on, group and physical activities, different understandings based on academic backgrounds, difficulty in learning practical and technical topics, technical issues and problems during e-learning sessions. These lead to the unsuitability of conducting professional training via the e-learning approach. In terms of prospects of knowledge learnt via the e-learning approach, participants showed that they are able to master all six modules covered in the professional shariah audit training programme via the e-learning approach. These include (1) shariah principles; (2) shariah governance; (3) Islamic financial transactions; (4) shariah risk management; (5) shariah audit planning and programme; and (6) shariah audit fieldwork and communication.Practical implicationsBased on the findings, it is suggested to have more time spent and earlier preparation on the learning contents and sessions, more discussion on actual contents and practical exercises and competency of the trainers in delivering e-learning sessions.Originality/valueThis study is believed to be one among the pioneering studies on the potential challenges and prospects in adopting e-learning for conducting the professional shariah audit training programme due to COVID-19.

There has been rapid growth in recent years in operational oceanographic activities, especially in association with the growth in ocean observing systems. At the same time, the attention given by the public to ocean issues has greatly increased. These factors along with the increasing complexity and multidisciplinary nature of oceanography suggest that the need for certification of oceanographic professionals may also be increasing (e.g., in association with coastal development, natural disasters, ocean pollution, declining fish stocks). Certification is a way to recognize that an individual has demonstrated professional competence and integrity in an occupational field.

The issues are considered related to providing mining enterprises with the engineering personnel capable of managing mining and blasting operations. At present, not all the mining enterprises have a full staff of specialists and managers who are legally entitled to manage mining and blasting operations. Some employees who previously had such a right, after changes in the legal framework, ceased to meet the new requirements. The analysis is presented concerning the competencies required to perform these production functions, as well as educational programs that allow acquiring these competencies. The importance of professional retraining programs for solving these problems and the imperfection of the modern regulatory framework, which practically excludes the possibility of obtaining the right to manage mining and blasting operations, even after professional retraining for persons with a higher technical education in a non-mining profile, are shown in the article. An integrated approach is proposed for resolving the issues of the admissibility of obtaining the right to manage mining and blasting operations by these persons considering a number of factors: basic education, work experience and positions held at a mining enterprise, completed training in programs of additional education and professional retraining. Such programs should be developed and implemented by the organizations with experience in training mining engineers and having a license from Rosobrnadzor for the right to implement programs not only for additional professional education, but also for higher professional mining education. The need is substantiated in developing professional standards for managers of mining and blasting operations at the enterprises for the extraction of solid minerals. Recommendations were developed for amending the federal rules and regulations in the field of industrial safety in order to ensure the possibility of using professional retraining programs for training and final certification of the managers of mining and blasting operations.