Tag: VET

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Second chance learning in Neighbourhood Houses in Victoria

Author: Tracey Ollis, Karen Starr, Cheryl Ryan, Jennifer Angwin and Ursula Harrison
Deakin University

Edition: Volume 57, Number 1, April 2017

Summary: Neighbourhood Houses in Victoria are significant sites of formal and informal education for adult learners. Intrinsically connected to local communities they play an important role in decreasing social isolation and building social inclusion. The focus of this research is on adult learners and adult learning that engages with ‘second chance’ learners who participate in adult learning programs in the Barwon and South West regions of Victoria. The greater Geelong region is characterised by declining car automotive and textile manufacturing industries and emerging new industries such as hospitality and tourism. The data from the research participants in the study include career changers, long term and recently unemployed, newly arrived and migrant communities, young people and older adults. This paper focuses on the learning practices of second chance learners who frequently have negative perceptions of themselves as unsuccessful learners, but are transformed through their learning experiences in Neighbourhood Houses. We argue the unique social space of the Neighbourhood House, the support and guidance offered by staff and teachers, the unique pedagogy and small group learning experiences, allows adult learners to reconstruct a new identity of themselves as successful learners.

Keywords: informal learning, formal learning, adult education, ACE, VET, training reform, Neighbourhood Houses

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 57_1. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Case studies in e-RPL and e-PR

Authors: Roslyn Cameron, Curtin University and Allison Miller, Vanguard Visions Consulting Pty Ltd

Summary:  The use of ePortfolios for recognition of prior learning (e-RPL) and for professional recognition (e-PR) is slowly gaining in popularity in the VET sector however their use is sporadic across educational sectors, disciplines, educational institutions and professions. Added to this is an array of purposes and types of e-RPL and e-PR models and practice. The aim of this paper is to build on the conceptual framework developed by Cameron (2012) for e-RPL and e-PR and to provide case studies for each of the four types developed within this framework: e-PR for Professional Accreditation; e-RPL for Workplace Recognition; e-RPL for Access and; e-RPL for Self Recognition. We use the case studies to explore the four types and the two dimensions or continuums central to the framework. The vertical dimension is a continuum between RPL as process and RPL as product and the second horizontal dimension is a continuum between formal learning contexts and low learner control as opposed to informal learning contexts and high levels of learner control. The case studies have aided the further development of the framework and its theoretical and practical applications.

Keywords: e-RPL, e-PR, recognition of prior learning, professional accreditation, eRecognition, VET, ACE

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 54_1. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Social capital outcomes: The new focus for adult literacy and numeracy courses

Authors: Stephen Black, Northern Sydney Institute of TAFE; Jo Balatti, James Cook University; & Ian Falk, Charles Darwin University

Edition: Volume 46, Number 3, November 2006

Summary: Since the early 1990s in Australia, adult literacy and numeracy courses in vocational education and training (VET) have been focused on human capital outcomes, that is, on developing the literacy and numeracy skills believed to improve the economic performance of individuals, enterprises and the nation generally. However, some researchers have expressed the concern that these outcomes are insufficient in explaining the socio-economic impacts of these courses. This paper reports on a recent study of the social capital outcomes of adult literacy and numeracy courses (Balatti, Black & Falk, 2006). The findings indicate that it is a complex mix of findings of both human and social capital outcomes from these courses that results in socio-economic impacts. The authors contend that social capital outcomes should be recognised and accounted for, along with human capital skills, in a reframing of adult literacy and numeracy policy and practice.

Keywords: human capital, social capital, VET,

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The ‘double-edged sword’ of the adult learning environment

Authors: Sara Murray and Jane Mitchell: Charles Sturt University

Edition: Volume 53, Number 1, April 2013

Summary: The vocational education and training sector plays a critical role in the provision of educational opportunities for young adults who have left school prior to completing a qualification. Some research has found that a major factor that supports student re-engagement in formal education is the ‘adult learning environment’ that characterises institutions such as TAFE. Other studies have questioned the suitability of the adult learning environment for some students. This study explores how students and teachers in five foundation TAFE courses view the adult learning environment and how they respond to this environment. The paper argues that the adult learning environment can in some instances be a ‘double-edged sword’, in that it can both enhance and limit student engagement.

