Regulating Work Experience Programs in the Greek Post-Secondary Education: The Case of Traineeships

The smooth transition of young people to the labor market and their competency in successfully planning and developing their careers constitute key aims of all modern education systems. The implementation of work placements plays an important role in the realization of these aims by enhancing the communication between the education providers and the world of work, and by contributing to the development of professionally oriented competences by young learners. The paper focuses on traineeships, a particular type of work placement, which is implemented by post-secondary education institutions in Greece. A traineeship includes a variety of training processes with clear objectives and predetermined assessment strategies, which help trainees to gain professional skills and experience through an experiential process. Its ability to exercise a strong influence on the professional prospects of young people led many education institutions to integrate traineeship opportunities in their study program either as a compulsory component or as a non-mandatory option. The paper analyses the traineeship component of the study programs of three post-secondary education institutions in Greece, i.e. Institutes of Vocational Training (IVTs), Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Technological Educational Institutes (TEIs). More analytically, the paper investigates the legislative provisions concerning the organization and implementation of student traineeships, and records the evolution of the particular learning option over the years. In addition, it attempts to identify indications of interaction between post-secondary education institutions as regards the organization and the particular features of student traineeship schemes, which may imply the development of mutual learning. The paper concludes by articulating some remarks regarding the implementation of traineeships in Greek post-secondary institutions and the improvement of their organizational and operational characteristics.

Regulating Work Experience Programs in the Greek Post-Secondary Education: The Case of Traineeships

The smooth transition of young people to the labor market and their competency in successfully planning and developing their careers constitute key aims of all modern education systems. The implementation of work placements plays an important role in the realization of these aims by enhancing the communication between the education providers and the world of work, and by contributing to the development of professionally oriented competences by young learners. The paper focuses on traineeships, a particular type of work placement, which is implemented by post-secondary education institutions in Greece. A traineeship includes a variety of training processes with clear objectives and predetermined assessment strategies, which help trainees to gain professional skills and experience through an experiential process. Its ability to exercise a strong influence on the professional prospects of young people led many education institutions to integrate traineeship opportunities in their study program either as a compulsory component or as a non-mandatory option. The paper analyses the traineeship component of the study programs of three post-secondary education institutions in Greece, i.e. Institutes of Vocational Training (IVTs), Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Technological Educational Institutes (TEIs). More analytically, the paper investigates the legislative provisions concerning the organization and implementation of student traineeships, and records the evolution of the particular learning option over the years. In addition, it attempts to identify indications of interaction between post-secondary education institutions as regards the organization and the particular features of student traineeship schemes, which may imply the development of mutual learning. The paper concludes by articulating some remarks regarding the implementation of traineeships in Greek post-secondary institutions and the improvement of their organizational and operational characteristics.

This time without ‘feeling’: Children’s intuitive theories of art as a logical basis for learning progression in visual arts

Learning in Visual Arts has traditionally been framed as an experiential process in which feeling and intuition complement the development of aesthetic knowledge. However, while art can be about feelings and processes that develop students’ expressive capacities, the complexity of art understanding and thinking extends beyond this narrow common-sense assumption. I argue that this assumption, which is represented in the Australian Curriculum: The Arts (ACARA, 2015), and even more firmly resonates in recent proposals for the revision of this curriculum (ACARA, 2021), obfuscates the conceptual and theoretical bases on which students make progress in art understanding. This paper examines the proposition that art understanding emerges progressively and can be described in conceptual terms, the basis of which can be identified in empirical research on the emergence of children’s intuitive theories of art. This paper examines how selected studies articulate the cognitive grounds on which students’ ontologies of art and epistemological beliefs are represented in their reasoning about art over time. It is argued that an empirically supported conception of learning anchored in students’ cognitive development in art that recognises the theoretical commitments underscoring their conceptual and practical reasoning in visual arts practices K–12 provides a logical basis for articulating progression in the subject.

