Technical and Vocational Education for Zimbabwe’s Rural Development: Issues and Concerns
The main purpose of this paper is to highlight some issues and concerns in the Zimbabwean educational system in general, and in particular, issues and concerns within the purview for technical and vocational education. The paper will further provoke debate within the context of technical and vocational education as a strategy geared for rural development. The paper, therefore, will analyse policies and practices and will further examine their implications, with a view to making recommendations for directing technical and vocational education towards rural development in Zimbabwe.
Vocational Education and Training: the Japanese approach
Given the astonishing success of Japan's economy since it was rebuilt after the end of the Second World War, it is inevitable that its principal competitors, the United States and the developed countries of Western Europe, should seek to analyse the reasons for that success and, where appropriate, emulate them. One important contributory factor is undoubtedly the system of Japanese vocational education and training and it is perhaps surprising that very little indeed has been written on this subject by British educationists and industrial trainers, though the sheer distance between Britain and Japan to some extent inhibits the acquisition of first-hand knowledge. During the last few years, however, a few articles on the subject have appeared in British journals [1] and, very recently, the Institute of Manpower Studies in Britain has produced a report on vocational education and training policies in Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States [2]. The United States, on the other hand, has long exhibited the keenest interest in Japanese vocational education and training. There are various reasons for this interest: the growth of the Japanese economy has caused increasing alarm in the United States; as a result of the American occupation of Japan after the war, the structure of the Japanese educational system is closely modelled on that of the United States and close links have been established between the two countries; and the shorter distance between them makes Japan more accessible to Americans than to British. As a consequence, numerous books and articles on the Japanese system of education and training have been published in the United States during the past 20 years. Recent articles in American journals which give succinct accounts of the Japanese approach to vocational education and training include those by Dillon & Rehder [3]. In addition, some very useful booklets and articles by Japanese authorities, especially those by Ishikawa & Suzuki [4], are available from official Japanese sources such as the Japan Information Centre in London. Finally, the National Institute for Educational Research in Tokyo issues reports and publications on virtually all aspects of the Japanese education system, including a very informative paper on Japanese education and industrial development by Collins [5], an Australian educationist. This article is based partly on these sources, and partly on discussions with leading Japanese educationists and visits to vocational training institutions in and around the Tokyo area in the course of a visit to Japan by the author in the Spring of 1984.
Measurement and Demonstration of Thermal Expansion Coefficient
There are many classroom demonstrations, such as the ball-and-ring experiment, for showing the existence of thermal expansion of solids. The coefficient of linear expansion α (= increase in length divided by the original length times the change in temperature) may be measured in high school laboratories using a number of methods.1–4 In this paper we describe an especially simple experiment for determining α for a metal rod. It is based on the well-known optical lever method and is suitable for either a laboratory experiment or a classroom exercise.