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Over the last decade or more, there have been a number of attempts to introduce programs into secondary schools that seek to provide students with an orientation to the world of business and to entrepreneurial activity. Despite the considerable effort that has been put into developing these programs and in offering them both within, and in addition to, standard curriculum offerings, there has been relatively little research on the programs, their effectiveness or their relevance to the prior experience, attitudes or interests of school students. This paper draws on data from an ongoing evaluation of one of these Enterprise Education programs. It uses data provided by over 10,000 students accumulated from programs offered over the four years of 1998-2001 and focuses on the personal and family experience of the students and on their attitudes toward, and understanding of, 'business'. The data highlight the views of 'business' that students hold and the significant variations in these (and in the students' exposure to the 'world of work') that operate across different demographic groups. The paper will consider some of the implications of these findings for programs of this type targeted at school students.

Western Australia's minerals and energy industry is a very significant, broadly spread industry that operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, often in isolated regions. The industry makes a significant investment in management development and is constantly looking for opportunities to offer company-based learning that meets regulatory imperatives and the challenges of location diversity. The national evaluation of the Frontline Management Initiative (Barratt-Pugh & Soutar 2002) [indexed at TD/TNC 70.05] suggests that management development is pivotal in forming workplace learning. This paper builds upon that work and details research into the practices and impact of frontline management development in the minerals and energy industry of Western Australia (Barratt-Pugh & Watson 2002). Using the voices of practitioners, the paper provides an in-depth view of the current development of frontline managers in the Western Australian minerals and energy industry and tells of the outcomes for managers, organisations, and their business. Finally the paper comments on the paradox experienced by managers seeking to extend their managing self within a system that mandates their achievement of defined management qualifications, and reflects on the brokerage role being played by the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia in negotiating the complexity of these emerging learning patterns, relations and spaces.

The theme of this paper is regional ecology and issues for vocational education and training (VET) in developing learning partners with small business for sustainable economic development while protecting the natural capital of a growing, complex, diverse region. However there are questions about the capacity of a market driven culture of VET for building learning communities as well as about the direction for the new national strategy in embracing the triple bottom line (the social, the economic and the environmental) for developing public private partnerships for learning communities with a sustainable future. The regional ecology of the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia is discussed and the absence of a role for VET is noted.

This report offers insight into the important area of generic skills from a practical implementation and assessment perspective. The approach is based on the experiences of 'coalface' educators and students involved in long term action research. The paper looks at the generic skills strategy of Torrens Valley TAFE which has evolved over a period of more than 10 years, into a nationally and internationally acclaimed practical implementation strategy. It highlights some practical assessment strategies, tools and processes and includes views of various stakeholders including graduates and employers and the impact it has had on them.

Ongoing restructuring, new types of students, changes in systems and the movement of staff within sections and institutes are only some of the daily challenges facing practitioners in many areas of TAFE as they grapple with the notion of organisational flexibility and customer responsiveness. This paper looks at how members of four workgroups based in two metropolitan institutes are dealing with challenges through informal learning. This paper draws from preliminary findings of an Australian Research Council collaborative research project concerned with determining the significance of informal learning and its contribution to organisational performance. The project is currently midway through and has completed interviews and held feedback sessions with members of four workgroups undertaking quite different types of work. While the project is based in an educational organisation, the major focus of the research project is on TAFE as a workplace. Wenger has written extensively on communities of practice and his work provides a new perspective for viewing learning occurring in workplaces (Wenger, 1998) [indexed at TD/TNC 71.237]. This paper draws from Wenger's theoretical work and views the four workgroups from the point of view of communities of practice. In doing so, it enables many of the everyday work practices of the workgroups to be articulated as 'learning'. This offers potential for learning and development because it begins to foreground practices within TAFE that may foster informal learning environments and strengthen what is already occurring in these communities.