Category: Research report

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‘Trying to keep up’: The experience of combining full-time VET with work

Author: Michelle Morris: Student Services, TAFE SA Regency Campus

Edition: Volume 53, Number 1, April 2013

Summary: Maintaining a healthy work-life relationship is important for the health and wellbeing of individuals and families. This is also true for students studying in vocational education and training(VET) who face increasing pressure to combine study and work. The intersecting commitments of work, life and study create a range of demands for individuals, which, in turn, impede work-life satisfaction. Time and money have been shown to be the biggest factors affecting people who combine work and VET – particularly for workers in low-income jobs, which constitute the biggest employment source for VET students. Data from a research project at TAFESA indicates that working students experience high levels of stress, time strain and interference with activities outside work/ TAFE. The work life outcomes for full-time students are significantly worse than outcomes for workers in the general population.

Keywords: full-time, work-life, balance, VET, research, TAFESA

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 53_1. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Organisational learning about depression in the workplace: a community of practice of silence and avoidance

Author/s: Lisa Davies

Edition: Volume 46, Number 1, April 2006

Summary: The economic and social impact of depression on the Australian workforce (Hickie 2002; Hawthorne, Cheok, Goldney and Fisher 2003) is only recently being acknowledged. In 2004 I undertook semi-structured interviews with people with human resource responsibilities in the deregulated sector of information technology in South Australia. The interviews focused on their accessibility to work-based education about depression and asked their opinions regarding the merit of such education.

Keywords: depression, Australian workforce, human resources, work-based education

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An examination of the social systems of engineering projects

Author/s: Errol Lawson

Edition: Volume 46, Number 1, April 2006

Summary: The thesis drew together threads of the representation of real-world entities as systems, the life-cycle of groups of people, the nature of problem-solving and related issues associated the learning processes in the development and application of new knowledge in a group. These threads were consolidated in a Social Systems Evaluation Framework (SSEF) that was based on the forms of capital concepts of Bourdieu, namely embodied, social, institutionalised, economic and objectified capital. The Social Systems Evaluation Framework can facilitate the evaluation of the social system of an engineering project at any stage from initiation to disbandment and provides guidance on the encouragement of high performing teams or on the need for early intervention in a dysfunctional team by management.

Keywords: social systems evaluation framework, SSEF, management, dysfunctional teams

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Situated researcher reflections and professional learning journeys

Author/s: Susanne Owen

Edition: Volume 46, Number 1, April 2006

Summary: Some key theoretical aspects of my recently completed Doctor of Education thesis regarding teacher professional development were situativity theory, communities of practice and being a situated reflective practitioner. With the hard work now over, it is interesting to comment on these aspects and their continuing relevance.

Keywords: teacher professional development, situativity theory, communities of practice, situated reflective practitioner

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