The chapter, which is an introduction to the book, discusses language features and ways of describing the phenomenon of cooperation between business and education, and attempts to describe the field of existing projects that require study and reflection. Some of these projects are described in this book. The objective of the book (and of this chapter as an introduction for this book) is to present the existing experience of such an interaction to the community concerned, to try to see together with the participants of the process, what works yet and what doesn't, what ins and outs appear during this interaction, and what are the positive effects of the cooperation. Such talk about existing practices of business and education interaction will let us discover trends, propose possible ways of collaborative work, and propose modes for further investigation of this phenomenon.
TopSome Language Patterns And Ways Of Description For Education And Business Interactions' Realizations
The surrounding life should enter the school... Or... The school should become open and give its students the opportunity to take part in the environment transformation processes... Or... Contemporary life should become the content of the studying process in the school... All these ideas criticizing the school that outlives before our eyes have appeared long ago. More than a hundred years ago these values formed the basis for new pedagogics, which was founded, in particular, by John Dewey (Dewey, 1916, 1938), and was realized in work experience of so-called “progressive schools”. However this practice didn't become inclusive; not only public schools find it difficult to implement the approach, but also private, experimental schools proceeding to look for ways of progressive education's implementation.
Yet the incoming new educational standards (Rogatkin & Andres, 2014) broadly orient the school to the close cooperation with the life and society surroundings. So now, basically, this practice should leave the area of experiment and become inclusive. That will be not an easy journey.
Unlikely that someone can “create” such a school “singly”, without the partners. In this context we don't suppose the society as a whole to be the partner, but we want to mark some real representatives, with which the school (education) may cooperate concretely. In the book we'll examine an experience of education and society interaction via examples of the partnership of school and business (as a part of society).
The last years clear trend is the active involvement of business community representatives in the development and implementation of various educational programs for school students. It is important to note that it is not a story only about participation in the financing of a given program. But also about the substantial partnership while developing and implementing of such programs, when business comes forward as the customer of the programs, as the considerable partner, and as the environment, the area of implementation of the program.
The educational programs for schoolmates that are realized with business participation can be as following: summer schools, championships on business-case solving, educational visits to enterprises, learning resource centers physically based at the enterprises, school projects, interdisciplinary learning immersions, weeks of high technologies, school technology park, interactive science museums, traineeships to the enterprises and so on.
Such partnership is particularly topical in a realization of STEAM-education programs, since the innovative business may act as
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A direct carrier, a manufacturer of modern technologies, which are the result of interdisciplinary research and project design, and are very interesting for the youth;
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An attractive environment of active engineer and social creativity;
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A headquarters of experts who help the teachers in program developing;
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A customer for students solutions, and also an area for the possible practical implementation of these solutions.
Beside this, it looks as though innovative business appears particularly to be one of the parties the most interested in the implementation of these educational programs since the youth is both the future talent pool for the innovative enterprises and the main consumer of their products and services. A now the business can already actually affect the education of this oncoming generation of workers and customers.
The objective of the book is to present the existing experience of such an interaction to the community concerned; to try to see together with the participants of the process, what works yet and what doesn't, what ins and outs appear during this interaction, and what are the positive effects of the cooperation. The book presents the experience of teachers and their business partners from the USA, Latvia, Russia, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand and other countries.
We hope that such talking about existing practices of business and education interaction will let us discover arising trends, propose possible ways of collaborative work and modes for further investigation of this phenomenon.
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