ACE working within / outside VET
- Authors: Foley, Annette
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at AVETRA 2007 Conference, Victoria University, Footscray, Victoria: 11th-13th April 2007
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- Description: This paper looks at vocational education and training (VET) policy initiatives currently being circulated within the Victorian adult and community education (ACE) sector. It particularly explores how coordinators working and managing ACE organizations are being encouraged to meet policy requirements that are in some cases at odds with their traditional roles. The paper explores how ACE and VET frontline managers/coordinators are experiencing policy reform differently in some cases and how the central role of identity and identity change in the formation of VET and ACE is being understood from a different philosophical and cultural position. The reflections and perceptions from seven ACE coordinators, four ACE/RTO managers and fourteen VET frontline managers were examined with the aim of better understanding the working experiences and perceptions of people responsible for delivering and coordinating change within their organizations. The paper and its conclusions shed light on differences in ACE/VET discursive practices and interpretations of current policy directives and the implications this difference is having on ACE practice and ACE delivery.
- Description: 2003005540
Men's sheds in Australia : Learning through community contexts
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Brown, Michael , Foley, Annette , Harvey, Jack , Gleeson, Lynne
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book
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- Description: ‘Men’s sheds’ organisations are typically located in shed or workshop-type spaces in community settings that provide opportunities for regular hands-on activity by groups deliberately and mainly comprising men. Men’s sheds in community organisations are shown to be a relatively new, diverse and poorly known set of community-based, grass-roots organisations—found only in Australia. These informal spaces and programs in community settings have grown recently and rapidly in parts of mainly southern Australia with a higher proportion of older men not in paid work. Men’s sheds are typically organised by, and legally constituted through, existing community organisations. They usually provide a woodworking workshop space, tools and equipment and an adjacent social area in a public, shed-type setting. Some include a metalwork area and/or an adjacent garden.
- Description: 2003005525
Old dogs, new shed tricks : An exploration of innovative, workshop-based learning practice in Australia
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Brown, Michael , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at AVETRA 2007 Conference, Victoria University, Footscray, Victoria: 11th-13th April 2007
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- Description: Our paper explores some recent innovations in workshop-based learning practice that come out of community-based men's sheds in Australia. It deliberately goes beyond an exploration of the typical community-based men's shed, already explored in our recent NCVER research report and looks at some new and productive interactions between sheds and other informal learning organisations. We go to the margins of rapidly evolving shed practice and single out three types of shed-based organisations that work with school resisters, Vietnam Veterans and older men in aged care. Our aim is to illustrate, using new Australian narrative data, some theoretical and practical implications and benefits of reciprocal, workshop-based mentoring relationships involving men of different ages. Our focus is on ways in which men with a skill or trade are able, in a situated and authentic learning context, to informally weave magic for and with other men, and in some cases with young people. Our paper provides pointers to some of the principles underpinning successful informal and community-based learning practice for older men: particularly the need for a high level of engagement; the choice of an appropriate and safe setting; and to account for the differences associated with age and gender. We articulate an imperative for bringing more blokes into all forms of learning in Australia including through more informal, community-based learning as well as through adult and community education. Our paper and its conclusions have implications for other workshop and shed-based learning practice in vocational education and training as well as informal and community-based learning by volunteers in the quintessential and ubiquitous Australian fire and football sheds.
- Description: 2003005537
Shedding some new light on gender : Evidence about men's informal learning preferences from Australian men's sheds in community contexts
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette , Brown, Michael
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the 37th Annual SCUTREA Conference, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland : 3rd-5th July 2007 p. 169-176
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- Description: Our research identifies some gender-related implications of men gathering, learning and sharing skills in shed-based community contexts with a raft of positive outcomes. (author abstract)
- Description: 2003005528
The international potential for men's shed-based learning
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette , Brown, Michael
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Ad-lib: Journal for Continuing Liberal Adult Education Vol. 34, no. (2007), p. 9-13
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- Description: This paper uses new data from research into informal learning through community-based 'men's sheds' organisations, that have proliferated rapidly and recently across much of southern Australia, to ask 'What is the potential for shed-based community learning in other countries?' It is based on a continuing suite of Australian research into informal learning occurring in community contexts for men, particularly research into men not in paid work.
