MANAGEMENT

Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it be a business, a not-for-profit organization, or government body. Management includes the activities of setting the strategy of an organization and coordinating the efforts of its employees or volunteers to accomplish its objectives through the application of available resources, such as financial, natural, technological, and human resources. The term "management" may also refer to the people who manage an organization.

Management is also an academic discipline, a social science whose objective is to study social organization and organizational leadership. Management is studied at colleges and universities; some important degrees in management are the Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com.) and Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) and, for the public sector, the Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree. Individuals who aim at becoming management researchers or professors may complete the Doctor of Management (DM), the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA), or the PhD in Business Administration or Management.

In larger organizations, there are generally three levels of managers, which are typically organized in a hierarchical, pyramid structure. Senior managers, such as the Board of Directors, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or President of an organization, set the strategic goals of the organization and make decisions on how the overall organization will operate. Senior managers provide direction to the middle managers who report to them. Middle managers, examples of which would include branch managers, regional managers and section managers, provide direction to front-line managers. Middle managers communicate the strategic goals of senior management to the front-line managers. Lower managers, such as supervisors and front-line team leaders, oversee the work of regular employees (or volunteers, in some voluntary organizations) and provide direction on their work.

Theoretical scope

Management involves identifying the mission, objective, procedures, rules and manipulation[3] of the human capital of an enterprise to contribute to the success of the enterprise.[citation needed] This implies effective communication: an enterprise environment (as opposed to a physical or mechanical mechanism) implies human motivation and implies some sort of successful progress or system outcome.[citation needed] As such, management is not the manipulation of a mechanism (machine or automated program), not the herding of animals, and can occur either in a legal or in an illegal enterprise or environment. Management does not need to be seen from enterprise point of view alone, because management is an essential function to improve one's life and relationships.[citation needed] Management is therefore everywhere[citation needed] and it has a wider range of application.[clarification needed] Based on this, management must have humans, communication, and a positive enterprise endeavor.[citation needed] Plans, measurements, motivational psychological tools, goals, and economic measures (profit, etc.) may or may not be necessary components for there to be management. At first, one views management functionally, such as measuring quantity, adjusting plans, meeting goals.[citation needed] This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Henri Fayol (1841–1925)[4][page needed] considers management to consist of six functions:

forecasting

planning

organizing

commanding

coordinating

controlling

(Henri Fayol was one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management.[citation needed])

In another way of thinking, Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), allegedly defined management as "the art of getting things done through people".[5] She described management as philosophy.[6][need quotation to verify]

Critics[which?], however, find this definition useful but far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely,[7] suggesting the difficulty of defining management without circularity, the shifting nature of definitions[citation needed] and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or of a class.

One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration" and thus excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. More broadly, every organization must "manage" its work, people, processes, technology, etc. to maximize effectiveness.[citation needed] Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments that teach management as "business schools". Some such institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name, while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the broader term "management".

English-speakers may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation.[8] Historically this use of the term often contrasted with the term "labor" – referring to those being managed.[9]

But in the present era[when?] the concept of management is identified[by whom?] in the wide areas[which?] and its frontiers have been pushed to a broader range.[citation needed] Apart from profitable organizations even non-profitable organizations (NGOs) apply management concepts. The concept and its uses are not constrained[by whom?]. Management on the whole is the process of planning, organizing, coordinating, leading and controlling.

Nature of work

In profitable organizations, management's primary function is the satisfaction of a range of stakeholders. This typically involves making a profit (for the shareholders), creating valued products at a reasonable cost (for customers), and providing great employment opportunities for employees. In nonprofit management, add the importance of keeping the faith of donors. In most models of management and governance, shareholders vote for the board of directors, and the board then hires senior management. Some organizations have experimented with other methods (such as employee-voting models) of selecting or reviewing managers, but this is rare.

In the public sector of countries constituted as representative democracies, voters elect politicians to public office. Such politicians hire many managers and administrators, and in some countries like the United States political appointees lose their jobs on the election of a new president/governor/mayor.

History

Some see management (by definition) as late-modern (in the sense of late modernity) conceptualization. On those terms it cannot have a pre-modern history, only harbingers (such as stewards). Others, however, detect management-like-thought back to Sumerian traders and to the builders of the pyramids of ancient Egypt. Slave-owners through the centuries faced the problems of exploiting/motivating a dependent but sometimes unenthusiastic or recalcitrant workforce, but many pre-industrial enterprises, given their small scale, did not feel compelled to face the issues of management systematically. However, innovations such as the spread of Hindu numerals (5th to 15th centuries) and the codification of double-entry book-keeping (1494) provided tools for management assessment, planning and control.

Also, Machiavelli wrote about how to make organisations efficient and effective. The principles that Machiavelli set forth in Discourses (1531) can be adapted to apply the management of organisations today:

An organisation is more stable if members have the right to express their differences and solve their conflicts within it.

While one person can begin an organisation, "it is lasting when it is left in the care of many and when many desire to maintain it."

A weak manager can follow a strong one, but not another weak one, and maintain authority.

A manager seeking to change an established organization "should retain at least a shadow of the ancient customs."[10]

With the changing workplaces of industrial revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries, military theory and practice contributed approaches to managing the newly-popular factories.[11]

Given the scale of most commercial operations and the lack of mechanized record-keeping and recording before the industrial revolution, it made sense for most owners of enterprises in those times to carry out management functions by and for themselves. But with growing size and complexity of organizations, the split between owners (individuals, industrial dynasties or groups of shareholders) and day-to-day managers (independent specialists in planning and control) gradually became more common.

TRADITIONAL EDUCATION

Traditional education, also known as back-to-basics, conventional education or customary education, refers to long-established customs that society traditionally used in schools. Some forms of education reform promote the adoption of progressive education practices, a more holistic approach which focuses on individual students' needs and self-control. In the eyes of reformers, traditional teacher-centered methods focused on rote learning and memorization must be abandoned in favor of student-centered and task-based approaches to learning. However, many parents and conservative citizens are concerned with the maintenance of objective educational standards based on testing, which favors a more traditional approach.

Depending on the context, the opposite of traditional education may be progressive education, modern education (the education approaches based on developmental psychology), or alternative education

DefinitionThe definition of traditional education varies greatly with geography and by historical period.