Keywords: vocational, VET, TAFE, young adult, learning, foundation

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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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‘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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Competency-based training: different perceptions in Australia and Germany

Author/s: Silke Hellwig

Edition: Volume 46, Number 1, April 2006

Summary: The German dual apprenticeship system has traditionally been viewed as an effective system for generating a highly skilled workforce in the trades, crafts and service sectors. In addition, countries and systems looking to improve their own approaches to vocational education and training (VET) have considered as exemplary the main features of the ‘dual system’ (that is, two learning sites and shared responsibility between private employers and public vocational schools). Nevertheless, competency-based training (CBT) as it has been implemented in the Anglophone countries has increasingly attracted the attention of public officials, vocational educators and VET researchers in Germany. This attention has been especially focused on the modularisation of curriculum and the importance of vocationalism in education and training systems. Comparative studies of these dual concepts (for example Deissinger 2002, Ertl 2000) have been used to inform  policy and practice. This paper focuses on the competency-based approach to VET in Australia and examines how reforms aimed at developing a national system, and implementing CBT in curriculum, training delivery and assessment are evaluated by stakeholders (for example, representatives of government, educators and academics). It also compares reforms to VET in Australia with those used in Germany for reforming and restructuring the dual system. This analysis is used to generate conclusions about the extent to which aspects of the Australian CBT model might be successfully applied to dual system reforms in Germany.

Keywords: dual apprenticeship, VET, competency-based training, Germany

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Learning in and through social partnerships

Author/s: Kathleen M. Fennessy, Stephen Billett and Carolyn Ovens

Edition: Volume 46, Number 1, April 2006

Summary: This paper explores participation in social partnerships as a space for learning. It analyses interview data about participation in social partnership from partnerships involved in vocational education and training (VET) to argue that social partnerships constitute a form of learning space. Partnership participants engage in new learning through the interactions and activities inherent in partnership work, and relational learning is the kind of learning most supported in these learning spaces. By fostering learning about the self and its relationship to others, social partnerships have potential to enhance capacity for action and responsibility, which underpins citizenship as a learning process. In this way, social partnerships are learning spaces that potentially build collective, even democratic, understanding by enhancing the individual’s cognitive and affective competencies. This cultural learning is embodied in the social partnership through engagement in effective partnership work.

Keywords: social partnerships, space for learning, VET, citizenship, responsibility

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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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Negotiating learning through stories: mature women, VET and narrative inquiry

Author/s: Jeannie Daniels

Edition: Volume 48, Number 1, April 2008

Summary: This paper explains my choice of narrative inquiry as a methodological approach in my recently completed PhD study. My research investigated learning experiences of mature women learners in VET. Notions of learning as negotiated lived experience called for a methodological approach that privileged the learner’s perspective and opened space in which alternative notions of learning might emerge. From interviews with twelve mature women, I explain how I use stories of learning to understand how these women, as learners with distinct yet diverse life experiences, contextualise their everyday into their VET learning. Some ethical considerations in using other people’s stories in narrative research are also identified. I argue for the use of stories to research women’s understandings of their VET learning and to reconceptualise learning as an ongoing and integrated process that must be understood within the everyday contexts of women’s lives.

Keywords: VET, mature learners, women, experience

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The role of cultural context in continuing vocational training

Author/s: Oktay Akbas ̨

Edition: Volume 51, Number 1, April 2011

Summary: This study analysed how auto repairmen working in micro-enterprises undertake continuing vocational training in relation to cultural context. The study was conducted in Kırıkkale, a city in central Anatolia in Turkey. To this end, the descriptive research technique of structured interview was used. Interviews with 33 auto repairmen were recorded and analysed. The results revealed the means used by auto repairmen to receive vocational training. It was found that the auto repairmen who participated in this study mostly consulted their co-workers as a means of vocational training. In addition, almost all of the craftsmen and foremen seemed to receive help from their co-workers when they encountered a problem which they could not solve on their own. The second most common means included computers and the Internet.. On the other hand, face-to-face education and printed materials were the least commonly used means for vocational training. These findings show that, although they are literate, auto repairmen, who mostly do not take full advantage of formal education and grow up in traditional cultural environments, prefer to use oral communication instead of printed materials as their information sources. These results should be taken into consideration while developing vocational training programs for auto repairmen and other similar groups that are not born into a written culture.

Keywords: auto, VET, training programs, vocational, culture, formal

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 51_1. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.