"How men are worked with": Gender roles in men's informal learning
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 38th Annual SCUTREA Conference, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK : 2nd-4th July 2008 p. 198-207
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- Description: Our paper critically analyses and theorises the role of women as coordinators and participants in community-based organizations where men comprise the majority of participants. Literature, interview and survey data lead us to suggest that it is "how men are worked with" that determines the effectiveness of women's involvement (author abstract)
- Description: 2003006466
A long and winding road : Autonomous men's learning through participation in community sheds across Australia
- Authors: Brown, Michael , Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 38th Annual SCUTREA Conference, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK : 2nd-4th July 2008 p. 78-86
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- Description: This paper discusses aspects of men's learning derived from our study of mostly older men who are coming together, talking, working and socialising in community sheds across Australia (Golding et al 2007). The paper looks at the social, informal and autonomous learning and considers the significance of the community "work-like" settings (author abstract)
- Description: 2003006465
Alternative possibilities : Social impulses in ACE coordinator practices
- Authors: Foley, Annette
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 38th Annual SCUTREA Conference, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK : 2nd-4th July 2008 p. 198-207
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- Description: This paper looks at policy initiatives in the vocational education and training sector in Australia. The paper draws on exiting work on neoliberalism in education and its impact on VET in the Australian setting and adds some new insights into the working practices of coordinators in the Victorian setting (author abstract)
- Description: 2003006462
Houses and sheds in Australia : an exploration of the genesis and growth of neighbourhood houses and men's sheds in community settings
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Kimberley, Helen , Foley, Annette , Brown, Michael
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Adult Learning Vol. 48, no. 2 (Jul 2008), p. 237-262
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- Description: This article reviews research into the genesis and spread of both neighbourhood houses and learning centres in Victoria and community-based men's sheds in Australia to identify some similarities and differences. Our article asks questions about the gendered communities of practice that underpin houses for women on the one hand, and sheds for men on the other. Our particular interest is with the gender issues associated with the development of the relatively mature neighbourhood house 'sector', and those associated with the very recent and developing community-based men's sheds 'sector'. Our underpinning research question has to do with the desirability (or otherwise) in each of these sectors of political and strategic decisions being either gender specific or gender neutral. We identify a number of tantalising parallels between the rationale behind the establishment of both sectors,for women and men, albeit in very different circumstances, along with some obvious differences.
- Description: C1
Let the men speak : Health, friendship, community and shed therapy
- Authors: Foley, Annette , Golding, Barry , Brown, Michael
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at AVETRA 2008 Conference, Adelaide : 3rd-4th April 2008
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- Description: Our paper is based on our recently published NCVER project on Men's sheds in Australia, Learning through Community Contexts (Golding, Brown, Foley, Harvey & Gleeson, 2007), which showed that men';s sheds informally cater for non vocational, social, health, wellbeing and learning needs of mainly older men. We deliberately used unedited transcripts from the NCVER project in the form of narratives or stories to give the men an opportunity to speak for themselves about the benefits of participating in men's sheds. The paper highlights some of the limitations of the methodology used in the attempt to allow the men themselves to make sense of the benefits they experience and enjoy from participating in men's sheds as conveyed through their own voices.
