Annette Foley

Vocational Education and Training Manager Discursive Practices at the Frontline: Alternative Possibilities in a Victorian Setting

This article looks at how the neoliberal reform process is affecting the professional identity of frontline managers in the Australian vocational education and training sector. The article examines how frontline managers are required to negotiate their working practices between their understandings and experiences as educators and the new vocationalism whereby discourses and practices of corporate managerialism and economic rationalism permeate the roles of managers. Essentially, the data from this study shows how frontline managers are juggling conflicting values as they facilitate or mediate the change process and how manager identities at the frontline are multiple and performed, not single and pre-assigned. The findings show a manager identity that is both compliant and contested.

Promoting ‘learner voice’ in VET: developing democratic, transformative possibilities or further entrenching the status quo?

In order to critique the notion of ‘learner voice’ in vocational education and training (VET) policy, this paper draws from a project conducted by the authors on behalf of the Australian National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC). The term ‘learner voice’ is used extensively throughout NVEAC documentation to describe the engagement of ‘disadvantaged’ students within the VET system. However, the concept of ‘voice’ being advocated, we argue, is a particularly ‘thin’ one which is linked to notions of client feedback, managed participation and the commodification of training rather than any broad sense of democracy, equity or social transformation. The paper critically examines current practices in relation to learner voice within the VET policy framework and their implications for the contested role of VET in contributing to social equity and redress of social and economic disadvantage.

VET Manager Identities: Culture, Philosophy and Professional Practice.

Abstract Using a post-structural approach this article investigates the working lives of frontline managers in VET and how they negotiate change in their day to day practices and decision making. The article is organised around accounts made by managers from different types of Vocational Education and Training (VET) organisations, namely: Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions, Group Training Organisations (GTO), Registered Training Organisations (RTO), RTO and Adult Community Education (ACE) joint organisations and stand alone ACE organisations. The data showed that most managers were experiencing change, albeit in different ways across their diverse VET organisations and roles. Managers were seen to understand and respond to the discourses of reform differently, depending on their organisational type, culture and philosophical beliefs, and according to their understandings of their professional role and status.

Men and Boys: Sharing the Skills Across Generations

ABSTRACT Our paper focuses on intergenerational learning in informal community settings between older men and boys. It examines and challenges narrow definitions of the notion of what is meant by “older” and “intergenerational” learning. It stresses the importance of older men’s capacity to be contemporary in their worldview, while drawing from a deep knowledge and wisdom developed from their life experiences and also from their formative cultural, national, and Indigenous learning traditions. Our paper provides an account of intergenerational stories wherein men informally mentor, share skills, and develop meaningful relationships with disengaged and disconnected young people in the community Men’s Sheds.