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 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
Vocational education and training manager discursive practices at the frontline: Alternative possibilities in a Victorian setting
- Authors: Foley, Annette
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Educational Management, Administration and Leadership Vol. 39, no. 1 (2011), p. 105-121
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- Description: This article looks at how the neoliberal reform process is affecting the professional identity of frontline managers in the Australian vocational education and training sector. The article examines how frontline managers are required to negotiate their working practices between their understandings and experiences as educators and the new vocationalism whereby discourses and practices of corporate managerialism and economic rationalism permeate the roles of managers. Essentially, the data from this study shows how frontline managers are juggling conflicting values as they facilitate or mediate the change process and how manager identities at the frontline are multiple and performed, not single and pre-assigned. The findings show a manager identity that is both compliant and contested. © 2011 The Author(s).
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
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
Men’s learning and wellbeing through community organisations in Western Australia
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Brown, Michael , Foley, Annette , Harvey, Jack
- Date: 2009
- Type: Report
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- Description: Report to the Western Australia Department of Education & Training
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.
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.
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
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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.
Promoting learner voice in VET: developimg democratic, transformative possibilities or further entrenching the status
- Authors: Foley, Annette , Golding, Barry , Angus, Lawrence , Lavender, Peter
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Vocational Education and Training Vol. 65, no. 4 (2013), p. 560-574
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- Description: In order to critique the notion of ‘learner voice’ in vocational education and training (VET) policy, this paper draws from a project conducted by the authors on behalf of the Australian National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC). The term ‘learner voice’ is used extensively throughout NVEAC documentation to describe the engagement of ‘disadvantaged’ students within the VET system. However, the concept of ‘voice’ being advocated, we argue, is a particularly ‘thin’ one which is linked to notions of client feedback, managed participation and the commodification of training rather than any broad sense of democracy, equity or social transformation. The paper critically examines current practices in relation to learner voice within the VET policy framework and their implications for the contested role of VET in contributing to social equity and redress of social and economic disadvantage.
Learner voice in VET and ACE: What do stakeholders say
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Angus, Lawrence , Foley, Annette , Lavender, Peter
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at AVETRA 2012 15th Annual Conference Canberra p. 1-10
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- 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: 2003009274
“Learner voice”: Who speaks? Who listens?
- Authors: Angus, Lawrence , Golding, Barry , Lavender, Peter , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: ECER 2012, The Need for Educational Research to Champion Freedom, Education and Development for All
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- Description: The paper will report on an ongoing research project being conducted by the authors, on behalf of the Australian National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC), in which we are required to conduct “a review and analysis of effective models and underpinning principles for gathering and responding to feedback from learners, particularly disadvantaged learners”. The term “learner voice” is used throughout the NVEAC documentation to describe engagement with students of vocational education and training. But the “voice” that has unashamedly dominated the policy discourse in vocational and adult education and training in recent decades has been that of business and industry. Recently, however, particularly in England during the final term of the New Labour administration, and increasingly is some Scandinavian and European countries, a renewed emphasis on policies of social inclusion has introduced the notion of “learner voice” into policy considerations. Especially important are the voices of learners who are perceived to be disadvantaged or marginalised. In Australia, too, discourses of both inclusion and human capital have led to policies of involving students, their interests and their views in some way in the education project. The engagement of students with the tertiary education sector and institutions has come to be regarded as a way of promoting students’ learning by making their education and training more relevant to, and inclusive of, their “needs” while simultaneously contributing to the more efficient utilisation of human capital in an increasingly competitive national economy. Such inclusiveness, therefore, is promoted as facilitating the twin virtues of equity and efficiency, and is seen by some as having the potential to empower learners and transform their learning experience, and also to transform and expand Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Adult and Community Education (ACE). The paper will critically examine the dynamics of the vet policy framework and the range current practice in relation to learner voice. It will particularly emphasise contradictions in both practice and policy in relation to who speaks and with what authority, and who listens to what effect.
Masculine Gendered Space
- Authors: Foley, Annette
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Studies in Adult Education and Learning Vol. 24, no. 3 (2018), p. 29-38
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- 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.
Men and boys: Ages and stages
- Authors: Foley, Annette , Golding, Barry
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Men learning through life Chapter 7 p. 97-112
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Men and boys : Sharing the skills across generations
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Intergenerational Relationships Vol. 15, no. 1 (2017), p. 52-63
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- Description: Our paper focuses on intergenerational learning in informal community settings between older men and boys. It examines and challenges narrow definitions of the notion of what is meant by “older” and “intergenerational” learning. It stresses the importance of older men’s capacity to be contemporary in their worldview, while drawing from a deep knowledge and wisdom developed from their life experiences and also from their formative cultural, national, and Indigenous learning traditions. Our paper provides an account of intergenerational stories wherein men informally mentor, share skills, and develop meaningful relationships with disengaged and disconnected young people in the community Men’s Sheds. © 2017 Taylor & Francis.
Architectures for apprenticeship: Achieving economic and social goals
- Authors: Smith, Erica , Gonon, Philipp , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Edited book
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- 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.
The case for some men's spaces
- Authors: Foley, Annette
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Men learning through life Chapter 5 p. 63-76
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- Description: My intention in this chapter is to address what could be seen as some tensions associated with the importance and value of gendered spaces in particular contexts. The gendered spaces that I refer to are those such as men’s sheds, where older men can come together and develop friend-ships, form community bonds, share life experiences and skills and, as a consequence, attain health benefits that have direct and positive impacts on their families and their communities (Golding et al., 2007). This chapter will put forward the case that in certain circumstances there is room for the existence and support of community gendered spaces for men that have the capacity to develop capabilities for individual agency (Sen, 1992).I write this chapter with some reservations about what Rowan et al. (2002, p. 5) describe as the ‘dangerous or hostile terrain’ of gendered masculine spaces, with the associated concerns from some commenta-tors that research which identifies men’s disadvantage might take the focus off funding or support for programmes which address women’s disadvantage, in terms of women’s participation in – and outcomes from – education and training more broadly (Golding, Foley and Brown, 2008). For this purpose, I want to clear some ground by clarifying the intentions of the chapter and, by doing so, dispel some of the tensions around this argument. ..."From introduction"
Learner voice in VET: who speaks? Who listens?
- Authors: Angus, Lawrence , Golding, Barry , Lavender, Peter , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: ECER 2012, The Need for Educational Research to Champion Freedom, Education and Development for All
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- 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.
Constructing narratives in later life : Autoethnography beyond the academy
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Adult Learning Vol. 57, no. 3 (2017), p. 384-400
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- 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.)