The chief business of traditional education is to transmit to a next generation those skills, facts, and standards of moral and social conduct that adults consider to be necessary for the next generation's material and social success.[2] As beneficiaries of this scheme, which educational progressivist John Dewey described as being "imposed from above and from outside", the students are expected to docilely and obediently receive and believe these fixed answers. Teachers are the instruments by which this knowledge is communicated and these standards of behavior are enforced.[2]

Historically, the primary educational technique of traditional education was simple oral recitation:[1] In a typical approach, students sat quietly at their places and listened to one student after another recite his or her lesson, until each had been called upon. The teacher's primary activity was assigning and listening to these recitations; students studied and memorized the assignments at home. A test or oral examination might be given at the end of a unit, and the process, which was called "assignment-study-recitation-test", was repeated. In addition to its overemphasis on verbal answers, reliance on rote memorization (memorization with no effort at understanding the meaning), and disconnected, unrelated assignments, it was also an extremely inefficient use of students' and teachers' time. This traditional approach also insisted that all students be taught the same materials at the same point; students that did not learn quickly enough failed, rather than being allowed to succeed at their natural speeds. This approach, which had been imported from Europe, dominated American education until the end of the 19th century, when the education reform movement imported progressive education techniques from Europe.[1]

Traditional education is associated with much stronger elements of coercion than seems acceptable now in most cultures.[citation needed] It has sometimes included: the use of corporal punishment to maintain classroom discipline or punish errors; inculcating the dominant religion and language; separating students according to gender, race, and social class[citation needed] , as well as teaching different subjects to girls and boys. In terms of curriculum there was and still is a high level of attention paid to time-honoured academic knowledge.

In the present it varies enormously from culture to culture, but still tends to be characterised by a much higher level of coercion than alternative education. Traditional schooling in Britain and its possessions and former colonies tends to follow the English Public School style of strictly enforced uniforms and a militaristic style of discipline. This can be contrasted with South African, US and Australian schools, which can have a much higher tolerance for spontaneous student-to-teacher communication.

PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

Philosophy of education can refer either to the application of philosophy to the problem of education, examining definitions, goals and chains of meaning used in education by teachers, administrators and policymakers. It can involve the examination of particular visions or approaches by researchers and policy-makers in education that often address contemporary debates and assumptions about innovations and practices in teaching and learning by considering the profession within broader philosophical or sociocultural contexts.[1]

As an academic field, study involves "the philosophical study of education and its problems...its central subject matter is education, and its methods are those of philosophy".[2] "The philosophy of education may be either the philosophy of the process of education or the philosophy of the discipline of education. That is, it may be part of the discipline in the sense of being concerned with the aims, forms, methods, or results of the process of educating or being educated; or it may be metadisciplinary in the sense of being concerned with the concepts, aims, and methods of the discipline."[3][4] As such, it is both part of the field of education and a field of applied philosophy, drawing from fields of metaphysics, epistemology, axiology and the philosophical approaches (speculative, prescriptive, or analytic) to address questions in and about pedagogy, education policy, and curriculum, as well as the process of learning, to name a few.[5] For example, it might study what constitutes upbringing and education, the values and norms revealed through upbringing and educational practices, the limits and legitimization of education as an academic discipline, and the relation between educational theory and practice. One application is Transactionalism which seeks to avoid the risks of simplifying complexity in teaching and learning any subject.[6]

Instead of being taught in philosophy departments, philosophy of education is usually housed in departments or colleges of education,[7][8][9] similar to how philosophy of law is generally taught in law schools.[2] The multiple ways of conceiving education coupled with the multiple fields and approaches of philosophy make philosophy of education not only a very diverse field but also one that is not easily defined. Although there is overlap, philosophy of education should not be conflated with educational theory, which is not defined specifically by the application of philosophy to questions in education. Philosophy of education also should not be confused with philosophy education, the practice of teaching and learning the subject of philosophy.

Philosophy of education can also be understood not as an academic discipline but as a normative educational theory that unifies pedagogy, curriculum, learning theory, and the purpose of education and is grounded in specific metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological assumptions. These theories are also called educational philosophies. For example, a teacher might be said to follow a perennialist educational philosophy or to follow a perennialist philosophy of education.

Plato's educational philosophy was grounded in a vision of an ideal Republic wherein the individual was best served by being subordinated to a just society due to a shift in emphasis that departed from his predecessors. The mind and body were to be considered separate entiies. In the dialogues of Phaedo, written in his "middle period" (360 B.C.E.) Plato expressed his distinctive views about the nature of knowledge, reality, and the soul:

    When the soul and body are united, then nature orders the soul to rule and govern, and the body to obey and serve. Now which of these two functions is akin to the divine? and which to the mortal? Does not the divine appear…to be that which naturally orders and rules, and the mortal to be that which is subject and servant?[10][11]

On this premise, Plato advocated removing children from their mothers' care and raising them as wards of the state, with great care being taken to differentiate children suitable to the various castes, the highest receiving the most education, so that they could act as guardians of the city and care for the less able. Education would be holistic, including facts, skills, physical discipline, and music and art, which he considered the highest form of endeavor.

Plato believed that talent was distributed non-genetically and thus must be found in children born in any social class. He built on this by insisting that those suitably gifted were to be trained by the state so that they might be qualified to assume the role of a ruling class. What this established was essentially a system of selective public education premised on the assumption that an educated minority of the population were, by virtue of their education (and inborn educability), sufficient for healthy governance.

Plato's writings contain some of the following ideas: Elementary education would be confined to the guardian class till the age of 18, followed by two years of compulsory military training and then by higher education for those who qualified. While elementary education made the soul responsive to the environment, higher education helped the soul to search for truth which illuminated it. Both boys and girls receive the same kind of education. Elementary education consisted of music and gymnastics, designed to train and blend gentle and fierce qualities in the individual and create a harmonious person.

At the age of 20, a selection was made. The best students would take an advanced course in mathematics, geometry, astronomy and harmonics. The first course in the scheme of higher education would last for ten years. It would be for those who had a flair for science. At the age of 30 there would be another selection; those who qualified would study dialectics and metaphysics, logic and philosophy for the next five years. After accepting junior positions in the army for 15 years, a man would have completed his theoretical and practical education by the age of 50

PROJECT BASED LEARNING

Project-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy that involves a dynamic classroom approach in which it is believed that students acquire a deeper knowledge through active exploration of real-world challenges and problems.[1] Students learn about a subject by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to a complex question, challenge, or problem.[2] It is a style of active learning and inquiry-based learning. PBL contrasts with paper-based, rote memorization, or teacher-led instruction that simply presents established facts or portrays a smooth path to knowledge by instead posing questions, problems or scenarios.

