Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemVocational education and training, impacts, values, disinterest, prejudice and the politics of employability( 2003)This study questions the proposition that undertaking vocational education and training (VET) enhances the likelihood of getting a job. The research opines that the perceived impact of VET in the employment decision is ideological and based on circumstantial evidence not measurable in the absence of specifically focused, large scale, longitudinal research. The research contends that unemployment, and the role of education and training in reducing unemployment, intersect in a highly politicised and manipulated environment lacking the necessary data and research to inform public policy and that this environment has spawned a new class system in Australia - "Employability". The research states that, in Australia, too many individuals and employers exhibit little regard for the value of education and training preferring experience and attitude, whilst the government makes little effort to instil a desire for life long learning engaging instead in denigration of the unemployed and shaping of public perception whilst frustrating independent analysis of its claims for success in dealing with this social enigma. Work, according to this researcher, has been elevated to the point of becoming a religion and humanity is now valued by business, and government, solely for its "employability" in an act of faith policy set that allocates education and training to a role subordinate to, and supporting of, employability. Decisions on the value of education are left up to individual choice in a narrowly focused set of policies shackled by economic overtones and a failure to promote life long learning. The research locates these, and other assertions, in a conceptual framework that explores the intersecting themes of society, economics, politics, education and training, through hermeneutical interrogation of empirical, theoretical and philosophical research using content, thematic and materialist semiotic analysis within an ethnographic - inductive design. The study surfaces the proposition that research and balanced economic and social evaluation techniques, together with a sophisticated debate and a set of values and policy of life long learning, does not shape public policy and action. Instead, the drivers are primarily narrow ideologies, acts of faith, unproven assumptions and the objectives of politics and capital. The researcher ultimately concludes that the decision to employ is more influenced by the external complex interactions of agency, practice and social structure and the singular conditions of interview.
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ItemVocational education and apprenticeship: a study of vocational education in the 20th century in England, Australia and the United States with special reference to the role of apprenticeship training and with recommendations for the modification of that training( [1978])My thesis outlines in brief the sorts of traditions and practices on which the institution of apprenticeship has been built, both as a form of training and as a social device to provide both moral guardianship and continuing education for the trainee. Although there is considerable evidence that the system has failed on both these counts since the decay of the old system three hundred years ago, apprenticeship continues to survive as the usual method for contracting training in exchange for service in England and Australia. It even receives official sanction and subsidization. Nevertheless, even on the mundane level of job practice, apprenticeship may be an unsatisfactory arrangement for both trainees and instructors, and the fact that the system has long been exposed to the hostile influences of labour and management still further hobbles its effectiveness as a form of training and of work induction. With the development of systematized and institutionalized technical instruction in the twentieth century, especially in the vocation-conscious United States, youth has even more opportunities to achieve vocational potential outside the cramping service status of apprenticeship. There may even be some doubt whether there should any longer be a place for apprenticeship in modern industrial societies where many sorts of skill must be newly developed and where a spirit of versatility will better ensure the tradesman continuing employment in the last quarter of this century.
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ItemThe appropriateness of professional judgement to determine performance rubrics in competency based assessments( 2003)When competency based training and assessment was introduced into the vocational education and training sector (VET) in Australia in the early 1990s, there were no clear policy guidelines about whether learners' levels of performance should be assessed and reported or whether assessment should be conducted and reported using a dichotomous system of competent/not yet competent. Across the literature various terms are used that describe or equate to the practice of differentiating performance of competence included: 'performance levels' (Smith 2000), 'levels of performance' (Thomson, Mathers & Quirk 1996), 'levels of competency' (Dickson & Bloch 1999), 'merit recognition practices' (Quirk 1995) and 'levels of achievement' (Strong 1995). Scoring, percentages, performance levels, profiling, alpha-numerical identifiers and additional criteria are examples of such approaches to 'grading'. Standards referencing is considered a form of criterion referencing where levels of performance are defined along a continuum of increasing competence and used for interpretive purposes to infer a competency decision (Glaser 1963 & 1981). The development of these levels of performance poses difficulties in terms of determining the validity of judgements for assessment practitioners. Williams & Bateman (2002) considered that determination of the levels of performance is inherent in the competency and therefore the scoring rubric is best developed by the subject expert/assessment practitioner. Much has been written regarding standards setting methods (such as Angoff, Nedelsky, Jaeger, Ebel) however recent literature (Berk 1995 & 1996; Hambleton, Jaeger, Plake & Mills 2000; Hambleton & Plake 1995; Plake & Hambleton 2000; Putnam, Pence & Jaeger 1995) has queried the applicability of such standard setting methods in relation to complex performance assessments. The recent research paper by Bennett (1998b) summarised the key issues and practices associated with setting performance standards in examinations and their implications for standard setting in the NSW Higher School Certificate program. Bennett proposed a multi-stage rather than a single approach to standard setting procedures using technical/subject experts. A similar standard setting procedure was used in this study. This research used item response theory to investigate the appropriateness of professional judgement to predict or determine performance rubrics within a graded competency based assessment framework. This study also investigated the criterion and construct validity of the analytical scoring procedures developed. The context of the research was that of the Public Services Training Package (ANTA 1999).