Category: Refereed article

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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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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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Developing speaking skills of adult learners in private universities in Bangladesh: problems and solutions

Author/s: Sabrin Farooqui

Edition: Volume 47, Number 1, April 2007

Summary: The globalisation of English and a growing demand for good English-speaking skills in the job market in particular have been placing a greater emphasis on the teaching of English speaking skills in Bangladesh. The private universities emphasise developing English skills. It seems that students of public and private universities have the same level of proficiency when they start but, at the end of four years of study, the students of private universities have acquired a higher level of proficiency in English.  With observation, document analysis and a series of interviews with teachers who are teaching English language in these private universities, this study investigates how these private universities are helping the students to develop English language skills. It explores teachers’ perceptions of the problems students encounter while speaking English and the factors that help these learners to develop their speaking skills.

Keywords: globalisation, English-speaking skills, Bangladesh, skill development

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Snapshot of a generation: bridging the theory-practice divide with project-based learning

Author/s: Dr Julaine Allan

Edition: Volume 47, Number 1, April 2007

Summary: In this example from the human services field, project-based learning is used to connect theoretical knowledge and practice skills by taking a project from industry and completing it within the peer supported learning environment of the classroom, returning the project product to industry. The theoretical ideal of participation was the project’s goal and the way Snapshot of a generation fulfilled this goal on several levels is discussed. The benefits of project-based learning are an injection of new perspectives and energy from students to the workplace, completion of tasks that human services workers view as important but do not have time to do, and critically important workplace experience for students in an environment of peer support and learning. Project-based learning is a subversion of the usual practicum because of the way abstract theory is embedded in the doing rather than separate from it.

Keywords: human services, project-based learning, theoretical knowledge, practice skills, peer-supported learning

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Prices and values: a perspective on adult and community education

Author/s: Graeme Wells

Edition: Volume 47, Number 1, April 2007

Summary: Government-provided services are caught in the jaws of a ‘cost-tax vice’. On the cost side, the long-term trend of rising relative prices of services, including education, seems set to continue. The other jaw of the vice is the high efficiency cost of raising additional taxes. Recent research making the case for public provision of post-compulsory education has concentrated on the difficult task of quantifying its economic and social benefits. However, given the effects of the cost tax vice, this paper argues that it may be wise to change the focus of research and to direct more attention to new ways of financing adult and community education.

Keywords: costs, taxation, post-compulsory education, economic benefit, social benefit, cost tax vice

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Human capital development: reforms for adult and community education

Author/s: Sarojni Choy & Sandra Haukka

Edition: Volume 47, Number 1, April 2007

Summary: The adult and community education (ACE) sector is consistently responsive to changing community needs and government priorities. It is this particular function that has drawn ACE into the lifelong learning debate as one model for sustaining communities. The responsiveness of ACE means that the sector and its programs continue to make valuable contributions to the quality of social and economic life, particularly in local communities. Although a major focus of ACE is on non-vocational outcomes, there is potential for the sector to make a greater contribution to the human capital stream of the Council of Australian Governments’ National Reform Agenda. This paper briefly describes the ACE sector and its current provisions, and proposes ways in which it could make a greater contribution to the human capital stream of the National Reform Agenda. Reforms to ACE are critical at a time when the Australian Government is planning activities for the Reform Agenda, when there is an urgent need of skilled workers, when the ageing population is seeking pathways and opportunities for economic outcomes, and when traditional vocational education and training providers are unable to meet the skill shortages experienced by industry across Australia. This paper attempts to initiate debate around an enhanced role for ACE, in terms of not only the Reform Agenda, but also a rather more defined position in meeting the learning and skilling needs of the broader community.

Keywords: ACE sector, National Reform Agenda, ageing population, skilled workers, vocational education

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A very peculiar practice? Promulgating social partnerships with small business – but what have we learnt from research and practice?

Author/s: Karen Plane

Edition: Volume 47, Number 1, April 2007

Summary: The ideologies underpinning public / private partnerships (PPPs) have been much contested in theory, but what does promulgating a social partnership mean in practice? This qualitative research study has been ‘critiquing’ a construct of ‘ecologies of learning’ or ‘capacities of capital’ for social partnerships between industry, vocational education and training (VET) and a regional community. This paper critiques one of these ecologies by exploring the discourses of social capital which present challenges for small business/ community partnerships in practice. It argues that there is a need to question the impact of neoliberalism on social partnerships with VET and how the entities of industry: ‘fortress enterprise’, the community: ‘fortress Australia’, and governance: ‘terra publica’ are positioned within this predominant economic rationalist discourse. It concludes that policies for ‘globalising neoliberalism’ can be capacity reducing for promulgating social partnerships with VET at the local level.

Keywords: PPPs, public–private partnerships, ecologies of learning, capacities of capital, social partnerships, VET, industry

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