Literature Search Strategy on University Management - Assignment Example

? Literature Search Strategy Literature Search Strategy i) The reason for the search. There significant differences portrayed by various countries in terms of their model of vocational education and training. In this case, this search will focus on identifying the way different countries manage vocational education. It is evident that, different countries have similar societal contexts; thus, this can offer an ideal chance for conducting a comparative research. It will also focus on presenting a comparative approach aimed at examining both similarities and differences in vocational education in different countries. The search will gather information regarding the countries balance employability and maintaining open access to universities. It will also focus on identifying the way social inclusion is facilitated in the process of vocational education and related pathways. The search will focus on seeking the understanding management and trade-offs, and various compromises in different alternative of vocation education. This search focuses on the vocational programs beyond secondary level; in fact, it will also reflect on gathering information regarding sharing of costs between the government, employers and students in terms of the benefits derived. The search will also focus on gathering information on ways employers and unions, who are responsible for curriculum development, can ensure that the learning meets the needs in the modern workplaces. It will also gather relevant insights on the way of developing a coherent guidance profession, which is autonomous from psychological counseling and information regarding labor market. Finally, the search will focus on gathering information about interchange and partnership between vocational education institutions and industry. ii) How you aim to conduct your search e.g. where you will look for appropriate literature. The search will be conducted using the commonly known online search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo Search. On the other hand, the search will rely on other searching strategies such as use of internet public library, academic library such as EBSCO, ProQuest, and Emerald (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2009). In this case, use of these search strategies will focus on utilizing broad sense of categories and associated topics, and this will offer possible direction towards the research (Hofstee, 2006). During the research, specific search phrases will be used in order to increase the likelihood of getting the expected information from the web pages. The search will also utilize Boolean search terms, which will facilitate getting more precise with queries. For example, the main terms can integrate terms such as "and", "or" and "not", which enables inclusion or exclusion of given terms in the results. The search will be narrowed and deepened in the search engines such as Ask.com and Google; whereby, this search will use a combination of three to five different keywords; in fact, these search engines will deepen the results pool of the key terms used. After getting the results, the content will be filtered and validated in order to get the most suitable source of required information (Mumford, 1997). Determining the legitimacy of the content will involve vetting and filtering; in fact, there is need to consider the author, source, and date of publication (Bryman & Bell, 2011). On the other hand, the author should be a professional with credential, while the page or journal should be resent. The search will focus on web pages that have their own domain names such as (.edu, .gov, .org and gov.co.uk). Therefore, these criteria will be used in conducting the online search, and relevant sources will be gathered such as books, peer reviewed articles, government reports and others (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe & Jackson, 2008). iii) The search terms used and a summary of what the searches found. The search terms used are "how other countries manage vocational education". This search terms were keyed in on the Google search box and the results were approximately 28.5 million. Therefore, there is need to select a few of them, which meet the requirements stipulated in the source vetting and validation criteria. Some of the search results that were found are such as "Vocational education and training institutions", which is report exploring the effective management and public governance of crucial issues in vocational education and training (VET) sector in various countries. The other link entailed a report from Unesco, with a title "The Role of Vocational Education and Training in - Unesco"; in fact, this report explores the role of vocational education in transition countries such as the member states of the European union and other OECD countries. The other link provided by the search results is a report titled "OECD reviews of vocational education and training learning for Jobs"; in fact, this report explores OECD countries that are developing vocational programmes on the basis of the competencies that can assist people to manage their careers. The other source is a report titled "Exploring leadership in vocational education", which offers information and analysis of vocational education. This is a working paper, which presents information regarding the role of managing and leading vocational education in different forms of countries in regard to their knowledge. The last source from the search was title "Benefits of vocational education and training"; in fact, it entails a report on benefits derived from Vocational education and training at various levels. It also offers an analysis of organization in different countries, and the way they are influenced by various policies and practices of human resource management. iv) A review of the nature of the literature found using up to 30 examples, i.e. 5 are government reports, 13 represent academic research etc. After conducting internet search using the common search engines, there were numerous sources from the search results. For instance, five of these sources were peer-reviews journals; six were government reports from the ministries of education in various countries. There were other four source research articles published in the last five years from different organizations. There were five academic researches, which covered the topic of vocational education and training; in fact, they covered an overview of the vocational education sector and the policies that can improve it. There were ten websites from legitimate organization and institutions, which offer vocational education from different countries. There were a total of thirty sources obtained were obtained from the internet search using Google search engine. v) A selection of 5 items which you feel would be a good starting point for your area of interest. Please state why? A good starting point for the area of interest is use of one peer reviewed articles, two government reports, and two academic researches. Apparently, most of these sources are up to date since they are released more regularly compared to book (Schepers & Van den Berg, 2007). On the other hand, information provided by websites may not be viable since it is not subjected to a review by scholars. References Bryman and Bell. (2011). Business research methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press Chapter 5 on BB9 Easterby-Smith, M, Thorpe, R and Jackson, P. (2008). Management Research (3rd ed.). London: Sage Hofstee, E. (2006). Extract from constructing a good dissertation – a practical guide to finishing a Masters, MBA or Phd on schedule Chapter on BB9 Mumford, A. (1997). How to manage your learning environment. New York: Peter Honey Publications. Saunders, M, Lewis, P. & Thornhill, A. (2009). Research Methods for business students (5th. ed.). Eaglewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall Schepers, P & Van den Berg, P. (2007). Social factors of work-environment creativity. Journal of Business and Psychology Vol 21:3 Read More