No description available.

This thesis uses a number of sources to piece together evidence of working-class reading habits during the period 1850 to 1914: autobiographies, library borrowing records, middle-class contemporary observations, and answers to correspondents pages in popular periodicals. Middle-class dominance of literary production through the publishing industry, librarians, editors, and book reviews helped to shape working class autobiographical representations of reading. Literary conventions of autobiographies limit them as a source. By portraying the authors' life as a success story the genre puts greater emphasis on the reading of accepted classics and canonical works. Studies of two early libraries show how notions of class and gender affected the provision of texts in libraries. Later records prove that reading for leisure purposes had increased dramatically over the period from 1850 to 1914 and that juvenile literature was popular even with adult readers. Changes in the publishing industry and the popularity of genres are reflected in the library stock. An alternative source confirms these trends. The answers to correspondence pages of the London Journal, Reynolds' Newspaper and the Family Herald reveal that a number of common readers wanted to read in order to better themselves socially and intellectually. A popularised version of autodidact culture was both promoted and sought in the pages of popular periodicals. The thesis concludes that two distinct trends in reading are evident through the period: reading for self-improvement subtly shaped by autodidact culture, and an increase in leisure reading

Cheung Kai-chee. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Bibliography: leaves [32]-[36] (2d group)

Both individual characteristics and organizational internal structure are significantly related to employees' participation in both kind of education and training, namely the firm-provided as well as self-chosen and paid education and training outside the firm. Those employees who are male and younger, those who are at higher end of job hierarchy, those who experienced more internal mobility, are more likely to participate in both kinds of education and training. They take the advantage of both kinds of education and training programs. / Cases of this study include 31736 employees from 410 enterprises, randomly sampled at China's county level from different regions in terms of economical development. Multilevel logistic regression was employed to model the impact of region, firm and individual characteristic on employees' participation in adult education and training. Dependent variables are classified in three groups in this study: (a) those employees who participated in the training provided by firm only, (b) those employees who participated in self-chosen and self-paid adult education and training outside firm only, and (c) those employees who participated in both two kinds of adult education and training. / In regard to employees' participation in firm provided training only, the labor market structural factors and the firms' internal organizational structure had the most explaining power, between these two firms' internal market characteristics had greater impact. A job position that an employee obtained is his/her niche in the labor market. The characteristics of an internal market is decisive for allocating training opportunities. Those employees at a position in advantage are likely to participate in firm supported training. That is, the higher an employee is at occupational hierarchy, the longer a person has worked in current firm, the greater the extent to which an employee has experienced changes in the workplace, the more likely that employee would take part in firm provided training. / In the context of global market and knowledge economy development, adult education and training are regarded as an important factor in keeping economic growth in China. They also become a means for individuals to acquire knowledge, skills and to enhance human capital, thus improving their ability in the job market. / In the fast-growing market-oriented economy in China, many employees have been involved in job-related education and training of various kinds. In the transition from the planned to a market economy, firms are more autonomous in the organization of production, and individuals are free to pursue their occupational aspirations. Firms and individual started to take responsibilities to invest in education and training in order to acquire competence. It is interesting to study who participate in adult education and training as an opportunity to update job skills. It is important to understand if that would have implications in improving the workforce quality. / The empirical analyses supported the hypothesis that employees' participation in adult education and training is determined by both individual characteristics and multi-level labor market structures. Both employees and their firms are embedded in certain social structure that could be facilitating or constraining in terms of making educational opportunities available to firms and individual employees. The findings clearly show that patterns of the three groups of independent variables having impact on the three types of participation choices vary. / These findings show that employees' participation in education and training is related to individual characteristics acquired before entering the labor market, and it is also related to the characteristics of labor market. Making education and training available for employees has become a practice to improve competence, which is vital to maintain sustainability. Therefore, it should give consideration to improving equality of participation for different groups of employees and reducing disparity between regions. A mechanism is necessary to coordinate education and training among sectors, such including education, economic sector and the government administration for the workforce. That would encourage the exchange of information between sectors and improve cooperation in developing programs for the workforce. In such a way, adult education and training can play an important role and meet skill training needs for different social groups. / This thesis takes employees' participation in education and training for a study. It is focused on the following research questions: Who had an opportunity to participate in adult education and training during the economic reform in mainland China? What are the factors affecting employees' participation? Based on human capital theory, labor market segmentation theory and organization theory, it is hypothesized that employees' individual characteristics, the firms' internal structural characteristics, and the firms' characteristics in relations to labor market all these multi-level factors have impact on employees' participation in adult education and training. Independent variables are accordingly deduced into three groups. Individual characteristics are those achieved status possessed by employees before entering into the labor market, include age, gender, marital status, initial education level. Characteristics of the firms' internal labor market is represented by the employees' job related characteristics in terms of job position, work experience in years, mobility, and the extent an employee experienced the firms' reform. An employee acquired these work-related attributes after having entered the firm, or being selected by a firm if one's individual characteristics were considered matching in the workplace. Finally, firms' characteristics, reflecting firms' attributes as compared to other firms in the market system, would affect resource allocation and labor requirements. These variables include firm size, the average education year of employee with in firm, the overall mobility of a firm's internal labor market, types of ownership, and the economic industrial sector that the firm belongs to. / Whether an employee has participated in self-paid adult education is an interaction of individual characteristics and labor market structure. Those employees who are male, younger, and who had senior secondary education are likely to participate in self-paid adult education. In regard to one's decision of participating in self-paid adult education or not, it mostly related to one's own individual characteristics. As an employee is embedded in the firm and then the firm embedded in the large labor market, his or her action is affected by the labor market structure, too, but those are the secondary factors. / 王蕊. / 呈交日期: 2006年2月. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2006. / 參考文獻(p. 213-232 ). / Cheng jiao ri qi: 2006 nian 2 yue. / Advisers: Jin Xiao; Nai-Kwai Lo. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4067. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Lun wen (zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2006. / Can kao wen xian (p. 213-232 ). / Wang Rui.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education. / With the rise of the independent trade union movement since 1973, immense importance has been attached to worker education. The growth of the union movement created the space and provided the resources for workers to assert an independent cultural practice in which worker education plays pivotal role. Intense debate has raged within the union movement over the content, of this education, the way it is to be provided, who the recipients should be and whether it fulfils its perceived aim. There exists general consensus though that worker education has been integral to the development of the labour movement. Yet, there is no comprehensive study of worker education in South Africa. Such a study is even more necessary today as attempts are made to address the historical deficiencies in the South African education system, This report therefore is a small contribution toward understanding worker education and the importance of its role not only for the Labour: movement but for society at large. (Abbreviation abstract) / Andrew Chakane 2019