Curating light: daylight-centric design for promoting wellness

Daylighting in architecture has traditionally been a practice-based, intuitive and experiential process, based on the common notion that daylight enhances our spatial and sensory awareness. This Thesis tests the effectiveness of daylight as a mechanism for creating a psychological and emotional impact, and promoting wellness within the confines of designed spaces. The creation of the project is based on a Maggie’s Cancer Centre model of patient-centric design. Maggie’s Centers have been traditionally located in suburban settings, where they may be ideally oriented for day-light infiltration and outdoor connectivity. The Maggie’s model promotes three primary design factors: i) abundance of daylight, ii) connection to nature, and iii) a de-institutionalized environment. The design project was purposefully situated within the specific constraint of an urban environment, in downtown Toronto, Ontario; where the goal is to achieve a spatial character that embodies these three design factors where daylight and access to views of nature are limited by the urban context. The project demonstrates a method of daylight centric design that utilizes three primary techniques for daylighting that were extracted from precedent analysis: i) Direct light, ii) Bounced light, and iii) Diffused light. Through the methodical harvesting and manipulation of daylight, the project highlights its potential for positively enhancing patient experience and aptly demonstrates the curation of varied experiential narratives in light.

Curating light: daylight-centric design for promoting wellness

Daylighting in architecture has traditionally been a practice-based, intuitive and experiential process, based on the common notion that daylight enhances our spatial and sensory awareness. This Thesis tests the effectiveness of daylight as a mechanism for creating a psychological and emotional impact, and promoting wellness within the confines of designed spaces. The creation of the project is based on a Maggie’s Cancer Centre model of patient-centric design. Maggie’s Centers have been traditionally located in suburban settings, where they may be ideally oriented for day-light infiltration and outdoor connectivity. The Maggie’s model promotes three primary design factors: i) abundance of daylight, ii) connection to nature, and iii) a de-institutionalized environment. The design project was purposefully situated within the specific constraint of an urban environment, in downtown Toronto, Ontario; where the goal is to achieve a spatial character that embodies these three design factors where daylight and access to views of nature are limited by the urban context. The project demonstrates a method of daylight centric design that utilizes three primary techniques for daylighting that were extracted from precedent analysis: i) Direct light, ii) Bounced light, and iii) Diffused light. Through the methodical harvesting and manipulation of daylight, the project highlights its potential for positively enhancing patient experience and aptly demonstrates the curation of varied experiential narratives in light.

The Experiential Meaning of Dancow Advertisements

Experiental process is a part of systemic functional linguistics, a theory of language that is oriented to the description of how language makes meaning in context. Systemic functional grammar views language as a resource for making meaning. This research was conducted to investigate the types of experiential meaning and the most dominant of experiential meaning used in Dancow advertisements in 1983, 1986, 2003, 2010 and 2014. This study was conducted by applying a descriptive qualitative method. Data were taken from television, websites and magazines. The relational process was found to be dominant, with a value of 40%, and it occurred 16 times. The material process had a value of 27.5% and was used 11 times. The mental process was on the third level with 25% and was used 10 times. Finally, the behavioral, verbal and existential process had the lowest percentage with 2.5% and was used 1 time. Keywords: Experiential Process, advertisement, mass media

Ethnography as thrownness and the face of the sufferer

This article provides a self-reflexive account of ethnographic research conducted on the outskirts of Burj Al Brajneh, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, run by Hezbollah. It focuses on ethnographic research conducted with a Syrian refugee family including the mother, father and three children. The research is well captured, in hindsight, by Sarah Pink’s definition of ethnography as a ‘reflexive and experiential process through which academic and applied understanding, knowing and knowledge are produced’. The article demonstrates how the ethnographer’s experience with the refugee children was marked, regardless of long and diligent preparations, by several dislocations: methodological, sensorial and epistemic. The ethnographer pursued a non-media-centric approach allowing him to explore both the refugee family’s media uses as well as the lived, everyday conditions that marked their media uses. The primary aim of the article is three-pronged: (a) to provide an ethnographic description and analysis of the media worlds in a Hizbullah area in South Beirut, (b) to analyse media uses and aesthetics of violence in the context of war/refugees’ lives and (c) to theorise using the Heideggerian concept of thrownness, the entangled and affective regime that emerges during the ethnographic encounter.