Are Training Systems Expecting Too Much From Workplaces?

Abstract:

Over the last decade or so, interest in the workplace as a site of vocational learning has grown rapidly. In many contexts, the workplace has been reified as the "best" or indeed the "only plausible" site of vocational learning.

The rediscovery of learning in the workplace has been welcomed as an opportunity to achieve both a more flexible and a more relevant form of learning than hitherto. In Australia, this has seen the creation of a system where nationally recognised training can be provided by any Recognised Training Organisation (RTO). Many are enterprises or industry associations who offer their programs entirely on-the-job without input from educational institutions or those trained in education. Moreover, this form of provision is growing rapidly.

This paper asks: "what are reasonable expectations of learning that occurs wholly in the course of normal work?" and "how might work-based learning be meshed with a formal educational system?"

Authors:

Geofrey Hawke

Geof Hawke
Senior Research Fellow and Alternate Director
Research Centre for Vocational Education and Training

Geof's professional experience has involved a range of areas within vocational education for over 25 years. These have ranged across work as diverse as TAFE vocational counsellor, researcher, manager and policy adviser. For nearly twenty years, he worked with the NSW TAFE Commission where he headed, the Assessment Research and Development Unit, a central policy unit with responsibility for establishing assessment policy and practice in NSW TAFE colleges. Subsequently he ran the Industry Restructuring Taskforce that managed the introduction of competency-based training in NSW and acted as the key liaison point with industry and a member of national bodies overseeing Australian training reform in the mid-1990s. Later he was the founding Chief Executive of the National Community Services and Health Industry Training Advisory Board. This body was one of a number of industry-owned and operated bodies that provided a coordinated industry input into the vocational education systems in Australia.

Since 1995, Geof has worked within the RCVET, a nationally-recognised Key Research Centre supported by the Australian National Training Authority. In that role he has managed over thirty large and small-scale projects, has been Acting Director on a number of occasions and has spoken widely on research and policy matters.

Recent research
Mr. Hawke's recent research focus has been on a range of policy and systems-related issues such as the funding of vocational education and training and the impact of changing work and employment structures on education policy broadly, though with a particular emphasis on policy in vocational education. Specific examples of this work include:

• a major project for NSW BVET (in collaboration with ACIRRT, University of Sydney) developing a policy framework for NSW that reflects the changing occupational and employment structures in Australia and related work for ANTA as part of the RCVET"s role as a National Key Research Centre
• an NREC project (with Robyn Johnston, RCVET and CREEW, University of SA) examining how learning cultures emerge from factors both internal and external to enterprises.
• an ongoing evaluation of the Australian Business Week in schools program - a leading enterprise education program for school students that is revealing new understanding of the complex relationships between locality, gender and opportunities to develop skills for the new economy.
  

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