Abstract not available

Because of the increased number of large corporations offering tuition-aid programs to their employees, there is a need to collect data and study the motivation for participation and barriers to participation for this population. A questionnaire, with items identifying motivational factors and barriers to participation in tuition-aid programs, was developed and sent to a sample of employees of a major corporation who do and who do not participate in that corporation's tuition-aid program. This study found that cost and time considerations are overwhelmingly cited as the chief barriers for participants and nonparticipants. Barriers identified as significant by both participants and nonparticipants were examined through a review of literature as to possible solutions to their elimination. The chief decision-makers in the 23 operating companies of the corporation rated each of the recommendations as to their feasibility in being implemented. The decision-makers rated prepayment and paying for material costs as the two lowest possible solutions they would consider implementing in order to reduce the barriers. What emerges clearly is the point that management must take a hard look at their present policies that appear to be barriers to participation in tuition-aid programs. The researcher developed a set of final recommendations along with a rationale for each. / Ed. D.

No description available.

Workers' education, a form of adult education, emphasized the study of economic and social problems from the workers' perspective. When the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) created its adult education program in 1933, workers' education classes were included. Between 1933 and 1943 thirty-six states participated in the federal experiment in workers' education. Seventeen of these states, including Indiana, were involved throughout the entire ten years of the program. With as many as two thousand teachers employed at one time, officials conservatively estimated that the program reached at least one million workers nation-wide.Three distinct phases of a federal workers' education program existed: FERA (1933-1935), Works Progress Administration (WPA--prior to separation from the other adult education programs, 1935-1939), and WPA Workers' Service Program (1939-1943). In separate chapters these phases of federal workers' education are examined from both the federal and state perspectives.FERA and WPA workers' education stimulated educational activities within the labor movement. For example, in Indiana this program was particularly popular among the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions. Federal workers' education activities also encouraged union-university cooperation and laid the foundation for labor education at Indiana University. In addition, the WPA Workers'' Service Program served as the model for a Federal Labor Extension Service, similar to the existing federal agricultural extension program, that, for reasons beyond the scope of this study, was never implemented.If nothing else, the FERA and WPA workers' education projects put thousands of unemployed people to work and helped the morale of both the relief recipients and the adults who attended classes. Never supported at levels necessary to reach a majority of the population, federal aid to workers' education was, at the very least, a sincere attempt by liberal relief administrators,educators, and labor leaders to serve the educational needs of American workers.Government documents, correspondence, and manuscript collections from the National Archives, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, and Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, constitute the basic sources for this paper.

This thesis is a re-evaluation of a movement founded to provide what Samuel Smiles called “the road to learning” for workers in the nineteenth century. Mechanics’ institutes emerged during the 1820s to both criticism and acclaim, becoming part of the physical and intellectual fabric of the age and inspiring a nationwide building programme funded entirely by public subscription. Beginning with a handful of examples in major British cities, they eventually spread across the Anglophone world. They were at the forefront of public engagement with arts, science and technology. This thesis is a history of the mechanics’ institute movement in the British Isles from the 1820s through to the late 1860s, when State involvement in areas previously dominated by private enterprises such as mechanics’ institutes, for example library provision and elementary schooling, became more pronounced. The existing historiography on mechanics’ institutes is primarily regional in scope and this thesis breaks new ground by synthesising a national perspective on their wider social, political and cultural histories. It contributes to these broader themes, as well as areas as diverse as educational history, the history of public exhibition and public spaces, visual culture, print culture, popular literacy and literature (including literature generated by the Institutes themselves, such as poetry and prose composed by members), financial services, education in cultural and aesthetic judgement, Institutes as sources of protest by means of Parliamentary petitions, economic history, and the nature, theory and practice of the popular dissemination of ideas. These advances free the thesis from ongoing debate around the success or failure of mechanics’ institutes, allowing the emphasis to be on the experiential history of the “living” Institute. The diverse source base for the thesis includes art, sculpture, poetry and memoir alongside such things as economic data, library loan statistics, membership numbers and profit / loss accounts from institute reports. The methodology therefore incorporates qualitative (for example, tracing the evolution of attitudes towards Institutes in contemporary culture by analysing the language used to describe them over time) and quantitative (for example, exploring Institutes as providers of financial services to working people) techniques. For the first time, mechanics’ institutes are studied in relation to political corruption, debates concerning the morality of literature and literacy during the nineteenth century, and the legislative processes of the period.