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This chapter discusses the changing and emerging characteristics of work, work practice and work requirements, and their consequences for vocational education. Changing patterns in work and working life are proposed as comprising: (1) the kind of work available; (ii) how individuals participate in work; (iii) what constitutes competence within that work; and (iv) those participating in work. The consequences for vocational education are systemic in terms of the kinds of occupations that need to be developed, variations in and complexity of work requirements, shifts in employer/employee relations, and the demographic shifts in those who will need to be supported by vocational education. The chapter examines these patterns of change to work and working life, and discusses policy and curriculum practice associated with each. Overall, it argues that the changes to work make it more demanding, and the frequency of change in work and how work is carried out demands careful, comprehensive and targeted preparation and on-going development. Moreover, with broader participation in the work force and longer working lives, the arrangement for this preparation and on-going development will need to be targeted, differentiated and sustained.

Published introduction.

The book from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 100.51. Individual chapters are indexed from TD/TNC 100.52 to TD/TNC 100.244. Show less

A complex set of relational factors shape adult students' transition to higher education. Through accounts provided by adult vocational education students, a set of related interdependencies between what the university and other forms of support (e.g. family, friends) afforded these students and their agency, capacities and engagement were identified as shaping their transition to higher education. Bases for these students' engagement in their studies were found in their intentions and previous experiences that together shaped how they construed what is afforded by the university and other sources of support. Consequently, beyond what universities provide to support these transitions, considerations for promoting successful student transition into higher education necessarily require accounting for students' experiences, access to different kinds of support outside the university and their previous experiences. Therefore, rather than proposing general prescriptions about what universities need to do to promote successful transitions, [these] complex factors likely [play] out in quite person-particular ways. All of this reinforces the view that successful transitions to higher education are quite individual processes, and not just wholly dependent upon what educational institutions provide, and those affordances need to be [informed] by and aligned with different kinds of student needs.

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Recent studies of learning through work have included how professional identities are formed through participation in work. However, we need a more elaborated understanding of how professional identities are negotiated at times of rapid change in working practices. This chapter examines the personal strategies that vocational teachers adopt, and the professional identity negotiations that occur, in response to requirements to change professional practices. [The authors] report on a study in which open-ended narrative interviews were conducted with sixteen Finnish vocational teachers. From the teachers' accounts, [the authors] identified distinct personal strategies that were adopted to engage with change. The strategies were labelled as follows: (i) professional development, (ii) passive accommodation, (iii) active participation, (iv) a balancing act, and (v) withdrawal. The strategies were aligned to the teachers' individual concerns, and were bound up with the personal resources available in negotiating with the changing character of the work. An account of these strategies offers a new way of understanding how identities are negotiated through an active, personally-shaped process. The study also illuminates how to promote individuals' management of the self and of learning at work.

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Changing personal and societal sentiments about the status of vocational education and the occupations it serves requires information, education, action at societal and local levels and will, inevitably take time. With entrenched issues such as the standing of occupations and the education systems that they serve, it is more likely incremental and focused initiatives are required to bring about this change. It has been consistently identified that there are 'zones of influence' shaping young people's decision-making about postschool pathways. These zones comprise the aspirations and advice of parents, the intended and unintended press of schoolteachers, the views of peers and suggestions arising from within the community. Consequently, advising and shaping young people's decisions about postschool pathways, including an informed and impartial consideration of vocational education, are not restricted to those students alone. Instead, it is necessary that those comprising these zones of influence also need advice and information so that young people's decision-making can be supported by informed and impartial advice.

A series of workshops with teachers and administrators, and presentations to policy and practitioner groups were used to evaluate the findings from focus groups and interviews, and a national survey that are elements of an Australian study. Those events were directed to identify how key institutions of government, schooling, vocational education institutions and industry could work to shape these zones of influence in ways that promoted broader and more informed considerations about post-school pathways, including vocational education. This led to strategies that could be used to reshape and enhance the standing of vocational education as a worthwhile post-school pathway across these zones of influence. These strategies were proposed as being directed broadly to inform that decision-making, and that includes perspectives, aspirations and interests of school students, parents, teachers, other familiars and members of the community, who in different ways shaped those perspectives.

This chapter sets out some initiatives that might be enacted by government, schools, employers, and teachers to offer experiences and informed and impartial advice about potential post-school pathways through engaging with the zones of influence.

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This chapter contributes to a discussion of pedagogic implications and actions with respect to the development of smart workforces. The author explores the dimensions of performance in the workforce as a way to understand what constitutes a smart workforce. Technical skill, work practice and organisational structure are aspects important to an understanding of workforces but the way in which workers engage in work practices must also be considered. The author suggests that a cognitive perspective, comprised of a socio-cultural approach based on activity theory, be used to analyse work practice. Work practice is therefore best understood when implanted within a specific community of work practice. To support this proposed analytical approach, a spectrum of nine dimensions of work practice is identified.