Thomas Markham (2011) describes project-based learning (PBL) thus: "PBL integrates knowing and doing. Students learn knowledge and elements of the core curriculum, but also apply what they know to solve authentic problems and produce results that matter. PBL students take advantage of digital tools to produce high quality, collaborative products. PBL refocuses education on the student, not the curriculum—a shift mandated by the global world, which rewards intangible assets such as drive, passion, creativity, empathy, and resiliency. These cannot be taught out of a textbook, but must be activated through experience."[3] James G. Greeno (2006) has associated project-based learning with the "situated learning" perspective[4] and with the constructivist theories of Jean Piaget. Blumenfeld et al. elaborate on the processes of PBL: "Project-based learning is a comprehensive perspective focused on teaching by engaging students in investigation. Within this framework, students pursue solutions to nontrivial problems by asking and refining questions, debating ideas, making predictions, designing plans and/or experiments, collecting and analyzing data, drawing conclusions, communicating their ideas and findings to others, asking new questions, and creating artifacts."[5](Blumenfeld, et al., 1991) The basis of PBL lies in the authenticity or real-life application of the research. Students working as a team are given a "driving question" to respond to or answer, then directed to create an artifact (or artifacts) to present their gained knowledge. Artifacts may include a variety of media such as writings, art, drawings, three-dimensional representations, videos, photography, or technology-based presentations.

Proponents of project-based learning cite numerous benefits to the implementation of its strategies in the classroom – including a greater depth of understanding of concepts, broader knowledge base, improved communication and interpersonal/social skills, enhanced leadership skills, increased creativity, and improved writing skills. Another definition of project-based learning includes a type of instruction, where students work together to solve real-world problems in their schools and communities. Successful problem-solving often requires students to draw on lessons from several disciplines and apply them in a very practic

John Dewey initially promoted the idea of "learning by doing". In My Pedagogical Creed (1897) Dewey enumerated his beliefs regarding education: "The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these.......I believe, therefore, in the so-called expressive or constructive activities as the centre of correlation."[7](Dewey, 1897) Educational research has advanced this idea of teaching and learning into a methodology known as "project-based learning". Blumenfeld & Krajcik (2006)[8] cite studies by Marx et al., 2004, Rivet & Krajcki, 2004 and William & Linn, 2003 state that "research has demonstrated that students in project-based learning classrooms get higher scores than students in traditional classroom".
John Dewey in 1902

In Peer Evaluation in Blended Team Project-Based Learning: What Do Students Find Important?, Hye-Jung & Cheolil (2012) describe "social loafing" as a negative aspect of collaborative learning. Social loafing may include insufficient performances by some team members as well as a lowering of expected standards of performance by the group as a whole to maintain congeniality amongst members. These authors said that because teachers tend to grade the finished product only, the social dynamics of the assignment may escape the teacher's notice.

al way. The promise of seeing a very real impact becomes the motivation for learning.

Examples
Although projects are the primary vehicle for instruction in project-based learning, there are no commonly shared criteria for what constitutes an acceptable project. Projects vary greatly in the depth of the questions explored, the clarity of the learning goals, the content and structure of the activity, and guidance from the teacher. The role of projects in the overall curriculum is also open to interpretation. Projects can guide the entire curriculum (more common in charter or other alternative schools) or simply consist of a few hands-on activities. They might be multidisciplinary (more likely in elementary schools) or single-subject (commonly science and math). Some projects involve the whole class, while others are done in small groups or individually.

When PBL is used with 21st century tools/skills, students are expected to use technology in meaningful ways to help them investigate, collaborate, analyze, synthesize and present their learning. The term IPBL (Interdisciplinary PBL) has also been used to reflect a pedagogy where an emphasis on technology and/or an interdisciplinary approach has been included.

An example of a school that utilizes a project-based learning curriculum is Think Global School. In each country (THINK Global School) visits, students select an interdisciplinary, project-based learning module designed to help them answer key questions about the world around them. These projects combine elements of global studies, the sciences, and literature, among other courses. Projects from past years have included recreating Homer's The Odyssey by sailing across Greece and exploring the locations and concepts central to the epic poem, and while in Kerala, India, students participated in a project-based learning module centered around blending their learning and travels into a mock business venture. The interdisciplinary project was designed to enable students to engage in the key areas of problem solving, decision making and communication — all framed by the demanding parameters of a "Shark Tank", or "Dragon's Den" style competition.

Another example of applied PBL is Muscatine High School, located in Muscatine, Iowa. The school started the G2 (Global Generation Exponential Learning) which consists of middle and high school "Schools within Schools" that deliver the four core subject areas. At the high school level, activities may include making water purification systems, investigating service learning, or creating new bus routes. At the middle school level, activities may include researching trash statistics, documenting local history through interviews, or writing essays about a community scavenger hunt. Classes are designed to help diverse students become college and career ready after high school.

In 2009, The Illinois Consortium for 21st Century Schools lead by Deeper Learning author Jim Bellanca, initiated a 5 year deeper learning research project to identify the best practices and conditions among existing PBL models. In 6 pilot schools with students from the low performing to the highest performing, they piloted their findings. The goal was to test if all school/all day public schools could be transformed by PBL as initiated in schools such as Manor New Tech, This would test if traditional schools with established faculty could make such this deep shift.

