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While many feel that the skills and training sector has been subjected to relentless change for most of the past three decades, one consistent feature has been the bipartisan political desire to impose the logic of the market on Australia's technical and further education institutions (for example, Australian National Training Authority 1996; Dawkins 1989; Deveson 1990; Gillard 2012; The Auditor-General 2007). The remainder of this presentation draws upon research into 'institutional logics' (Friedland & Alford 1991; Thornton, Ocasio & Lounsbury 2013) to explore three related areas: (1) the impact of marketisation and privatisation upon the school education sector by using long-term international comparisons; (2) the specific impact of the market logic's application in the non-university post-secondary skills and training sector in four similar countries; and (3) to make a brief suggestion as to logical representations of TAFE in ways that might be used to establish a viable policy alternative to the single-minded pursuit of the discourse of marketisation and privatisation for publicly-funded training.

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This book examines the Canadian labour market in terms of the nature and extent of training provided for people who are either marginalised or members of groups that are chronically disadvantaged in the workplace. It discusses greater challenges for those marginalised in the labour force due to policy shifts that have resulted in a push to a more flexible labour market, and political changes that have shifted the responsibility for training from the federal government to the provinces. The author argues the need to understand the nature of barriers to training faced by specific categories of workers in order to design training programs to meet their needs. Chapters in this book are as follows: Who wins, who loses: the real story of the transfer of training to the provinces and its impact on women / Ursule Critoph; Snakes and ladders: coherent training for office workers / Alice de Wolff and Maureen Hynes; The road to equity: training women and First Nations on the Vancouver Island highway / Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Kate Braid; Women's training and equity on the Hibernia construction project; The culture of construction: or, etiquette for the nontraditional / Kate Braid; Hammering their way through the barriers: low-income women retrain to be carpenters / Margaret Little; Training and retraining health workers amid health care restructuring, downsizing, and rationalization: the case of health care aides / Larry Haiven and Liz Quinlan; Community skills training by and for immigrant women / Margaret Manery and Marjorie Griffin Cohen; Life skills training: 'open for discussion' / Shauna Butterwick; Pathways to employment for women: apprenticeship or college training? / Robert Sweet; Public policy and women's access to training in New Brunswick / Joan McFarland; Still shopping for training: women, training and livelihoods / Karen Lior and Susan Wismer; Youth Employment Programs in British Columbia: taking the high road or the low road? / Linda Wong and Stephen McBride.

Selected chapters in this book are indexed from TD/TNC 77.206 to TD/TNC 77.212. Show less

This occasional paper, the fourteenth in the series, brings together papers and summaries of presentations from the 2015 TAFE Directors Australia national conference, INSPIRE, which was held at The Grand Chancellor Hotel, Hobart from 9–11 September. The presentations included topics related to industry engagement; a market approach to vocational education and training (VET); quality and accountability, diversity of higher education providers, internationalising vocational education qualifications; emerging technologies, and Australia's partnerships with countries abroad. The majority of the papers from the conference plenary sessions are included in this occasional paper.

The conference sessions were: Embracing the shark: risk governance = value creation; Higher education in TAFE; Can TAFE institutes in regional locations help the business communities be more innovative?; Increasing staff capability to drive organisational performance: inspiration based on evidence; A conversation: what could be the big leap forward for Australia's policy on skills?; How can vocational education and training contribute to the next wave of economic growth?; The regulator, the registered training organisation (RTO), the broker and the lawyer; Review of training packages and accredited courses; Good skills and fine training in New Zealand: we think we have all the ingredients but do we have the recipe?; Australian International Education 2025; US community colleges conferring baccalaureate degrees: an update; When do markets work in education: and when don't they?; How adopting a Smart Campus mindset can help TAFEs train people for the jobs of the future; Training for the global economy: trends in the Asian Region; Three years in Beijing: thoughts on China's rise; VET Reform in China; Switching on students: technology isn't enough!; A new and compelling narrative for the directors of Australia's public provider; Quality and accountability: what can we learn from Ontario, Canada?; My inspiration - my passion - my future; TAFE the quality benchmark? Industry partnerships: a way of achieving quality; What role should commissioned agents play in the on-shore international vocational education and training industry?; Future higher education diversity; Australia-China: develop and strengthen mutual interests in a rapidly changing environment; How TAFEs are getting it right: competing to win in 2016; How has the competitive marketplace played out across the States and Territories for TAFE?; VET, the internet and social capital: Some navigational aids for the revolution.

