Improving Workforce Education Learning Outcomes

Abstract

Despite numerous attempts over the past few decades to prepare the U.S. workforce for the increasing challenges of a global economy, educators hear the same complaints from industry about how difficult it is to find highly skilled workers. The growing need to have a higher level of education and different knowledge, skills, and attitudes than in the past brought on by globalization makes the task of preparing workers for tomorrow's workplace even more daunting. Whatever the reason for dropping out, many young people have clearly not responded to the attempt to educate them through full-time schooling, no matter how innovative the program. This chapter argues that more adolescents can be educated in a school system that no longer emphasizes full-time schooling but instead combines part-time school with part-time real-world work experience. To carry out such an approach, it may be time to expand our horizons in the search for solutions, and we can find some guidance in a rather unexpected place, the work of Soviet educator Anton Semyonovich Makarenko. Makarenko's success in training young people to become productive workers includes several concepts and methods that may be useful in improving today's workforce education system.