As a result of the all school adoption of PBL in collaborative school wide cultures, several pilot schools earned accolades as P21 Exemplar schools (http://www.p21exemplars/Franklin) with raised achievement results and obvious evidence of teacher practice change. The model calls for all teachers and administrators to engage in a multi-year professional development effort which changed school culture, teachers re designing their units of study, teachers vetting all units and deciding which to contribute to a school based digital PBL library of unit plans and student artifacts, revisions in RTI, revisions in teacher evaluation and in student "grading".as well as an upgrading of grade level PLCs. The model empowers teachers to change how they deliver instruction so that MindQuest21 PBL is the dominant model of instruction in every classroom. The model was assessed in one three school public district with a rising "free and reduced,lunch" population. Following the pilot years, the Consortium initiated this change program in Chicago Public Schools, Atlanta Public Schools, and in a rural Illinois statewide network. The P21 Exemplar school site provides videos and descriptions of the Illinois projects as well as other PBL projects across the country.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided funding to start holistic PBL schools across the United States. These organizations include,

    Big Picture Schools [1]
    EdVisions Schools
    Envision Schools
    New Tech Network [2]
    North Bay Academy of Communication and Design
    Raisbeck Aviation High School[26]

Another example is Manor New Technology High School, a public high school that since opening in 2007 is a 100 percent project-based instruction school. Students average 60 projects a year across subjects. It is reported that 98 percent of seniors graduate, 100 percent of the graduates are accepted to college, and fifty-six percent of them have been the first in their family to attend college.[27]

The European Union has also providing funding for project-based learning projects within the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013. For example, PopuLLar - Music and language learning, Moving toys in the classroom and ARTinED - A new approach to education using the arts.

According to Terry Heick on his blog, Teach Thought, there are three types of project-based learning. The first is Challenge-Based Learning/Problem-Based Learning, the second is Place-Based Education, and the third is Activity-Based learning. Challenge-Based Learning is "an engaging multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that encourages students to leverage the technology they use in their daily lives to solve real-world problems through efforts in their homes, schools and communities." Place-based Education "immerses students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences; uses these as a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the curriculum, and emphasizes learning through participation in service projects for the local school and/or community." Activity-Based Learning takes a kind of constructivist approach, the idea being students constructing their own meaning through hands-on activities, often with manipulatives and opportunities to. As a private school provider Nobel Education Network combines PBL with the International Baccalaureate as a central pillar of their strategy.

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Early childhood education (ECE; also nursery education) is a branch of education theory which relates to the teaching of young children (formally and informally) up until the age of about eight. Infant/toddler education, a subset of early childhood education, denotes the education of children from birth to age two.[1] It emerged as a field of study during the Enlightenment, particularly in European countries with high literacy rates.[2] It continued to grow through the nineteenth century as universal primary education became a norm in the Western world. In recent years, early childhood education has become a prevalent public policy issue, as municipal, state, and federal lawmakers consider funding for preschool and pre-K.[3][4][5] It is described as an important period in child's development. It refers to the allround development of a child's personality.

History
The history of early childhood care and education (ECCE) refers to the development of care and education of children between zero and eight years old throughout history. ECCE has a global scope, and caring for and educating young children has always been an integral part of human societies. Arrangements for fulfilling these societal roles have evolved over time and remain varied across cultures, often reflecting family and community structures as well as the social and economic roles of women and men.[6] Historically, such arrangements have largely been informal, involving family, household and community members. The formalization of these arrangements emerged in the nineteenth century with the establishment of kindergartens for educational purposes and day nurseries for care in much of Europe and North America, Brazil, China, India, Jamaica and Mexico.

ContextWhile the first two years of a child's life are spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self", most children are able to differentiate between themselves and others by their second year. This differentiation is crucial to the child's ability to determine how they should function in relation to other people.[11] Parents can be seen as a child's first teacher and therefore an integral part of the early learning process.[12]

Early childhood attachment processes that occurs during early childhood years 0–2 years of age, can be influential to future education. With proper guidance and exploration children begin to become more comfortable with their environment, if they have that steady relationship to guide them. Parents who are consistent with response times, and emotions will properly make this attachment early on. If this attachment is not made, there can be detrimental effects on the child in their future relationships and independence. There are proper techniques that parents and caregivers can use to establish these relationships, which will in turn allow children to be more comfortable exploring their environment.[1] Academic Journal Reference This provides experimental research on the emphasis on caregiving effecting attachment. Education for young students can help them excel academically and socially. With exposure and organized lesson plans children can learn anything they want to. The tools they learn to use during these beginning years will provide lifelong benefits to their success. Developmentally, having structure and freedom, children are able to reach their full potential.

Learning Through Play
Early childhood education often focuses on learning through play, based on the research and philosophy of Jean Piaget, which posits that play meets the physical, intellectual, language, emotional and social needs (PILES) of children. Children's curiosity and imagination naturally evoke learning when unfettered. Learning through play will allow a child to develop cognitively.[13] Thus, children learn more efficiently and gain more knowledge through activities such as dramatic play, art, and social games.[14]

Tassoni suggests that "some play opportunities will develop specific individual areas of development, but many will develop several areas."[15] Thus, It is important that practitioners promote children’s development through play by using various types of play on a daily basis. Allowing children to help get snacks ready helps develop math skills (one-to-one ratio, patterns, etc.), leadership, and communication.[16] Key guidelines for creating a play-based learning environment include providing a safe space, correct supervision, and culturally aware, trained teachers who are knowledgeable about the Early Years Foundation.

Davy states that the British Children's Act of 1989 links to play-work as the act works with play workers and sets the standards for the setting such as security, quality and staff ratios.[17] Learning through play has been seen regularly in practice as the most versatile way a child can learn. Margaret McMillan (1860-1931) suggested that children should be given free school meals, fruit and milk, and plenty of exercise to keep them physically and emotionally healthy. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) believed that play time allows children to talk, socially interact, use their imagination and intellectual skills. Maria Montessori (1870-1952) believed that children learn through movement and their senses and after doing an activity using their senses.

In a more contemporary approach, organizations such as the National Association of the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) promote child-guided learning experiences, individualized learning, and developmentally appropriate learning as tenets of early childhood education.[18]

Piaget provides an explanation for why learning through play is such a crucial aspect of learning as a child. However, due to the advancement of technology, the art of play has started to dissolve and has transformed into "playing" through technology. Greenfield, quoted by the author, Stuart Wolpert, in the article, "Is Technology Producing a Decline in Critical Thinking and Analysis?", states, "No media is good for everything. If we want to develop a variety of skills, we need a balanced media diet. Each medium has costs and benefits in terms of what skills each develops." Technology is beginning to invade the art of play and a balance needs to be found.[19]

Many oppose the theory of learning through play because they think children are not gaining new knowledge. In reality, play is the first way children learn to make sense of the world at a young age. As children watch adults interact around them, they pick up on their slight nuances, from facial expressions to their tone of voice. They are exploring different roles, learning how things work, and learning to communicate and work with others. These things cannot be taught by a standard curriculum, but have to be developed through the method of play. Many preschools understand the importance of play and have designed their curriculum around that to allow children to have more freedom. Once these basics are learned at a young age, it sets children up for success throughout their schooling and their life. Many Early Childhood programs provide real life props and activities to enrich the children's play, enabling them to learn various skills through play.