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Research has extensively documented the employment barriers facing immigrants in Canada. Less attention is paid to the employment strategies that immigrants deploy in the host labour market. To address this gap in the literature, two projects are conducted to examine how immigrant women learn to optimize their labour market outcomes. Both projects employ a combination of life history style interviews and institutional ethnographic analysis. Life history interviews offer women ample space to (re)construct their experiences in relation to the social, economic and political contexts. Institutional ethnographic analysis starts with people’s experiences, but aims to explicate the social processes and practices constituting people’s experiences. The studies find that the women often resort to re-training and re-education as a means to improve their employment prospects. The women’s educational experiences help articulate them to what I call a credential and certificate regime (CCR), or the social processes and practices that attribute differential values to credentials and certificates produced at different places. I argue that in the era of globalization, CCR helps manage the Canadian labour force with an increasing number of immigrant workers, thereby preserving patriarchal and white supremacist power. The CCR that I explicate is predominantly Canadian centred. It is developed out of gatekeepers’ anxiety towards entrance controlling in various sectors that demand and indeed produce local certificates. The CCR also speaks of a transnational trend of credentialization, which is spearheaded by influential international organizations and companies located in the economic west. Both trends have helped create an expansive training market that is instrumental in feminizing immigrant women’s labour. In this paper, I also show different ways in which the CCR in Canada both services and disservices immigrant women, which makes it imperative to rethink the values and practices of training for immigrant women.

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A key requirement that underlines the delivery of successful skills development and training programs is communication about needs and opportunities. [This report] produced by [Canadian Policy Research Networks] CPRN for the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities identifies best practices to strengthen the flow of information among these groups and lead to more effective training. The project set out to identify the most successful vehicles that individuals, employers, and institutions use to communicate information about job training programs and employment needs. It identifies the best ways to inform students about training programs they are considering; employers about programs best suited to their needs for employees; and training institutions about the needs of employers and students. The findings will be of interest to governments and to those responsible for developing student service programs either in governments or institutions.

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This introduction introduces the thematic organization of the chapters included in the Vol. 1. These chapters are organized thematically to provide a foundation and context for understanding the sector of community colleges and global counterparts. Within each theme are examples of institutions in this sector from throughout the world.

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This report provides a picture of the Canadian labour market in the ‘new economy’ of the late 1990s and the emerging training market and its strengths and weaknesses. The new economy is characterised by rapid technological change and knowledge-intensive activities and the authors investigate how to support Canadian workers in developing the skills required to participate in this economic environment. The report is based on a synthesis of the results of a major Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN) project which has addressed three questions: what employment patterns and skill requirements characterise the new economy?; what are the implications of these trends for human capital investment?; and, what should individuals, employers, and governments be doing to ensure that Canadians are prepared for, and benefit from, employment in the new economy? The report begins with an empirical analysis of the post-industrial labour market and how employment is being transformed. On the basis of this analysis, the report argues that effective participation in the new economy relies on a strong basic education and the opportunity to upgrade and extend skills throughout working life. The analysis also revealed that many Canadians are not getting the training opportunities they need and, drawing on the results of the CPRN project, the report concludes by outlining a framework for skills development and defining the roles of individuals, employers, training providers and government. Show less

While standard models of training focus on how the structure of the input market affects training provisions of firms, this paper investigates the relationship between product market competition and training provision. Using the longitudinal and nationally representative data from Statistics Canada's Workplace and Employee Survey, [the authors] find that increased competition is strongly associated with more training provision within the workplace. [The authors] show that this association is unlikely to be driven by unobservable workplace heterogeneity, the specific measures used, and other relevant factors which can affect training provisions. To the extent that training is a significant source of human capital and industry competitiveness, [the authors'] empirical results suggest increasing training is a significant channel through which competition raises productivity.

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The potential for research to influence policy, and for researchers to influence policy actors, is significant. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of health services researchers engaging in (or not able to engage in) policy-relevant research. Semi-structured telephone interviews were completed with 23 experienced researchers. The results paint a complex and dynamic picture of the policy environment and the relationship between government officials and academic researchers. Elements of this complexity included diverse understandings of the nature of policy and how research relates to policy; dealing with multiple stakeholders in the policy-making process; and identifying strategies to manage the different cultures of government and academia.

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Education policies and systems in all OECD countries are coming under increasing pressure to show greater accountability and effectiveness. However, the information readily available for policy making is often unsuitable, either because the rigorous research required for policy needs has not been conducted, or because the research that is available is contradictory and does not suggest a single course of action. It is crucial that educational policy decisions are made based on the best evidence possible. Evidence in Education: Linking Research and Policy brings together international experts on evidence-informed policy in education from a wide range of OECD countries. The report looks at the issues facing educational policy makers, researchers, and stakeholders - teachers, media, parents - in using evidence to best effect. It focuses on the challenge of effective brokering between policy makers and researchers, offers specific examples of major policy-related research, and presents perspectives from several senior politicians. This book provides a fresh outlook on key issues facing policy makers, researchers and school leaders today.

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