Vocational education and training and conceptions of the self

Abstract

In this article it is suggested that many of those responsible for the development of Australian vocational education and training (VET) policy, and the teachers and trainers responsible for implementing education and training within the prescribed policy framework have an inadequate conception of persons (or selves). It is suggested that VET policy, and practice deriving as it does from these inadequate behaviourist conceptions is, thus, less successful and less moral than it should be. A number of conceptions of the self and of persons are given brief exposition in the article, and the concept of a socially extended self is supported. This concept of the person, it is argued, is incompatible with current competency-based training approaches that characterise VET policy imperatives and, to some extent, VET practice. VET practitioners, it is suggested, can and should develop richer conceptions of their students, particularly conceptions that provide an account of persons as social beings who may internally be multiplied along a temporal axis.

Instructor beliefs and their mediation of instructor strategies

“…Much of the literature on workplace learning has overlooked the ways in which organizational cultures mediate workplace learning programs, including instructor training (e.g. Blunden, 1997; Merriam and Cafarella, 1991; Tovey, 1997), and this area needs greater attention. It is contended that because of the influence of cultures on instructor conceptualizations of learning, the kind of training program aimed at enhancing instructor skill also needs to be modified from one based on a receptive‐accrual form of information transmission to a cognitive‐mediational one (Putnam and Borko, 1997).…”

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

“…The curriculum is all about 'work competences' (Moodie and Wheelahan 2012, 320). Such a restricted curriculum, along with a behaviourist approach to instruction and assessment (Blunden 1999;Colley et al 2003), according to Moodie and Wheelahan (2012, 323), has resulted in severe limits to the transformative potential of VET.…”

“…It also contributes to a very narrow conception of VET that depersonalises students (Blunden 1999;Colley et al 2003). As Blunden (1999, 166, 167) explains:…”