Author: Ajal

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After the doctorate? Personal and professional outcomes of the doctoral learning journey

Author/s: Barry Elsey

Edition: Volume 47, Number 3, November 2007

Summary: This paper explores the post-graduation experiences of 94 doctoral graduates from the Division of Business at the University of South Australia. Data were gathered by means of an online questionnaire. The first part examines the extent to which the original goals and ambitions of the graduates were realised in successfully completing the doctoral learning journey. The second part investigates ways in which doctoral learning outcomes were applied after graduation. These two foci are of interest to university policy-makers, marketing and administrative staff and academics ultimately responsible for the delivery of programs and the management of the doctoral learning journey.

Keywords: doctoral graduates, online questionnaire, learning journey, learning outcomes

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Transformative pedagogy for social capital

Author/s: Peter Willis

Edition: Volume 47, Number 3, November 2007

Summary: This paper explores ways in which pedagogy for an elaborated form of transformative learning can be a useful catalyst for the development of social capital in community and workplace groups and networks. I begin with an example and then explore ideas of learning challenges embedded in building and maintaining social capital. I consider the usefulness of a four-dimensional approach to transformative learning as a suitable pedagogy for its development and maintenance. The paper concludes with brief profiles of four educators whose work, in different ways, could be said to have promoted forms of social capital, directly or indirectly: Desmond Tutu, Anne Sullivan, Jesus and Socrates. Each of these educators, without excluding other approaches, tended to emphasise one of the four transformative pedagogies.

Keywords: transformative pedagogy, transformative learning, social capital

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Propensity to lifelong learning: Reflections of a research student

Author/s: Robert D. White

Edition: Volume 47, Number 2, July 2007

Summary: My tertiary learning journey began as a research assistant reviewing educational literature. I wondered why, among the mountain of lifelong learning literature, I could find nothing that explained why people are or are not lifelong learners. It appeared to be taken for granted by policy-makers, decision-makers and researchers that everyone either is, can or will be a lifelong learner. It appeared that no one had asked the question “What makes a lifelong learner?” So I asked the question and began a masters degree.

Keywords: lifelong learning, lifelong learners

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Creating older adults technology training policies: lessons from community practices

Author/s: Michael Nycyk and Margaret Redsell

Edition: Volume 47, Number 2, July 2007

Summary: Influencing government policy in adult learning areas requires consistent efforts in having findings noticed by educational policymakers. Submissions by Adult Learning Australia and researchers have called for unified educational policies and practices across Australia. This paper argues that, whilst it is important to address macro issues of policy formation, research into micro issues can also be valuable in assisting policy formation. Using information technology and communication teaching in a community centre, it considers analysis of informal daily policies and practices and what is working at the everyday level is important. Student experience examples at one centre teaching these skills to older adult are reported to show the types of policies and practices which maximised the long-term running of the centre and long periods of student retention. Like researchers addressing macro adult learning issues, it requires consistent reporting of results to educational policy-makers to remind them of what practices and policies do work for older adults.

Keywords: education, policy, practices, policy formation, student experience, student retention, technology, older adults

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Tackling the issues and challenges of using video data in adult literacy research

Author/s: Ali R. Abasi and Maurice C. Taylor

Edition: Volume 47, Number 2, July 2007

Summary: Although video has long been used as a teaching aid in adult literacy and basic education, literacy researchers seem to have ignored the potential benefits of using video as a tool that could add rigour to research. Reporting on their field experiences of an adult literacy learning study in Canada, the authors provide a narrative account of their use of video as a data collection tool. The article describes the methodological challenges associated with the use of video data and the procedures that were used to analyse video records in their adult literacy research.