Theories of child development
The Developmental Interaction Approach is based on the theories of Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, John Dewey and Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The approach focuses on learning through discovery.[20] > Jean Jacques Rousseau recommended that teachers should exploit individual children's interests in order to make sure each child obtains the information most essential to his personal and individual development.[21] The five developmental domains of childhood development include:[22]
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

    Physical: the way in which a child develops biological and physical functions, including eyesight and motor skills
    Social: the way in which a child interacts with others[23] Children develop an understanding of their responsibilities and rights as members of families and communities, as well as an ability to relate to and work with others.[24]
    Emotional: the way in which a child creates emotional connections and develops self-confidence. Emotional connections develop when children relate to other people and share feelings.
    Language: the way in which a child communicates, including how they present their feelings and emotions, both to other people and to themselves. At 3 months, children employ different cries for different needs. At 6 months they can recognize and imitate the basic sounds of spoken language. In the first 3 years, children need to be exposed to communication with others in order to pick up language. "Normal" language development is measured by the rate of vocabulary acquisition.[25]
    Cognitive skills: the way in which a child organizes information. Cognitive skills include problem solving, creativity, imagination and memory.[26] They embody the way in which children make sense of the world. Piaget believed that children exhibit prominent differences in their thought patterns as they move through the stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor period, the pre-operational period, and the operational period.

EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION

Experiential education is a philosophy of education that describes the process that occurs between a teacher and student that infuses direct experience with the learning environment and content.[1] The term is not interchangeable with experiential learning; however experiential learning is a sub-field and operates under the methodologies of experiential education.[2] The Association for Experiential Education regards experiential education as "a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people's capacity to contribute to their communities."[3] Experiential education is the term for the philosophy and educatio
nal progressivism is the movement which it informed.

About
John Dewey was the most famous proponent of experiential education, writing Experience and Education (1938). It expressed his ideas about curriculum theory in the context of historical debates about school organization and the need to have experience as central in the educational process; hence, experiential education is referred to as a philosophy. Dewey's fame during that period rested on relentlessly critiquing public education and pointing out that the authoritarian, strict, pre-ordained knowledge approach of modern traditional education was too concerned with delivering knowledge, and not enough with understanding students' experiences.[4]

Dewey's work influenced dozens of other prominent experiential models and advocates in the later 20th century, including Foxfire,[5] service learning,[6] Kurt Hahn and Outward Bound,[7] and Paulo Freire. Freire is often cited in works on experiential education.[8] He focused on the participation by students in experience and radical democracy, and the creation of praxis among learners.

John Dewey was an educator, but he was foremost a philosopher. His interests included political philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, logic, and philosophy of education. Political philosophy was one of his many philosophical interests. He saw weaknesses in both the traditional and progressive styles of education. He explains in length his criticisms of both forms of education in his book, Experience & Education (1938). In essence, he did not believe that they met the goals of education, which he defined as obtaining freedom of thought. Dewey did not believe in freedom of thought in any kind of absolute sense.[citation needed]

Dewey advocated that education be based upon the quality of experience. For an experience to be educational, Dewey believed that certain parameters had to be met, the most important of which is that the experience has continuity and interaction. Continuity is the idea that the experience comes from and leads to other experiences, in essence propelling the person to learn more. Interaction is when the experience meets the internal needs or goals of a person. Dewey also categorizes experiences as possibly being mis-educative and non-educative. A mis-educative experience is one that stops or distorts growth for future experiences. A non-educative experience is one in which a person has not done any reflection and so has obtained nothing for mental growth that is lasting (Experience & Education, Dewey).

In addition to the notions raised by Dewey, recent research has shown that experiential learning does not replace traditional methods of learning. Instead, experiential learning is designed to improve one's understanding by giving one the freedom to explore and find the learning path that is most suitable for him or her.

Practice
The methodologies reflected in experiential education have evolved since the time of Hahn and Dewey. For experiential education to become efficient pedagogy, physical experience must be combined with reflection.[10] Adding reflective practice, allows for personal introspection of challenges and key learnings. That is, physical challenges provide a gateway in which we can observe qualities about ourselves, and those whom we are working with. Further, for the efficacy of experiential education, experiences must be separated, giving the learner sufficient time to process the information.[10]

Experiential education informs many educational practices underway in schools (formal education) and out-of-school (informal education) programs. Many teaching methods rely on experiential education to provide context and frameworks for learning through action and reflection.

    Outdoor education uses organized learning activities that occur in the outdoors, and uses environmental experiences as a learning tool.[11]
    Service learning is a combination of community service with stated learning goals, relying on experience as the foundation for meaning.[12]
    Cooperative learning alters homogeneous groupings in order to support diverse learning styles and needs within a group.[13]
    Active learning, a term popular in US education circles in the 1980s, encourages learners to take responsibility for their learning, requiring their experience in education to inform their process of learning.[14]
    Environmental education is based in educating learners about relationships within the natural environment and how those relationships are interdependent. Students participate in outdoor activities as part of their learning experience.[15]

Experiential education serves as an umbrella for linking many diverse practices into a coherent whole. Its philosophy is closely linked to numerous other educational theories, but it should not be conflated with progressive education, critical pedagogy, youth empowerment, feminist-based education, and constructivism. The development of experiential education as a philosophy has been intertwined with the development of these other educational theories; their contrasts have clarified differences.

Fellowships and other training programs are available for experiential educators; but, formal training in experiential methods is lacking for K-12 undergraduate teaching programs (see Wendel, A. and Mantil, A., (2008) and the National Society for Experiential Education)

Examples
Examples of experiential education abound in all disciplines. The educator Lucy Calkins writes,
    If we asked our students for the highlight of their school careers, most would choose a time when they dedicated themselves to an endeavor of great importance...I am thinking of youngsters from P.S. 321, who have launched a save-the-tree campaign to prevent the oaks outside their school from being cut down. I am thinking of children who write the school newspaper, act in the school play, organize the playground building committee.... On projects such as these, youngsters will work before school, after school, during lunch. Our youngsters want to work hard on endeavors they deem significant.[16]

Writing journals proves to be quite effective as part of English classes. Specifically, by writing "personal" and "text-related" journals, students find meaning in their own thoughts as well as in concepts learned in class. Personal journaling is the recording of past and present personal thoughts and events in the student's life to enhance self-awareness, student interest, and learning. Text-related journaling is writing about concepts learned in class in relation to students' personal experiences, to promote understanding

Other programs
High school English classes in Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, Georgia earned national attention for using their research and writing to publish the Foxfire journal. (Wigginton, 1985). Students researched the culture of the Appalachian Mountains through taped interviews with local people. They wrote and edited articles based upon their interviews. Foxfire has inspired hundreds of similar cultural journalism projects around the country.

