Exploring some current issues for Cooperative Education.

As cooperative education (co-op) has recently surpassed 100 years, it is worthwhile to reflect on the challenges co-op faced and responded to, as co-op has matured and new challenges developed. Much concern was raised in the past of a lack of accepted theoretical learning framework for learning in co-op, however, there has been advances made since that attempt to capture the complexities of what is co-op. Over the last so many years, diverse range of terms has developed, along with multiple definitions, to loosely describe what may (or perhaps may not) be co-op, possibly a reflection of the diversity of practices of co-op across the disciplines and attempts to be inclusive. Lastly, we would argue that even though co-op often claims to have integration of knowledge between the workplace and educational institutions, the claims are often not well supported, how integration may occur seems to be poorly understood, and here still lays a challenge for the co-op community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]