Keywords: video, teaching aid, literacy, benefits

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Adult learners online: students’ experiences of learning online

Author/s: Wendy M. Knightley

Edition: Volume 47, Number 2, July 2007

Summary: Throughout the world, policy-makers are demonstrating their commitment to widening participation in education by promoting alternative pathways to gaining academic qualifications. This  paper reports a study which aimed to investigate the potential of online learning to overcome barriers to participating in education by socially disadvantaged adults, and to identify the factors that influenced such students’ participation and successful completion of online learning courses. Seventy-nine adults taking online learning courses with the Open University in the United Kingdom participated in a telephone survey and 15 of these students were also interviewed. Participants perceived themselves as having more easily accessed education because of the option of online learning and reported having benefited from the experience. However, online learning per se should be offered as only one potential means of attracting and retaining adult students, and further exploration into its potential for widening participation is necessary.

Keywords: participation, education, qualifications, social disadvantage, online learning

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Teaching for social capital outcomes: the case of adult literacy and numeracy courses

Author/s: Jo Balatti, Stephen Black and Ian Falk

Edition: Volume 47, Number 2, July 2007

Summary: There is strong evidence that participation in education and training can produce social capital outcomes. There is also strong evidence that such outcomes are useful outcomes; they can enhance the development of other outcomes often called human capital and they can contribute to the social-economic wellbeing of the learners and the communities in which they live. Yet, little research has been done on the pedagogy and other conditions that produce social capital outcomes in education and training. This paper reports on a research project that investigated what teachers do to produce social capital outcomes in adult literacy and numeracy courses.

Keywords: social capital outcomes, human capital, wellbeing, socio-economic

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Implementing an holistic approach in vocational education and training

Author/s: Donna-Louise McGrath

Edition: Volume 47, Number 2, July 2007

Summary: Although the phrase ‘holistic approach’ is increasingly used in reference to vocational education and training (VET) in Australia, there appears to be a paucity of literature which extensively conceptualises or details its practical application. Existing references to an ‘holistic approach’ appear indicative of an integrated model seen as a vehicle for the achievement of a broad range of vocational and social capital outcomes, particularly in Indigenous contexts. This paper suggests that the theoretical framework for an holistic approach to VET is humanism and constructivist theory and that an ‘holistic approach’ is essentially relevant training which is contextualised and purposely tailored to the learner or community needs and goals. The paper also provides a practical schema for implementing an holistic approach in VET, which is seen as synonymous with the thematic, integrated and whole approaches to learning and curriculum development implemented in schools.

Keywords: holistic approach, vocational education and training, social capital outcomes

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Crafting youth work training: synergising theory and practice in an Australian VET environment

Author/s: Andrew Wojecki

Edition: Volume 47, Number 2, July 2007

Summary: In the Australian vocational education and training (VET) context, attention is often given to what youth work training programs should consist of, resulting in less attention on how youth work education and training programs might be imagined, constructed and implemented. In this paper, a particular South Australian youth work training program is explored with the purpose of investigating the particular educational methodology employed and its impact in the structuring and delivery of a VET youth work education program. It emphasises that, in conceiving a competency-based youth work curriculum and its contribution toward the development of professional youth work identities, how the youth work educational program is delivered is just as important as what it should consist of.

Keywords: vocational education, youth work, training programs, competency-based

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The origins of competency-based training

Author/s: Steven Hodge

Edition: Volume 47, Number 2, July 2007

Summary: This article attempts to trace the origins of competency-based training (CBT), the theory of vocational education that underpins the National Training Framework in Australia. A distinction is made between societal and theoretical origins. This paper argues that CBT has its societal origins in the United States of America during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Public debate and government initiatives centred on the widely held view that there was a problem with the quality of education in the United States. One of the responses to this crisis was the Performance-Based Teacher Education movement which synthesised the theory of education that became CBT. The theoretical origins of CBT derive principally from behaviourism and systems theory – two broad theoretical orientations that influenced  educational debate in the United States during the formative period of CBT. Most of the component parts of CBT were contributed by specialists with a background in one or both of these theoretical orientations.

Keywords: competency-based training, vocational education, National Training Framework, performance-based teacher education, behaviourism, systems theory

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