Christchurch School, in the tidewater area of Virginia, has an experiential program called Great Journeys Begin at the River. The hands-on, skill-based, inside/outside curriculum is based on using the school's location on the Rappahannock River, in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Students recycle aluminum to raise money for the school's oyster farm, which they tend in an effort to help save the Bay.

The Nicodemus Wilderness Project provides an environmental experiential education program with a global reach called the "Apprentice Ecologist Initiative". This scholarship-based opportunity is targeted for youth volunteers who want to help protect the environment. The initiative seeks to develop young people for leadership roles by engaging them in environmental cleanup and conservation projects, empower volunteers to rebuild the environmental and social well-being of our communities, and improve local living conditions for both citizens and wildlife.

Project OASES (Occupational and Academic Skills for the Employment of Students) emphasizes experiential education in the Pittsburgh public schools. Eighth graders, identified as potential dropouts, spend three periods a day involved in renovating a homeless shelter as part of a service project carried out within their industrial arts class. Students in such programs learn enduring skills, such as planning, communicating with a variety of age groups and types of people, and group decisionmaking. In their activities and in reflection, they come to new insights and integrate diverse knowledge from fields such as English, political science, mathematics, and sociology.

Presidential Classroom, a non-profit civic education organization in Washington D.C., is open to high school students from across the country and abroad. They meet and interact with government officials, media correspondents, congressman, and key players on the world stage to learn how public policy shapes many aspects of citizens’ lives. Students travel to Washington and spend a week hearing from prominent speakers, meet with interest group spokesmen and tour the national capital. Students participate in a group project directed by experienced instructors; they have mediated debates on current issues facing the country. The focus of the week is to give students a hands-on introduction to how "real world" politics take place.

The Advantage Foundation, a not-for-profit education organization in Western Australia, helps bridge the gap between university and employment via the Australian Business Icon program. The program engages young and emerging entrepreneurs in direct experience and focused reflection to increase knowledge, develop skills and clarify values. It requires students with innovative, strategic thinking, and analytical skills, to take on four (4) pre-organized innovative and entrepreneurial business-related tasks. The goal is to develop the communication, ethics, innovation and enterprise of students.[18]

Global College, a four-year international study program offered by Long Island University, is based on self-guided, experiential learning while a student is immersed in foreign cultures. Regional centers employ mostly advisors rather than teaching faculty; these advisors guide the individual students in preparing a "portfolio of learning" each semester to display the results of their experiences and projects.

The New England Literature Program in the English Department at the University of Michigan is a 45-day program, in which University instructors live and work together with 40 UM students in the woods of Maine in early spring. They intensively study 19th and 20th-century New England literature, in a program that includes creative writing in the form of academic journaling, as well as a deep physical engagement with the landscape of New England. NELP students and staff take hiking trips into the White Mountains and other parts of the New England natural areas each week, integrating their experience of the landscape with writing and discussion of texts.

The Chicago Center for Urban Life and Culture is the only nonprofit and independent experiential educational program for college students in the United States. The Chicago Center is distinguished by unique seminars characterized by a 'First Voice' pedagogy, its location in the multi-ethnic Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, and development of several hundred internship sites in Chicago. While many of the students who attend Chicago Center grew up in cities, the majority are from suburban, rural and farming communities. Students participate individually in its Semester, May Term and Summer Session. The Chicago Center also designs and staffs programs for groups, what it calls "LearnChicago!", which promise non-tourist experiences in the city.

The Philadelphia Center is an off-campus program based on a model of experiential education. Recognized by The Great Lakes Colleges Association, The Philadelphia Center is currently the only undergraduate level program that supports independent living and encourages the use of the city as a learning space.

Several Australian high schools have established experiential education programmes, including Caulfield Grammar School's five-week internationalism programme in Nanjing, China and Geelong Grammar School's Timbertop outdoor education programme.[19]

Other projects and "capstone" programs have included student teams writing their own international development plans and presenting them to presidents and foreign media and publishing their studies as textbooks in development studies, to running their own businesses, NGOs, or community development banks.[20]

At the professional school level, experiential education is often integrated into curricula in "clinical" courses following the medical school model of "See one, Do one, Teach one", in which students learn by practicing medicine. This approach is being introduced in other professions in which skills are directly worked into courses to teach every concept (starting with interviewing, listening skills, negotiation, contract writing and advocacy, for example) to larger-scale projects in which students run legal aid clinics or community loan programs, or write legislation or community development plans.

The Boys and Girls Club of America provides a framework for youth development professionals to employ experiential learning methods.

Lifeworks International offers experiential, service-learning programs for high school students. Trips combine adventure travel, cultural immersion, community service, and global education during expeditions in China, Thailand, India, Costa Rica, Peru, the British Virgin Islands, and Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.

Youth development programs have used experiential education methods to reach at-risk youth. An example is "Circus Harmony", based in St. Louis, Missouri. Their mission is to "teach the art of life through circus education". By learning circus arts skills, students come together from diverse backgrounds and experiences and learn from each other as well.[21]

In Legal Education, critical pedagogy is associated with devising more equitable methods of teaching, helping students develop consciousness of freedom, and helping them connect knowledge to power.

Change in roles and structures
Whether teachers employ experiential education in cultural journalism, service learning, environmental education, or more traditional school subjects, its key idea involves engaging student voice in active roles for the purpose of learning. Armstrong (2012) claims that students should be responsible of learning not the teachers.[23] Students participate in a real activity with real consequences for the purpose of meeting learning objectives.[24]

Some experts in the field make the distinction between "democratic experiential education" in which students help design curricula and run their own projects and even do their own grading (through objective contracted standards) and other forms of "experiential education" that put students in existing organizations in inferior roles (such as service learning and internships) or in which faculty design the field work.[20]

Experiential education uses various tools like games, simulations, role plays, stories in classrooms. The experiential education mindset changes the way the teachers and students view knowledge. Knowledge is no longer just some letters on a page. It becomes active, something that is transacted with in life or lifelike situations. It starts to make teachers experience providers, and not just transmitters of the written word.

