Work Based Learning and Vocational Education and Training Practitioners. Working Paper.

N

13

Australian National Training Authority, Melbourne.

Developed Nations; Discourse Communities; Educational Change; Educational Principles; Foreign Countries; Job Skills; Job Training; Labor Force Development; Partnerships in Education; Postsecondary Education; Teacher Role; Theory Practice Relationship; Trainers; Vocational Education; Work Experience Programs

Work-based learning (WBL) is one response of education and training institutions to criticisms they have failed to adapt to changing economic times and the changing nature of work. Formal educational institutions are challenged by the perception that they are inadequate to the task of preparing the present and future work force with the necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions required in post-industrial workplaces; discourses focusing on learning that occurs outside formal educational institutions; and discourses problematizing what counts as knowledge in contemporary society. Potential impact of WBL can be explored by focusing on technical and further education (TAFE) in Australia. TAFE should be a natural home for WBL because it claims an explicit and direct connection with the world of work, but its teachers face an intensifying dilemma in their educational practices, due to their location in an educational institution rather than the workplace and by curriculum practices grounded by notions of content stability, compartmentalization, occupational continuity, and universally applicable outcomes. Differences that distinguish WBL from current vocational education and training (VET) practices relate to the individualization of the learning program and to the multiple sets of relationships that are created between the participating organization, learners, provider, and VET practitioner. (Contains 34 references.) (YLB)

2001

ED454449