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Discusses the major difficulties facing human resource development in organizations with respect to the role of training and development personnel who are seen to have been forced into a reactive position by senior management dictates. Gives an overview of the failure to deliver appropriate training and development and the lack of real commitment to HRD. Puts forward the need for a new kind of training and development professional and the key issues that need to be addressed.

This paper seeks to study the changing role of training and development over a seven‐year period.

Quantitative analysis; comparative analysis of 763 training and development/HRD job advertisements featured over a seven month‐period in 1996‐1997 and in 2003‐2004.

Change in the training and development role has been patchy and not as extensive as some of the literature has suggested.

The study was confined to training and development/HRD job advertisements from one, albeit leading, UK HR magazine and only allowed a seven‐year gap between the two sets of data gathered. It would have been interesting to have analysed job advertisements from multiple sources and over a longer period of time, and to have had a ten‐year gap between the two sets of data. However, the data gathering was a very time‐consuming process which limited the scope of the data gathered.

Practitioners need to consider how the training and development/HRD role is represented to the external world and the implications this has for the perceived image of the profession. Further, given the amount of resources invested in the recruitment process, those compiling job advertisements need to take care to ensure that the final product accurately reflects what is required of the post and incorporates any changes to the role over time.

First study to use training and development/HRD job advertisements to examine the ways in which the role of training and development has changed.

Successfully measuring effectiveness in management training and development can be a difficult task. Design of a valid measurement programme should include evaluation in key areas; including emotional reaction and knowledge gain measured after training interventions. Behavioural change and organisational impact measurements should be used on a longer time horizon to evaluate the progress and currency of the management development programme. Finally, research shows that maintaining a balance of the above measurements is the final key to success in measuring the effectiveness of management training and development.

The Industrial Training Service was established in 1960 to influence ideas about training at national level and to help put them into practice. This has always been the background against which ITS in‐company work or individual training and development programmes have been conducted. The Industrial Training Service thus has been one of the links between the realities of day‐to‐day work carried out in organisations, and the thinking at national level, which guides the policies and practices of training and human resource development. This article describes how the development of the ITS over the past 20 years has paralleled the evolution of training in the UK. It describes a working model which has guided its development and uses it to make some analysis and prediction for the next 20 years.

Reports empirical evidence on stakeholders′ perceptions vis‐à‐vis the HRD function. Examines both internal and external HRD stakeholder groups and identifies their expectations, values, beliefs and evaluation criteria as they relate to the HRD function within the organization.

The idea that learning is a natural human activity which takes place in a relatively non‐contrived way as part of everyday life has, in the author's experience, been lost when one considers the present state of training and development in many modern organisations. While it is accepted that some contrivance of the learning activity is necessary in order to make it more effective, there has been something of an obsession amongst trainers and consultants to come up with new methods and approaches, rather than concentrating on helping people to learn. Furthermore, the training function has tended not to emphasise the important role that the line manager plays in the development activity within the modern organisation. This may have arisen because the training function wanted to demonstrate ownership and establish a power base within the organisation; however, centralised ownership of training and development does not lend itself to the promotion and undertaking of non‐contrived on‐the‐job/natural development activities.

Reports that most organizations see training and development as the province of the human resource department. Proposes that responsibility for this should be placed in the hands of the line manager. Investigates how the responsibility for training and development can be successfully transferred to the line manager. Concludes with a series of key learning points which help in the implementation of this strategy.

Most organised development efforts in developing countries have historically focused on health care, food sufficiency, infrastructure, or technical and vocational training. However, the need to enhance concurrently managerial and organisational capabilities has been increasingly recognised. This is currently being addressed in many developing countries through formal management development projects sponsored both locally and by such external agencies as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank, among others. As interest grows in effectively accomplishing planned management development in such settings, and as the magnitude of resource commitments to development projects increases from local and international sources, there is a corresponding need for guidelines on how to do these development activities well in the settings of third world countries. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a comprehensive design for management and organisation development that incorporates learning from the author's experiences with a three‐year middle management training project conducted in Egypt.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the statistical evidence for the extent of employer training in Australia and analyse this information in the light of three major qualitative projects that have been undertaken into employer training since the mid‐1990s.

The paper reports an analysis of the major statistical databases on employer training in Australia and also draws evidence from three major projects that used a case study method in their qualitative phases.

The paper finds that assumptions about low levels of employer training expenditure in Australia are not supported by the available statistical data. The three qualitative projects examined also support the conclusion that Australian enterprises are increasing both the quality and quality of the training they provide to their employees.

The research projects reported in this paper were completed during the period 1994‐2004.

The paper concludes that the research evidence supports an increasing quality and quantity of training in Australian enterprises. In recent years this increase in training activity has been partly driven by government policies aimed at making nationally recognised training more available to employers and employees.

The paper counters the prevailing assumptions about the quality and quality of training provided by Australian employers and shows that carefully framed government policy can have a major effect on the level of employer investment in training.

Training, particularly in the form of comprehensive professional development, continues to be a need for paraeducators (also known as teacher assistants). Training needs begin with an initial set of knowledge and skills and is built based upon the paraeducator’s role with individual students and the educational settings. Standards or guidance documents are available from a few individual states within the United States, higher education systems, and professional organizations that serve individuals with exceptional needs and agencies. An international professional organization, Council for Exceptional Children [CEC] (2011), identified a common skill set that reinforces standards for defining curricula when providing training to paraeducators. Key to their ongoing professional development is the on-the-job coaching by the education professional (teacher), to support the application of skills into the inclusive setting. Various forms of professional development are available including online trainings in addition to face-to-face.