Besides changing student roles, experiential education requires a change in the role of teachers. When students are active learners, their endeavors often take them outside the classroom walls. Because action precedes attempts to synthesize knowledge, teachers generally cannot plan a curriculum unit as a neat, predictable package.[citation needed] Teachers become active learners, too, experimenting together with their students, reflecting upon the learning activities they have designed, and responding to their students' reactions to the activities. In this way, teachers themselves become more active; they come to view themselves as more than just recipients of school district policy and curriculum decisions.

It is also important to point out that not all learners learn the same. As a result, there are diverse learners that have unique learning styles pertinent to their success as students. Studies have shown that cooperative learning is strongly suggested in a diverse learning atmosphere. “Contemporary views of learning and their pedagogical applications have begun to change traditional classroom interaction patterns, shaping the communicative roles of the teacher and students as participants in a classroom learning community,” writes David Wray & Kristiina Kumpulainen. This paradigm shift in education gives both the student and teacher shared responsibility of the learning process. The teacher’s participation in discussion sessions is to act as a facilitator, maintain classroom decorum, provide individual and group feedback, and alleviate concerns or issues in the lesson.

Critical thinking strategies are pertinent to the success of student oriented learning. When students are engaged in active discussions, high level thinking skills are put into practice to the point where students are synthesizing the information at a deeper level of understanding. According to Elliot Eisner, “We need to provide opportunities for youngsters and adolescents to engage in challenging kinds of conversation, and we need to help them know how to do so. Such conversation is all too rare in schools. I use 'conversation' seriously, for challenging conversation is an intellectual affair. It has to do with thinking about what people have said and responding reflectively, analytically, and imaginatively to that process. The practice of conversation is almost a lost art. The most significant intellectual achievement is not so much in problem solving, but in question posing.” Through experimental education, students are capable of finding their voice through peer-to-peer interaction. Students are now seen as active participants in the learning process. Vygotsky`s social development theory requires students to play untraditional roles as they collaborate with one another through critical thinking and conversational skills. According to Ann Ketch, author of Conversation: The comprehension connection writes, “The oral process helps students clarify and solidify their thoughts. The thinking changes from what it was before the conversation took place. Through conversation, the student is in charge of his or her own mental processing. The teacher acts as a facilitator, pushing the student to rely upon and monitor his or her own comprehension, which fosters critical thinking.” This is very vital because student conversation can elicit new ideas that may not have been mentioned or even thought of by another student. Therefore, student dialogue is very important because it helps individuals make sense of what is being learned. It also helps build respect for other’s opinions while taking ownership of his or her learning process.

In experimental education, students are given the opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills by making connections to the real world. Therefore, effective learning entails active experimentation with a hands-on approach to learning. It is perceived that students learn more by being active. Students are interdependent in establishing group goals and decision-making skills. As a result, students are also capable of developing leadership skills, which can also enhance student motivation and confidence.

When students are given a choice in terms of content to be learned, it ensures the teacher that his or her learners are interactive in the learning process. According to Ernie Stringer, “Action learners move through continuous cycles of this inquiry process to improve their understanding, extend their knowledge, or refine their skills.” When given a preference, students may feel motivated to take control of his or her learning experience. Student incentives are tied to progress in academic achievement. “Research indicates that intrinsic motivation stems from one’s interests and capacities to surmount challenge s when presented or pursued,” says Fenice B. Boyd. Many schools are encouraging teachers to tap into student interests with the hope that they transfer that motivation into the classroom.

Through the continuous cycle of learning, teacher’s often work with students to develop a framework of knowledge, which is to be evaluated based on student input to the lessons content. Therefore, the teacher should establish criteria of what is to be learned as related to the student(s) choice in learning material. Ernie Stringer draws on the importance that “action research provides a process for developing a rich, engaging curriculum relevant to the lives and purposes of students, engaging their interests and abilities, and serving the broad human needs of community, society, and the planet. Creative construction of curricula or syllabi provides the means whereby the needs, perspectives, and/or interests of diverse stakeholders can be incorporated into vital, creative, effective programs of learning.” In essence, a well-planned curriculum is designed for learning that encompasses a broad range of goals and individual needs that ensures the active learning process.

As students and teachers take on new roles, the traditional organizational structures of the school also may meet challenges.[25] For example, at the Challenger Middle School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, service activities are an integral part of the academic program. Such nontraditional activities require teachers and administrators to look at traditional practices in new ways. For instance, they may consider reorganizing time blocks. They may also teach research methods by involving students in investigations of the community, rather than restricting research activities to the library (Rolzinski, 1990).[citation needed]

At the University Heights Alternative School in the Bronx, the Project Adventure experiential learning program has led the faculty to adopt an all-day time block as an alternative to the traditional 45-minute periods. The faculty now organizes the curriculum by project instead of by separate disciplines. Schools that promote meaningful student involvement actively engage students as partners in education improvement activities. These young people learn while planning, researching, teaching, and making decisions that affect the entire education system.

At the university level, including universities like Stanford and the University of California Berkeley, students are often the initiators of courses and demand more role in changing the curriculum and making it truly responsive to their needs. In some cases, universities have offered alternatives for student-designed faculty approved courses. In other cases, students have formed movements or even their own NGOs like Unseen America Projects, Inc., to promote democratic experiential learning and to design and accredit their own alternative curricula.[20]

Other university level programs are entirely field-taught on outdoor expeditions. These courses combine traditional academic readings and written assignments with field observations, service projects, open discussions of course material, and meetings with local speakers who are involved with the course subjects. These "hybrid" experiential/traditional programs aim to provide the academic rigor of a classroom course with the breadth and personal connections of experiential education.

VETERINARY EDUCATION

Veterinary education is the tertiary education of veterinarians. To become a veterinarian, one must first complete a veterinary degree (DVM, VMD, BVS, BVSc, BVMS, BVM, cand.med.vet).

