Search Results for
"Vocational education"

Australian unions entered the ‘national training reform agenda’ in the late 1980s promising themselves a high skill, high wage economy in which ‘lifetime learning’ was an integral part of paid employment. The regulatory arrangements the union movement sought in order to realise these goals have instead been used to promote the ‘marketisation’ of vocational training, in which the business community has gained increased leverage over training design, delivery and assessment. As a result, unions have seen one of their traditional strongholds—the male-dominated apprenticeship system—cut back, while training access remains sharply defined by class and gender. Unions now face questions of how best to participate in the training market, in ways that promote union identity. © 2000, Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

A number of jurisdictions have adopted vocational education and employment programs intended, among other aims, to reduce recidivism among adult correctional populations. Because of the well-established links between low educational attainment, unemployment and crime, these programs do seem to target a risk factor for recidivism. Whether, in fact, they are effective in reducing future offending behavior is still open to question. This review assesses the empirical status of the effectiveness of vocational education and employment programs by drawing conclusions based upon systematic rankings of methodological rigor of individual program evaluations. Evaluation research in vocational education/job training, community employment, and correctional industries program areas was assessed. Based upon rankings of methodological rigor and specific decision criteria for assessing overall empirical support for program effectiveness, several types were identified as generally successful at reducing offender recidivism, including vocational education, multi-component correctional industry, and community employment programs. The pervasive lack of rigorous program evaluation in this area limits the kinds of conclusions that can be drawn and points toward a clear research agenda for providing stronger evidence on the effectiveness of vocational education and correctional work programs. © 2000 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

The contemporary efflorescence of lifelong learning discourse in education and social planning is argued here to be, substantially, the product of economic determinism. That discourse is evaluated from the perspective of three progressive sentiments that have informed lifelong learning advocacy: the individual, the democratic and the adaptive. Each progressive sentiment is seen as expressing a central programmatic purpose for educational reform and as capturing its ethical thrust. Contemporary lifelong learning discourse is found to be only superficially expressive of these informing sentiments. The progressive, ethical, liberatory nature of each sentiment is marginalized or excluded from the discourse, which may best be seen, accordingly, as seriously regressive, counter-ethical and non-liberatory. It is substantially lacking in critical concern, social vision, and any commitment to social justice and equity. It constructs education as a commodified private good, for which individuals should pay. It focuses strongly on individual interests and on vocational skills development. That education which is funded by the state, is focused increasingly on the development of basic life and vocational skills in the interests of engagement in and service to the global economy. Educational engagement is increasingly seen as desirably embedded in the economically productive activities that are its desired outcomes, further limiting any opportunity for socially progressive learning. It is suggested that if the prevailing lifelong learning discourse is to be made more culturally progressive- in both its educational activities and its learning outcomes- it cannot be through a return to traditional progressive ideologies. Rather, it must accept prevailing epistemology in refocusing that discourse. Paradoxically, although non-compliant educationists are now largely marginalized and ineffectual in their influence on the nature of the contemporary lifelong learning agenda, their vocation and their increasing suffusion throughout contemporary cultural formations places them in a potentially strong position to lead cultural and educational change in directions that are more culturally progressive. © 2000 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The design and delivery of National vocational Qualifications (NVQs) in the United Kingdom have suffered from both conceptual operational problems. This article identifies two ways of dealing with these problems that are based on wider research findings. The first approach is to move from a narrow model of quality control to a Total Quality Management approach. The European Quality Foundation model for Total Quality Management is suggested as an appropriate approach. This model is then analysed against the current approaches to assessment verification of NVQs. The approach of developing ‘situated learning in communities of practice’ is used to focus on the weaknesses of the existing system. The specific issues of simulation and sampling analysed are covered in some depth, with improved approaches suggested. Finally, the article explores the implications of the adoption of radically different quality criteria, with built-in continuing professional development based on collaborative and situated learning. These implications include substantial modernisation of existing policy and practice, and allocation of appropriate resources, as well as the development of an approach to the implementation of change consistent with these findings. © 2000 Journal of vocational education and Trainin. All rights reserved.

Over the last decade, a competency-based approach to education and training has become widely used in a broad range of education and training contexts, most particularly, vocational education and training (VET). Among other things, this approach emphasizes the importance of knowledge and skill that is portable, visible and expressible. Various products have been developed (e.g. competencies, competency standards, Training Packages) to enable access to this knowledge and skill and secure its foundational role. Other knowledge and skill - that is, knowledge and skill that is situated and not easily visible and expressible - is seemingly rendered redundant. This paper discusses the role and significance of situated practises in competency-based training (CBT), most particularly embodied knowledge and tacit skills. Using empirical material collected in the course of a recent research project on CBT, the argument is made that the body, as currently constituted in VET products, is understood more as a symbolic/informational than material/physical entity. This understanding gives rise to a ‘thin’ conception of vocational competence and, sometimes, a thin practise of developing this competence. More broadly, the body is a critical site of contestation between radically different goals (e.g. industrial/educational, global/local). Bodily specificity (e.g. tacit skills, experienced judgement) can be mobilized to challenge the universalizing impulses of CBT. Indeed, this specificity completes or is necessary to these impulses. It plays a constitutive role in the practice of vocational education and training and could, with profit, be more fully recognized and supported in its policy. © 2000 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.