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Abstract
Supervised work experience within courses of post-school education has grown rapidly over the last 40 years. A strong commitment to the principle of "sandwich" education has been matched in recent years by an increasing concern about how to manage the placement period to help the students involved to gain most value from the experience. Looks at the problem from the perspective of the academic institution. Specifically, it suggests an answer to the question: how can the academic institution manage the sandwich placement experience of students more effectively? Considers the application of a management development approach called action learning to support sandwich placement students and enhance their learning from the sandwich experience.
This article first appeared in Education + Training, Vol. 35 No. 7, 1993, p. 3-7.
Supervised work experience as an integral part of degree courses in Britain is, for the most part, a post-war phenomenon (Davies, 1990). Since the 1950s it has grown rapidly. According to the Association for Sandwich Education and Training (ASET) (1991) there were about 130,000 students enrolled on sandwich courses in 1991. In addition, supervised work experience is also part of the courses of teachers, doctors, dentists, social workers and those of other vocationally-oriented disciplines where, however, the term "sandwich course" is rarely used. Despite the recessions of the last decade commitment to sandwich education appears to be undiminished nationally.
Two influential reports on sandwich education (usually known as the "Rise Report") were produced by the Department of Education and Science (DES) and the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) during the mid-1980s. While supportive of the sandwich principle, they identified two main areas where improvements in the learning experience for placement students were desirable:
(1) Insufficient integration between the sandwich and the academic periods of the course(DES, 1985).
(2) The sandwich placement can be an excessively specialized experience(CNAA, 1985, p. 4, paras 1,7,2).
Since the mid-1980s there has been increasing interest in the management of supervised work experience. Ashworth and Saxton (1992) have pulled together the resulting fragmented literature. They have also reframed the key questions as:
* How can the placement be managed so that it is a genuine educational experience?
* What are the main roles of the tutor and the workplace supervisor?