Vocational education : Professor Stephen Billett's latest book

A hardcopy of Professor Stephen Billett’s new book ‘Vocational education: purposes, traditions and prospects’ arrived in the library just as I got back to work a month ago.  Usual preview also available on Google books. As much of the content is relevant to my research, I have put time  into working through the book.

In this book, Billett argues for better recognition/respect of the role of vocational education. To support the assertion he begins by undertaking a review of the positioning of vocational education through analysis of its historical roots, both in Western (Greek, Roman) and Asian (Chinese) traditions. Discussions continue by unpacking the connotations of the terms 'vocations' and 'occupations'. The historical valuing of vocations is contrasted to the more prosaic acceptance of the need for people to undertake paid work in the form of occupations. Of interest, is the collation of an argument for the deliberation of not only vocations but occupations as a calling. Thereby, closing the loop with regards to occupations and vocations, with some individuals, transforming their occupations into vocations.

The various economic, social and political pressures and continuous reforms within vocational education are then overviewed and brought together in the next few chapters on the development and purposes of vocational education.

Then a useful chapter, introducing, substantiating and describing the vocational education curricula as intended curriculum as decreed by standards setting bodies, enacted curriculum by those who deliver the learning required to take up a vocational occupation and the experienced curriculum as how learners/students encounter and engage with the learning. Parts of this are summarised in Billett’s keynote presentation last year at the Industry Training Federation’s (ITF) NZ vocational education research forum. The concept is useful when we assess the impact of vocational education on students who are being prepared (through pre-trade or university education) for work. Does the intended curriculum actually meet the needs of industry and is the curriculum as experienced by learners, actually sufficient preparation for the realities of work?


Overall, a scholarly book written for an academic audience. It provides good overview of the present state of affairs in the vocational education field. Vocational education is something governments require to assist with the training of a ‘skilled’ workforce. Yet, vocational education is more than ‘just training’, it prepares people for occupations , in turn providing livelihoods for many. For some, occupations are not just a job, but a means to also attain fulfilment. As vocational educators, we need to think through our objectives. Are we training? or educating? Does preparation for work also need to include many non-work related skills that help people become 'who they want to be and become'?  So, in a sense, the book raises many questions about vocational education's role - for individuals, society or humanity?

ebooks on workplace learning / education research relevant to vocational education research

There are now many ebooks in the CPIT library. During my summer trawl through the University of Canterbury library, I noticed many of the journals now only available as digital (as from 2008) and there are more books listed as ebooks on the library catalogue.
At CPIT, many of our ebooks are available via the eblib (EBL) subscription. You can either browse the books (5 minutes – arrghh) or make a request for a loan. Loan requests are for 7 days and there can be gap of a few days (for some books) before the access email arrives. Not the most user-friendly experience in comparison to just picking the book off the library shelve and flicking through it. I also checked access to the ebooks via my ipad. On-line reading worked without any glitches, the only drawback being the multiple logins required to obtain access.

Anyway, I worked through three ebooks a couple of weeks ago, as I requested them all on the same day. Something I will need to make plans around as working through three books in a week is heavy going.

The first book “Making work visible: Ethnographically grounded case studies of work practice” (2011) edited by Margaret Szymanski and Jake Whalen and the most relevant to my current work. This book records the work of Xerox and the work of well-known researchers in the field of workplace learning including Lucy Suchman and John Seely Brown. In a sense, it is almost a history book, as it documents the many studies made from the 1970s, on improving workplace learning but also machine-human interaction. Chapter one is a transcript from a presentation by Suchman, detailing the journey of the work practice and design project.

The second chapter is by Wes Sharrock and Graham Button, detailing their engineering investigations on ‘ what is made visible on making work visible?’. This chapter has a good discussion on the advantages and pitfalls of using ethnographical research methods (ethnomethology) to study workplace practice. As an example, they describe studies of engineers planning work and how these workplans may at times become barriers to the actual work progressing.

