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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
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:
This volume contains the paper of the 6th International Conference of the International Network on Innovative Apprenticeship: Architectures for apprenticeship: Achieving economic and social goals, which was held on the campus of Federation University Australia, on September 1-2, 2015. The papers and keynote speeches offer many aspects for discussion and reflection. This was also the case at the conference itself, which provided two days of topical debates and fruitful deliberations. The papers covered the themes of Governance, Didactics, Quality of Apprenticeships, School-to-work transition, the status of Apprenticeships, and Apprenticeships and Social justice.
Description:
This paper draws on data from recently-completed research funded by the Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) and undertaken in the State of Victoria, in six non-metropolitan communities: three in rural/regional areas and three in peri-urban areas. The rationale for the research was that, despite decades of effort, education outcomes for rural and regional areas in Australia remain well under the Australian average (Napthine et al, 2019), partly because so many young people need to leave home to attend tertiary education (McKenzie, 2014). There is almost no specific research on peri-urban areas. For this paper we have extracted data, from selected phases of the project, specifically to find out why young people may or may not make VET choices. The method for this paper comprised analysis of data from each site, consisting of: • Interviews with VET-sector organisations; • ‘Snapshot surveys’, completed, prior to interviews and focus groups, by 80 young people in schools and 32 in their second-year out; • Publicly-available government ‘On-Track’ data (DET, 2018), of young people in their first year out of school. Recent related literature looks at VET choices in terms of the perceived and actual financial rewards of VET choices (e.g. Norton & Charastidtham, 2019); or in terms of the perceived status of VET choices (e.g. Billett, Choy & Hodge, 2019). Our research showed a complex picture with a number of factors (personal, environmental, cultural background and geographic) influencing choices; and also a perception that VET means apprenticeships, almost to the exclusion of traineeships or full-time VET. The agency of individual schools and of VET providers or apprenticeship organisations was also found to be important. The findings have clear implications for both policy and practice.
Description:
This paper draws on data from recently-completed research funded by the Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) and undertaken in the State of Victoria, in six non-metropolitan communities: three in rural/regional areas and three in peri-urban areas. The rationale for the research was that, despite decades of effort, education outcomes for rural and regional areas in Australia remain well under the Australian average (Napthine et al, 2019), partly because so many young people need to leave home to attend tertiary education (McKenzie, 2014). There is almost no specific research on peri-urban areas. For this paper we have extracted data, from selected phases of the project, specifically to find out why young people may or may not make VET choices. The method for this paper comprised analysis of data from each site, consisting of: • Interviews with VET-sector organisations; • ‘Snapshot surveys’, completed, prior to interviews and focus groups, by 80 young people in schools and 32 in their second-year out; • Publicly-available government ‘On-Track’ data (DET, 2018), of young people in their first year out of school. Recent related literature looks at VET choices in terms of the perceived and actual financial rewards of VET choices (e.g. Norton & Charastidtham, 2019); or in terms of the perceived status of VET choices (e.g. Billett, Choy & Hodge, 2019). Our research showed a complex picture with a number of factors (personal, environmental, cultural background and geographic) influencing choices; and also a perception that VET means apprenticeships, almost to the exclusion of traineeships or full-time VET. The agency of individual schools and of VET providers or apprenticeship organisations was also found to be important. The findings have clear implications for both policy and practice.
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.
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.
Description:
Learning through life experiences as distinct from learning through the academy and courses have become increasingly important themes in later life adult education research and practice. Whilst the dominant discourse for most younger people is still about education and training for students in standardised and accredited courses, there is increasing concern to find ways of giving voice to empower people otherwise excluded, disempowered or missing from mainstream education, learning, research and the community. This paper specifically explores and actively mirrors ways of using techniques developed through academic autoethnography to empower older people to share and make sense of the lives they have lived by exploring some of the unexamined assumptions that govern everyday life, behaviour and decision making including in the many, often very informal contexts well beyond educational institutions, the academy and paid work. In essence, like autoethnography, our paper seeks to identify, interrogate and celebrate ways of revealing and displaying multiple layers of consciousness connecting the personal to the cultural for sharing and celebrating diversity in later life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Australian Journal of Adult Learning is the property of Copyright Agency Limited and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
Description:
Our paper presents some initial findings from research funded by the National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC) and conducted in a range of VET and ACE organisations in three Australian states and the Northern Territory with a view to identifying the mechanisms and systems used to capture learner voice. The paper also draws upon recent research in the UK and Europe that has provided critical insights into the benefits to learners' experiences and successes that result from taking learner voice seriously in the Further Education (FE) setting.
Description:
Our paper presents some initial findings from research funded by the National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC) and conducted in a range of VET and ACE organisations in three Australian states and the Northern Territory with a view to identifying the mechanisms and systems used to capture learner voice. The paper also draws upon recent research in the UK and Europe that has provided critical insights into the benefits to learners' experiences and successes that result from taking learner voice seriously in the Further Education (FE) setting.
Description:
This paper reports on research conducted by the authors on behalf of the Australian National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC), which was established in 2009 to provide independent advice to the Standing Council on Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment (SCOTESE) on how disadvantaged learners can achieve better outcomes from vocational education and training (VET). The paper draws on interviews conducted with more than 60 VET managers and staff, students and student organisations, and a range of VET stakeholders in all Australian states and territories. The authors were required to conduct a review and analysis of effective models and underpinning principles for gathering and responding to feedback from learners, particularly disadvantaged learners. Participants were asked particularly about learner voice regulatory frameworks and provider accountability for acting on feedback from learners, particularly disadvantaged learners.
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:
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:
The article comes from a research program examining the benefits of men's sheds in an Australian context. The author first addresses some of the controversial issues of disadvantage and inequality of women, takes into account the position associated with the implications of unequal distribution of materials and resources by feminists, and assumes that unequal distribution of resources not only limits many women but also some men. The author looks at the health status of men in Australia and discusses, through a research program, the link between participation in men's spades and health and wellbeing benefits. The article uses Sen's capability approach to present men's sheds in the Australian context as a useful space where enabling capabilities developed through meaningful activities can benefit men in relation to health and wellness.
Description:
The article comes from a research program examining the benefits of men's sheds in an Australian context. The author first addresses some of the controversial issues of disadvantage and inequality of women, takes into account the position associated with the implications of unequal distribution of materials and resources by feminists, and assumes that unequal distribution of resources not only limits many women but also some men. The author looks at the health status of men in Australia and discusses, through a research program, the link between participation in men's spades and health and wellbeing benefits. The article uses Sen's capability approach to present men's sheds in the Australian context as a useful space where enabling capabilities developed through meaningful activities can benefit men in relation to health and wellness.