- Description: 200300647
Out the back : Men's sheds and informal learning
- Authors: Brown, Michael , Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Fine Print Vol. 31, no. 2 (2008), p. 12-15
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- Description: Some experts say a mental state of relaxed concentration - when the brain produces alpha waves - is the most conducive to learning. Perhaps this is why the friendly atmosphere and ambience in men's sheds supports the process of informal learning. This paper discusses aspects of men's learning derived from the authors' study of mostly older men who are coming together, talking, working and socialising in community sheds across Australia. The paper looks at the social, informal and autonomous learning and considers the significance of the community work-like settings. Mentoring, coaching, 'sitting next to George' and 'hanging out on the periphery' are common forms of social pedagogical interaction in these contexts as are group discussion, conversations and low-key questioning. In this paper the mostly older men's learning is analysed as a subset of lifelong learning. The participants in the study are mostly older men: some retired, some recovering from illness or injury, others unable to find full-time paid work. However all share a social space and an undefined but common purpose that due to ageing bodies and faculties is sometimes illusionary as much as real, but that is loosely focused around regular, hands-on participation in traditional, male-orientated, goal-directed activities. Considered highly significant to participation in the learning and group activities is the development of male friendships referred to as 'mateship' amongst men in Australia. These friendships develop through participation and inclusion in activity that occurs in social and community spaces. The authors' research shows that access to, and inclusion in, these male-orientated group spaces provides an avenue for the development of friendships, trust, support and reciprocity. Through the research the authors found that the associated learning and life- stage development that occurs in these environments leads to self- reported improvements in happiness, health and wellbeing, and feelings of social connection. The participants in this study are generally considered to be a missing group or cohort in adult education. It also picks up on the trend in Australia about 'a remarkable explosion in individualised, self-directed and autonomous forms of learning that have occurred without involving adult educators'. Considered central to this study were the places, spaces and faces. [Author abstract, ed]
- Description: 2003006456
Shedding school early insights from school : Community shed collaboration in Australia
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette , Brown, Michael
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
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- Description: Our paper focuses on evidence of positive interactions between schools and community sheds in Australia to examine what it is about shed-based community programs and pedagogies that are attractive to some early school leavers and school resisters. It is based primarily on interview data from the subset of men’s sheds across Australia with school programs that formed part of our 2007 research into men’s sheds. It is complemented by insights from interviews with men’s sheds participants and rural fire volunteers about what it was that also led many of them to also ‘shed’ school early. Our paper identifies links between the success factors associated with informal learning pedagogies in voluntary and community groups identified in the UK and success factors associated with community-based shed programs in Australia. We identify the potential benefits of sheds in engaging both early school leavers and older men with negative recollections of school, in enjoyable, regular, hands-on activity. We also discuss ways in which some of the difficulties associated with shed-based school programs that seek to engage and reintegrate early school leavers might be avoided or minimised. Finally, we pose some unanswered questions about the implications of our research findings for education and training providers.
- Description: .
- Description: Adelaide :
- Description: 3rd - 4th April 2008
- Description: 0
Informal learning : A discussion around defining and researching its breadth and importance
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Brown, Michael , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Adult Learning Vol. 49, no. 1 (2009), p. 34-56
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- Description: Informal learning has often been seen as formal learning's 'poor cousin'. Our paper explores and discusses new and different ways of thinking about defining, valuing and researching the breadth and importance of informal learning in diverse national and cultural contexts. This includes a consideration of the power relations that can act to devalue informal learning. It is underpinned by a recognition that not only do a relatively small proportion of adults currently engage informal learning, but those who do tend already to be dedicated and successful lifelong learners. It leads to a discussion about how informal learning might be framed as part of the solution to adult exclusion, seen to be aggravated by unnecessary adult educational hierarchies, accreditation, assessment and formality.
Men’s learning and wellbeing through community organisations in Western Australia
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Brown, Michael , Foley, Annette , Harvey, Jack
- Date: 2009
- Type: Report
- Full Text:
- Description: Report to the Western Australia Department of Education & Training
Senior men’s learning and wellbeing through community participation in Australia
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette , Brown, Michael , Harvey, Jack
- Date: 2009
- Type: Report
- Full Text:
- Description: Report to the National Seniors Productive Ageing Centre.