Chapter 3 is by Peter Tolmie on ‘uncovering the unremarkable’ and focuses on studies of software engineers working at home or at office, to understand ‘unremarkable’ computing a precursor of ubiquitous computing : having technology work in the background without acknowledging but using the capabilities when required. Although seemingly a simple task, the article details the complexities of uncovering the unremarkable, a clear warning to those of us trying to study and understand tacit learning.

Francois Brun-Cotton and Patricia Wild write on ‘work practices to understand the implications of nascent technology’, of relevance to our netbooks projects. Provides a good description of ethnography, based on collection of a wide range and volume of artefacts, both static and multi-media.

The next chapter is interesting reading both from the technology and cultural point of view. Diane Schiano and Victoria Berlotti work on ‘ using field study to inform the design of a mobile leisure guide for Japanese youth’ called Tokyo to Go. A good overview of how to conduct a field study using various approaches.

The above are from the first two parts of the book, the next two parts are less relevant covering ‘practices around documents’ and ‘the customer front’. The last two parts ‘ learning and knowledge sharing’ and ‘competency transfer’ – as applied to the projects detailed in the book, have a few chapters for follow up. The last chapter in the book is especially useful to my current learning about ethnography as a research method and how to introduce analytical thinking to other trades tutors. This chapter by Brigette Jordan on ‘Transferring ethnographical competence: personal reflections on the past and future of work practice analysis’ provides a realistic guide to mentoring others into the culture of ethnographical research.

The second book is written by Leslie Rupert Herrenkohl and Veronique Mertl called “how students come to be, know and do: A case for a broader view of learning’ (2010). Here, a research study of a group of American grade school students, is used extend the understanding of how people learn. The book strongly advocates a sociocultural approach to try to increase the numbers of women and minority people into the sciences.

The third book is Yrjo Engestrom's work on ‘from team to knots; studies of collaboration and learning at work’ (2008). Here, 6 case studies are used to illustrate the activity theory framework to study how teams work. The case studies include a TV broadcasting team to find out why the team has ‘stagnated’ in their work approaches; a court trial team as an example of a supposedly tightly restricted/controlled work, innovating possibilities to bring about efficient trial process; a primary health care team to study how newly constructed teams find their bearings and a mode of working together; a teaching team as an example of boundary crossing; industrial machining teams engaged in knowledge creation; and how telecom call centre teams build a shared concept and attain their own social capital. Good examples of how activity theory has been used to study diverse workplaces.

Common themes run through these three books. They are related to preparing people (and students) for a work life of continual change. Xerox’s studies and the case studies in Engestrom’s book provide insightful observations with some recommendations for future strategic learning directions. The book by Heerenkohl and Mertl offers one possible route for education to prepare the next generation for the complexities that lie ahead as humanity copes with social, technological and environment challenges.

The three books are part of the Cambridge University Press ‘Learning by doing: Social, cognitive and computational aspects’ series and over the next few months I will work my way through other pertinent books in the series.

Emerging approaches to educational research - book summary

Through browsing through another new book in the CPIT library, I started to work through the first few chapters in greater detail. The book is ‘the Sage handbook of workplace learning’ edited by Margaret Malloch, Len Cairns, Karen Evans and Bridget N. O’Connor. Chapter 2 by Professor Paul Hager on ‘theories of workplace learning’ provides a good overview of the three approaches , the theories influenced by psychological theories, socio-cultural theories and post-modern theories. So, time to update my knowledge on the post-modern theories through an ebook from the CPIT library ebook collection. The book is edited by Professor Tara Fenwick, Professor Richard Edwards and Peter Sawchuk and called ‘emerging approaches to educational research’. Fenwick presents a summary at the University of Technology last month.