Many veterinary schools outside North America use the title "Faculty of Veterinary Science" instead of "College of Veterinary Medicine" or "School of Veterinary Medicine", and some veterinary schools in China, Japan and South Korea (such as the DVM degree-awarding Department of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry at Guangxi University in China and the Department of Veterinary Medicine at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology use the term "Department".[1]) Veterinary schools are distinct from departments of animal science offering a pre-veterinary curriculum, teaching the biomedical sciences (and awarding a Bachelor of Science degree or the equivalent), and providing graduate veterinary education in disciplines such as microbiology, virology, and molecular biology.

Aspiring veterinarians can earn several types of degrees, differing by country and involving undergraduate or graduate education.[1] In the United States, schools award the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree (DVM).[2] This degree is also awarded in Bangladesh, Canada, Ethiopia, Hungary, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Tobago and Trinidad.[1] Other countries offer a degree equivalent to the North American DVM. In the United Kingdom and countries which have adopted the undergraduate system of higher education, a bachelor's degree is equivalent to a DVM (after five or six years of study). In the US, a four-year DVM degree such as Bachelor of Veterinary Science, Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine or Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery follows a four-year undergraduate degree (eight years of study after high school).[3] In Ireland, the Veterinary Medicine Programme at the University College Dublin awards the Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine (MVB).[4] At the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, the degree awarded is the Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine & Surgery (BVMS).[5] Some veterinary schools offer a degree enabling the recipient to practice veterinary medicine in their home country but does not permit the individual to take a licensing examination abroad; for example, veterinary schools in Afghanistan offer only the Bachelor of Science (BS) degree.[3] Although Ethiopia awards a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree, it is not recognized in the US or Western Europe.[6]

About 50 percent of veterinarians own their own business when they graduate from school. Nearly every country requires an individual with a veterinary degree to be licensed before practicing. Most countries require a non-national with a veterinary degree to pass a separate licensure exam for foreign graduates before practicing. In the US, the Educational Commission for Foreign Veterinary Graduates (ECFVG) administers a four-step examination recognized by all American state and territorial veterinary licensing boards, the US federal government, and the District of Columbia.[7] The European Parliament issued a September 30, 2005 directive providing EU-wide standards for veterinary medical education and the recognition of veterinary degrees from member states.[8]

Licensure requirements are diverse. In South Africa, the Veterinary and Para-Veterinary Professions Act, Act 19 of 1982 provides for automatic licensure if an individual has graduated from one of several universities in South Africa, New Zealand, or the United Kingdom (including the University of Pretoria, Medical University of South Africa, Massey University, University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, University of Liverpool, and the University of London as of 2008) or has passed the licensure examination administered by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. All others must pass an examination and register with the South African Veterinary Council.[9] India has a similar system, in which degrees awarded by certain schools are "deemed" to qualify an individual to practice veterinary medicine, but has forgone an exam in favor of state tribunals which investigate credentials and control a registry of licensed practitioners.

ACCREDIATION
All developed countries and most newly industrialized and developing countries accredit veterinary schools.[11] Those in the US are accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Council on Education (COE)[12][13] The EU is developing an accreditation standard, with accreditation usually provided by the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education (EAEVE) as of 2008.[14][15][16]

Accreditation systems vary widely in developing nations. In Mexico El Consejo Nacional de Educación de la Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia (CONEVET) accredits veterinary medical colleges, although few schools are accredited.[17] The accreditation system is poor (or nonexistent) in other developing nations; Ethiopia has focused on building veterinary medical colleges rather than accrediting existing schools. With almost no accreditation system, the country's veterinary education is poor

Curriculum
Veterinary student listening to a calf's side with a stethoscope
Student at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine receives clinical training in bovine health.

CURRICULUM
Veterinary school curricula are not standardized, with programs lasting from three to six years. In the United States and Canada the program is generally four years long, usually after a four-year pre-vet undergraduate degree). For the first three years, students learn anatomy, physiology, histology, neuroanatomy, pharmacology, immunology, bacteriology, virology, pathology, parasitology, toxicology, herd health (also called population health), nutrition, radiography, and epidemiology. During the third year, students learn anesthesiology, diagnostics, surgery, ophthalmology, orthopedics, and dentistry. For the fourth year, often 12 months long instead of nine, students care for a wide range of animals.[21] Clinical education is a focus of most veterinary school curricula worldwide. In 2005, for the first time in its 104-year-history, the Veterinary Medicine Programme at University College Dublin instituted a lecture-free final year focusing on clinical training.[22] The Institute of Veterinary Pathology at the University of Zurich has implemented a curriculum for teaching pathology with an extensive clinical component.[23] Veterinary schools in Israel,[24] Spain,[25] the Czech Republic,[26] and Slovakia[27] also emphasize clinical training.

However, clinical training is limited in some schools and countries; in Japan, students do not receive clinical education until they have studied for six years.[28] In Sri Lanka, until recently there were few companion animals; veterinary education focused on herd health, with little attention to clinical skills.[29] In Ethiopia few schools have clinical training facilities, and the government has prioritized opening more schools over improving existing colleges.[6] There is concern in the United States that clinical training may suffer because many veterinary teaching hospitals are in financial trouble.[30]
Students taking notes in a classroom
Students at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison take notes during a June 2005 classroom lecture.

Most veterinary schools do not allow students to engage in "species specialization", and students must be able to treat a broad range of species.[31] However, most veterinary programs allow students to take elective courses which will enable them to specialize at graduation. Veterinary schools in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States engage in "tracking", and students are asked which branch of veterinary medicine they intend to practice (such as companion-animal, bovine, equine, food-supply, avian, wildlife, and public-health).[32] Although tracking is controversial, about 60 percent of US and Canadian veterinary schools engage in full or partial tracking of students and there are calls for full tracking by some North American veterinary-medical-education organizations.[33][34] It is argued that enhanced tracking should be linked to "limited licensure" of veterinarians to practice only in the species (or specialty) in which they were trained.[33][35] Although very few veterinary schools require students to enroll in an internship or residency upon graduation, internships and residencies are often required for veterinarians seeking board certification in Canada, Europe and the US.[36]

Lectures and rote learning are two of the most common teaching methods in veterinary education.[37] To a lesser degree, outcome-based education[38] discovery learning, and inquiry-based learning are also used.[39] Problem-based learning has been adopted in most veterinary schools in developed countries, particularly Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and Western Europe.