Water, weeds and autumn leaves : Learning to be drier in the Alpine region
- Authors: Foley, Annette , Grace, Lauri
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Adult Learning Vol. 49, no. 3 (2009), p. 451-471
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- Description: Our paper explores how and what adults living and working in the Alpine region of Victoria understand and are learning about the changes to water availability, in a time when the response to water availability is subject to extensive debate and policy attention. Interviews for this study were conducted in the towns of Bright and Mount Beauty, with participants drawn from across the Alpine region. The interviews focused on what local stakeholders from the Alpine region understood about water availability in the region and how and what they had learned about living and working with climatic changes in their local area. The findings of our study see that there was evidence of a strong understanding of the direct and indirect impact of climate change oil participants' local community area. The study also sees evidence of learning through a community frames of reference' as outlined by Berkhout, Hertin and Dann et al.
- Description: 2003007972
Wicked learning : Reflecting on Learning to be drier
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Brown, Michael , Foley, Annette , Smith, Erica , Campbell, Coral , Schulz, Christine , Angwin, Jennifer , Grace, Lauri
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Adult Learning Vol. 49, no. 3 (2009), p. 544-566
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- Description: In this final, collaborative paper in the Learning to be drier edition, we reflect on and draw together some of the key threads from the diverse narratives in our four site papers from across the southern Murray-Darling Basin. Our paper title, Wicked learning, draws on a recent body literature (Rittel & Webber 1973) about messy or 'wicked problems' as characterised by Dietz and Stern (1998). It picks up on our identification of the difficulty and enormity of the learning challenges being faced by communities, associated, at best, with a decade of record dry years (drought) and severely over-committed rivers. At worst, drought is occurring in combination with and as a precursor to recent, progressive drying of the Basin associated with climate change. Our research is suggestive of a need for much more learning across all segments of the adult community about '... the big picture, including the interrelationships among the full range of causal factors ...' (Australian Public Service Commission, APSC 2007: 1) underlying the presenting problem of drying. We conclude that solutions to the messy or wicked problem of drying in an interconnected Basin will lie in the social domain. This will include building a wider knowledge and acceptance of the problems and likely future risks across the Basin including all parts of communities. The problem of drying as well as its causes and solutions are multidimensional, and will involve comprehensive learning about all five key characteristics of other 'wicked' policy problems identified in previous research in the environmental arena. The narratives that we have heard identify the extreme difficulty in all four sites of rational and learned responses to being drier as the problem has unfolded. All narratives about being drier that we have heard involve a recognition of a combination of the five characteristics common to wicked problems: multidimensionality, scientific uncertainty, value conflict and uncertainty, mistrust as well as urgency. All narratives identify the importance of social learning: to be productive, to be efficient, to survive, to live with uncertainty, to be sustainable and to share. Combating the extent and effects of drying, causality aside, will require new forms of learning through new community, social and learning spaces, apart from and in addition to new technological and scientific learning.
- Description: 2003007975
Climate Change in the Victorian Alps: Can VET be a change agent?
- Authors: Grace, Lauri , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: AVETRA 13th Annual Conference: VET Research: Leading and Responding in Turbulent Times
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- Description: Of all the factors contributing to turbulent times in Australia, climate change is one that offers both challenges and opportunities for VET. In a time when the response to water availability is subject to ‘extensive debate and policy attention’, our presentation explores what adults living and working in the Alpine region of Victoria understand about the changes to water availability, and what they have learned about adapting to significant climatic changes in their local area. Interviews were conducted in the towns of Bright, Mount Beauty and Albury, with participants from across the Alpine region. Our study found evidence of a strong understanding of the direct impact of climate change on participants’ local community area, and a keen desire to learn about adaptation to change. In addition to an identified need for more information around climate change issues and projected impacts in general, participants saw practical hands-on water education strategies as an important way to educate people to help themselves. Conversations about where or how people learned to adapt to change were broad ranging, and clearly connected to the participants’ backgrounds, livelihoods or where they were situated. This raised the question of what responses VET might develop to address these identified learning needs. Major local industries of tourism, agriculture, water harvesting and land care are all covered by national Training Packages that include industry- specific units of competence to support learning to live and work in an environmentally sustainable way. In addition, the national Employability Skills framework offers opportunities to build climate change awareness and adaptation into units of competency where they may not be explicitly incorporated. Our presentation will outline the opportunities for VET to act as a change agent in this and other Australian communities impacted by climate change.