The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 67.101. Individual chapters are indexed from TD/TNC 67.102 to TD/TNC 67.109. Show less

The decisions that young people make about post-school pathways are becoming increasingly important because of implications for: (i) personal educational and employment trajectories and goals, (ii) allocation of educational resources, and (iii) meeting a range of community needs associated with the development of occupational capacities. Indeed, there is a growing and global concern that young people are disproportionately participating in higher education which comes at a cost to the level of participation in vocational education and the occupations it serves. This trend indicates a shift in young people's aspirations and their preference for post-school pathways. However, there are implications and outcomes arising from this decision-making, leading to calls in many countries to redress this shift in post-school preferences. There are distinct implications both for young people who have identified a preferred occupation and those who remain undecided about them and the consequences for post-school pathways. Yet, without an elaboration of the societal factors and personal practices shaping and influencing that decision-making, it is difficult to know how to redress that situation.

This review examines recent literature addressing the factors and practices shaping young people's decision-making about those pathways. It identifies a complex intertwining of societal (i.e., institutional) and personal factors shaping this decision-making. Although societal factors (e.g., [socioeconomic status] SES, location, gender) play important roles in this decision-making, it appears that the practices of parents, teachers and familiars are salient in this decision-making and, therefore, efforts to redress this issue. These findings suggest such practices need to be mediated by enhancing what is suggested by societal institutions (e.g., schools, government), familiars (teachers, parents) and more fully informing young people's decision-making.

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Investigating issues associated with and strategies for enhancing the standing of vocational education necessarily involves engaging with a range of perspectives, insights and suggestions. This includes those who organise and implement educational experiences, those who enact them, and also those who directly influence the decision-making of young people, as well as those young people themselves. Of course, such a venture means capturing and comparing, contrasting and evaluating those perspectives. As insights and perspectives need to be captured in some detail, qualitative approaches to data gathering and analysis are essential. On the other, quantitative analysis is required to identify patterns across cohorts of informants and analyse their weightings and rankings. Accordingly, this chapter sets out the rationale for and approaches adopted in an investigation about enhancing the status of vocational education and the occupations it serves in Queensland, Australia.

The investigation comprised an initial round of focus groups and interviews with school-age students, teachers and parents, students in vocational education institutions and their teachers (Phase 1). A careful analysis of focus group data, interview transcripts and surveys gathered through these interviews were then used to develop a survey that was administered nationally (Phase 2). That survey extended the scope of the study and the range of informants and provided a platform for quantitative analysis and comparisons of perspectives and suggestions of distinct cohorts of informants. Then, in Phase 3, suggestions about enhancing the status of vocational education were identified through a series of focus groups with school administrators and teachers. Weighting to sets of suggestions about what government, industry, schools, and teachers might do to offer well informed and impartial advice and engage with information about potential postschool pathways were analysed.

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This book of readings brings together the results of a body of research on the funding and financing of vocational education and training (VET) in Australia presented at a research forum hosted by the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research (NCVER) in late 2003.

There is widespread belief amongst many Australian commentators that Australian employers do not provide their employees with enough training. In recent years this belief has led to calls for the re-imposition of compulsory levies on employers to ensure that they spend more on training. This belief is largely based on the analysis of data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), particularly data on training expenditure. In this chapter the authors challenge this interpretation of the data and make the case that Australian employers do not spend much less than their international counterparts on training for their employees and that the way to get employers to invest in training is not through the use of compulsory levies.

The book of readings is indexed at TD/TNC 84.03; individual chapters are indexed from TD/TNC 84.21 to TD/TNC 84.29. Show less

In this chapter, the author pursues the role of context in patterning cognition, by examining effects on communities of practice in fashioning individual cognitive structures. Psychological and socio-cultural views of cognition are contrasted and reconciled, and it is argued that guided learning within an authentic culture of work practice is needed to embed vocational knowledge in the context of its use.

The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 36.34. Show less

This chapter contributes to a volume containing international theory and empirical research on the topic of continuity and change in identity formation processes at work, in the context of changes in working processes and labour market requirements. The author aims to understand how individuals engage in, and learn through, work and throughout their working life, and what directs their learning. The chapter begins with an outline and discussion of the relational interdependence between social and individual agency as a way to understand learning through and for work, and the role played by individual agency and subjectivities in that interdependence. This is followed by a description of a study that investigated the working life, and life outside work, of five individuals. The findings are detailed in a discussion of the relationships between the work of the individuals, their goals, preferences and intentions, their personal agency in shaping their work, and the changing nature of work and their sense of self.

The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 89.488. Selected individual chapters are indexed from TD/TNC 89.489 to TD/TNC 89.491. Show less