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The VOCEDplus landmark documents are key documents considered by history and authoritative commentary to have influenced the development of the Australian vocational education and training (VET) system, providing vision and/or leading to significant change. This paper is part of a series of overviews that analyse and describe how these landmark documents impacted on the development of various aspects of Australia's VET sector. Its focus is on the impact the landmark documents have had on training and assessment in Australia's VET system. This overview demonstrates how training and assessment, as fundamental activities of vocational education, were viewed in different ways across the landmark documents. Up to the mid-1980s, a more traditional, educational perspective was evident with training seen as a practice comparable to that of schooling. The Dawkins policy papers of the late 1980s signalled a significant shift in the conceptualisation of training and assessment as playing a key role in national skills formation. Assessment not only confirmed and measured individual learning progress but served as a guarantee of system quality.

The landmark documents covered in this analysis are: TAFE in Australia: report on needs in technical and further education, April 1974 [Kangan report] (TD/LMR 85.637); Education, training and employment: report of the Committee of Inquiry into Education and Training [Williams report] (TD/LMR 85.677); COSTAC overseas mission to study developments in vocational education and training (TD/TNC 87.1259 and TD/TNC 90.776); Successful reform: competitive skills for Australians and Australian enterprises [FitzGerald report] (TD/LMR 85.636); Young people's participation in post-compulsory education and training: report of the Australian Education Council Review Committee [Finn review] (TD/LMR 85.641); Key competencies: report of the Committee to advise the Australian Education Council and Ministers of Vocational Education, Employment and Training on employment-related key competencies for postcompulsory education and training [Mayer report] (TD/LMR 85.658); [Dawkins trilogy]: A changing workforce (TD/LMR 85.675); Improving Australia's training system (TD/LMR 85.676); Skills for Australia (TD/LMR 85.648); Training costs of award restructuring: report of the Training Costs Review Committee [Deveson report] (TD/LMR 85.635); The Australian Vocational Certificate Training System [Carmichael report] (TD/LMR 85.646); Moving on: report of the high level review of training packages (TD/LMR 85.653); Formal preparation of TAFE teachers in Australia: a report to the Council by the Staff Development Advisory Committee [Fleming report] (TD/LMR 85.662); Enterprising nation: renewing Australia's managers to meet the challenges of the Asia-Pacific century [Karpin report] (TD/LMR 85.651). Show less

An assumption of Australia's competency-based vocational education and training (VET) system is that experienced practitioners from industry will, by virtue of their expertise, be well-placed to read, analyse and interpret units of competency that relate to their industry. This paper draws on research that challenges this assumption. Interviews with 30 VET practitioners about how they interpret units of competency revealed that those with extensive industry experience did not always recognise their industry in the texts. Theories of expertise and workplace knowledge offer one way to account for these counter-intuitive findings. According to these theories, higher levels of expertise are characterised by reliance on tacit knowledge and an intuitive grasp of workplace situations and challenges and little reliance on explicit, formal work-related rules and procedures. It will be argued that the explicit, formal approach to representing occupational knowledge found in units of competency does not necessarily serve to represent competent practice in the eyes of industry experts.

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This paper is one of a series of policy discussion papers presented by the LH Martin Institute. The aim is to contribute to the debate the Institute sees as necessary to reform and invigorate the tertiary education sector, in particular vocational education and TAFE. The series covers a range of topical issues, from policy settings, governance, funding, competency based training, social inequality and training markets.

Any attempt to improve or reform Australia's system of vocational education and training (VET) should address the model of curriculum that is at the heart of the system. This model is often referred to as 'competency-based training' (CBT) although most stakeholders are probably more familiar with CBT in the form of 'training packages'. CBT is not only central to the way Australia's VET system works, it has been a constant for over twenty-five years. For many who work in the system, CBT is the only curriculum model they know for vocational education. This discussion describes the attractions of CBT to make clear that the architects of training reform had good reason to make CBT the cornerstone of a new system. This survey is followed by a systematic look at criticisms and shortcomings of CBT as articulated by researchers and other stakeholders. Finally, two questions are presented which would be useful to ponder in any attempt to shift away from CBT.

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This paper explores the contention that Australian vocational education and training (VET) may be an environment in which transformative learning can occur, and indicates ways to enhance VET practice in relation to this kind of learning. Mezirow's theory of transformative learning is surveyed to provide background. Two examples of VET programs are described to show how VET can serve as a context for transformative learning. It is suggested that if there are VET programs that produce conditions favourable to transformative learning, then practitioners working in these areas can enhance their practice through familiarity with the features of transformative learning and ways that have been promoted for the support and facilitation of transformative learning.