All over, red rover? The neglect and potential of Australian adult education in the community
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Adult Learning Vol. 51, no. SPEC.ISS.1 (2011), p. 53-71
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- Description: Consistent with the 'looking back, moving forward' conference theme, in this paper we undertake a critical, research-based appraisal of the current, arguably neglected state of adult education in Australia in 2010, and proceed to paint a picture of how a different and potentially more positive future might be realised. Firstly, we emphasise situations (including states and territories) in Australia in which adult education is seen to be lacking or missing for particular groups of adults. Secondly we emphasise research evidence confirming the demonstrable value of learning for purposes other than those that are immediately vocational. We identify links between lifelong and life wide learning on one hand, and health and wellbeing on the other. Part of the paper involves international comparisons with other forms of adult learning that Australia might learn from, adapt or borrow. We make particular reference to research underpinning the recent Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning by NIACE in the United Kingdom. Our first main conclusion has to do with equity. Adult and community education (ACE) in Australia is currently seen to be least available or accessible to those Australians with the most limited and most negative experiences of school education, but the most need to learn in non-vocational domains. These groups include older Australians, some men and women, people not in paid work, and rural, isolated and Indigenous people. Our second main conclusion is that, to realise adult learning's future potential, we need changes to government policies, research and practice that acknowledge and actively support the broader nature and value of learning for life across all age groups. To paraphrase research from Belgium by Sfard (2008), based around Beck's (1986) exploration of reflexive modernity, the adult education function of ACE is in dire straits, unless education is seen as being much more valuable than the sum of individual vocational competencies, and particularly unless it is also recognised, valued and supported as one of many valuable outcomes of social, lifelong and lifewide learning throughout the community.
Do you want VET with that?' Some implications for lifelong and lifewide learning in an era of universal VET
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at AVETRA 14th Annual Conference: Research in VET: Janus- Reflecting Back, Projecting Forward p. 70
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Our [presentation] seeks to explore what might have been lost with the gains as vocational education and training (VET) in Australia has tended to become a universal part of lifelong and lifewide education and training transactions. The idea for our [presentation]’s rhetorical title, ‘Do you want VET with that?’ comes from a service catchcry in a fast food chain that seeks to ‘add value’ to the sales transaction by adding the option of ‘French fries’. In exploring the question and its presuppositions about the value of ‘added VET’, it critically examines a range of recent Australian and international policy and research literature. The paper addresses several AVETRA conference themes, including the work of VET and its workforce, learner success and skilling for Australia’s future. Our [presentation] critically examines the extent to which ‘value adding with VET’ has permeated contemporary education and training discourses in all sectors. It seeks to deconstruct some of the prevailing presuppositions about the universal utility of vocational learning. We use some of our previous research around community learning contexts to examine how some of the important links between learning and a range of non-vocational outcomes, such as benefits to health and wellbeing have been lost, as VET has become part of most sectors and pathways from secondary school onwards. Our [presentation] provides evidence from the literature examined to challenge the notion that learning for vocational outcomes alone is sufficient for lifewide and across the life course. In doing this it draws on critical insights from recent research from Europe and its component states that confirms how learning can produce outcomes that benefit people’s lives and self-esteem beyond work. We argue that there is room in contemporary VET discourse/s for an expanded discursive field where health and wellbeing might be acknowledged, enhanced and valued as an important ‘outcome’ of learning alongside vocational skills development.