From your business to our business: Industry and vocational education in Australia.
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Author(s)
Billett, S
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2004
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Over the last 20 years, the voice of business and its impact upon Australian vocational education have transformed. These changes range from enterprise reluctance to be involved through to industry determining what is taught and assessed, and how, as well as the principles for administering vocational education, and attempts to use vocational education to reform the schooling system. These transformations and government complicity in them are enmeshed in the restructuring of the Australian economy allegedly in response to an increasingly competitive and globalised economy. They were also facilitated by vocational education ...
View more >Over the last 20 years, the voice of business and its impact upon Australian vocational education have transformed. These changes range from enterprise reluctance to be involved through to industry determining what is taught and assessed, and how, as well as the principles for administering vocational education, and attempts to use vocational education to reform the schooling system. These transformations and government complicity in them are enmeshed in the restructuring of the Australian economy allegedly in response to an increasingly competitive and globalised economy. They were also facilitated by vocational education continuing to be misunderstood and having low status. However, the expanded leadership role afforded Australian business has not been matched by its purchase on the complexity of educational issues and practice, including the need to encompass other interests (e.g. small business and students). While vocational education has become the business of business, it seems it is business not understood. Even in addressing its own purposes (i.e. work readiness), business has demonstrated a preference for ideological and naive imperatives that have proved inadequate. Along the way, the goals for vocational education and standing of its institutions, practitioners and students have all been transformed, probably to their detriment.
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View more >Over the last 20 years, the voice of business and its impact upon Australian vocational education have transformed. These changes range from enterprise reluctance to be involved through to industry determining what is taught and assessed, and how, as well as the principles for administering vocational education, and attempts to use vocational education to reform the schooling system. These transformations and government complicity in them are enmeshed in the restructuring of the Australian economy allegedly in response to an increasingly competitive and globalised economy. They were also facilitated by vocational education continuing to be misunderstood and having low status. However, the expanded leadership role afforded Australian business has not been matched by its purchase on the complexity of educational issues and practice, including the need to encompass other interests (e.g. small business and students). While vocational education has become the business of business, it seems it is business not understood. Even in addressing its own purposes (i.e. work readiness), business has demonstrated a preference for ideological and naive imperatives that have proved inadequate. Along the way, the goals for vocational education and standing of its institutions, practitioners and students have all been transformed, probably to their detriment.
View less >
Journal Title
Oxford Review of Education
Volume
30
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2004 Taylor & Francis : The author-version of this article will be available for download [12-18 months] after publication : Use hypertext link to access the version of the publisher.
Subject
Education