Published abstract.

Available papers from the 11th Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association (AVETRA) Conference are indexed from TD/TNC 92.459 to TD/TNC 92.499 and from TD/TNC 92.701 to TD/TNC 92.716. Show less

This article attempts to trace the origins of competency-based training (CBT), the theory of vocational education that underpins the National Training Framework (NTF) in Australia. A distinction is made between societal and theoretical origins. This paper argues that CBT has its societal orgins in the United States of America during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Public debate and government initiatives centred on the widely held view that there was a problem with the quality of education in the United States. One of the responses to this crisis was the Performance-Based Teacher Education movement which synthesised the theory of education that became CBT. The theoretical orgins of CBT derive principally from behavourism and systems theory - two broad theoretical orientations that influenced educational debate in the United States during the formative period of CBT. Most of the component parts of CBT were contributed by specialists with a background in one or both of these theoretical orientations.

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Vocational education and training (VET) is an area of research dominated by positivist approaches. Such approaches complement the behaviourist educational philosophy known as 'competency-based training' (CBT) that underpins Australia's VET system. This paper reflects on a quandary encountered by researchers examining the history of competency-based education at a TAFE institution in South Australia. The issue was how to account for a series of mutations in the way CBT was understood and practised that subverted the largely unquestioned expectation of progress. The researchers found that Foucault's 'genealogical' approach allowed for the construction of a mode of intelligibility that lends the history a disturbing cogency. At the centre of this construction is an understanding of CBT as a highly permeable system whose configurability supports the reticulation of multiple forms of power.

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'Transformative learning' is a term used by Meziro (1991) and his followers to designate a specifically 'adult' kind of learning that involves shifts in how learners view the world and themselves. New research into learning in [vocational education and training] VET suggests that in some subject areas transformative learning may play more than an incidental role. Among the implications of this finding is that the trainer's practice may be more important in VET than it has been the custom to acknowledge. When transformative learning systematically contributes to VET, the trainer becomes a co-constructor of competence rather than a transmitter of skills and knowledge. This paper reports on this new research and reflects on the role of the trainer in the process VET-oriented transformative learning. Results indicate that some trainers of youth workers develop a practice that responds to the contours and dangers of transformative learning without necessarily being aware of the body of knowledge that has built up around this type of learning. The paper suggests that in some VET sectors, trainers and [registered training organisations] RTOs could enhance their work by taking stock of transformative learning research and theory.

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Competency-based training has been criticised for entailing a fragmented curriculum. In the light of this criticism a good question is how these fragments cohere into a basis for competent work practice. This question is explored in this paper, which draws on recent research into transformative learning in the context of vocational education and training (VET). Mezirow’s (1991) concept of ‘meaning perspectives’ - broad psychological structures that undergo change in transformative learning - is used to interpret experiences reported by learners in case studies of learning in VET programs. Participants in this research were found to possess or develop meaning perspectives on work roles which influenced the way curriculum was received. These perspectives appear to bind personal elements of identity, values and motivation with the diverse content of formal learning programs and work experience. This paper considers the proposition that vocational meaning perspectives come into play in VET learning and function like a unifying ‘glue’ that may counteract any fragmenting effects of a competency-based curriculum.

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How vocational education and training (VET) practitioners understand and use competency standards is of fundamental importance to the quality and integrity of the Australian VET system. This small study seeks to address this question by gaining insights from 30 VET practitioners. The research found that VET practitioners have little faith in the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and feel somewhat ill-equipped to interpret competency standards when developing curriculum. Furthermore, the unclear language and 'jargon' contained within the competencies make them hard to decipher. The author points to a number of potential solutions, including more intensive initial training, followed up with activities such as assessment validation to help build expertise.

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Transformative learning theory is a dominant approach to understanding adult learning. The theory addresses the way our perspectives on the world, others and ourselves can be challenged and transformed in our ongoing efforts to make sense of the world. It is a conception of learning that does not focus on the measurable acquisition of knowledge and skills, but looks rather to the dynamics of self-questioning and upheaval as the key to adult learning. In this article, transformative learning theory is used as a lens for studying learning in a competency-based, entry-level management course. Instead of asking which knowledge and skills were developed and how effectively, the research enquired into deeper changes wrought by the learning experiences. The research found that for some learners the course contributed to significant discontent as they discovered that management practices they took to represent the norm fell dramatically short of the model promoted in the training.

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