This book provides a good introduction to why research approaches have shifted and moved towards trying to understanding the diverse nature of learning and the various contexts learning take place in. The book introduces, describes, discusses and evaluates the ‘sociomaterial’ research approaches or ‘four arenas’ for future educational research. The four arenas are complexity theory, cultural historical activity theory (CHATs), actor-network theory and spatiality.

Each of the four arenas is based on recent dissatisfaction with the inability of research frameworks to capture, study and explain ‘how people learn’. Each proposes frameworks / methods to try to account for the many material / non-material contributions towards how learning occurs. There is generally no ‘right or wrong’ answer coming through using any of the four arenas as research frameworks. Hence, the use of ‘post-modern’ as one categorisation for a raft of research approaches that go beyond the usual ‘qualitative/quantitative’ debate.

The common premises of the four arenas are:

Not dependent on the individual as being the sole focal point of study

Challenge relationships/binaries on which our understandings of ‘practice’ are founded

Challenge notions of context as being where the action is and allowing for a wider range of ‘contexts’ to be recognised

do not take reductionist stances but recognise the continuous dynamic nature of learning

acknowledge the complexity and ‘mess’ that represents the ‘real-world’.

Accept that learning is fundamentally difficult to pin down or to explain.

For me, the above represents some of the steps I have taken as a teacher/researcher, moving from trying to grasp the ‘known’ to understanding that the ‘known’ is slippery, dependent not only on context but on social/historical/ontological factors and attempts at explanation are always going to be incomplete. The above also challenge my grounding as a ‘socioculturalist’ in trying to explain learning as an ‘equilibrium’ between social affordances and individual agency with contributions from the various social relationships individuals encounter. Shifting towards a post-modern framework requires unpacking my current belief systems and evaluating another new way of looking at things.

There is a helpful explanation of the terms used in ‘knowing organisations:practice-based approach’ (book by Nicolini, Gherardi and Yanow) by Svabo – titled – ‘materiality in a practice-based approach’ also relevant to the ‘emerging approaches to educational research’ book.

Ibooks 2, ibooks author and itunes u app

Endgadgets has a brief summary of the latest Apple launch. An educational focus with details of ibooks 2 for purchase of textbooks, free Mac app - ibooks author - for those who want to compile their own textbooks and put them up on itunes and an ipad app for itunes U. A more educationally focused summary from the Guardian provides some balance.

Unfortunately, ibook has always been a dud in New Zealand as we are only able to access a small range of 'free' classics . Similar thing now with ibook 2, textbooks are only accessible within the US of A. As a teaser, there are two interactive books that we can download in NZ.  One a pretty picture book with animation is for younger children (the yellow submarine) and the other, and Introduction to life on earth. Both provide good examples of what is possible with interactive books, with a facilities for the book to be read out (yellow submarine) and video and interactive windows/sections (life on earth).

On the bright side, it will be interesting to try out ibooks author to compile interative textbooks. Something we will work on through the next couple of months. The ibooks author app is now downloaded onto the Learning Technologies Unit sandpit Mac and I have emailed a few tutors who might be interested, to try it out. 

I downloaded the Itunes U app on to my ipad this morning. A nice, clean interface which recognised my current itunes podcasts and popped them on to the bookshelf.  Straight –forward app store type layout to find and download more pod or vodcasts. I have been working my way through a series of podcasts from Oxford University on 'critical reasoning for beginners' and now downloaded a series on 'Nietzsche on mind and nature'. About 4-5 hours of podcasts on Nietzche, enough for the next two months of dog walkies :)

Working knowledge in the globaliizing world

I am putting the time in this week to catch up on reading of books recently purchased by the CPIT library. Firstly, a hard copy book edited by Liv Mjelde and Richard Daly as part of the series published by Paul Lang on studies in vocation and continuing education called ‘working knowledge in the globalizing world'. The articles in this book originated from papers presented at a conference in oslo in 2004 on vocational education and training.


The chapters in the book have been divided into two parts. Part one with writings on ‘working knowledge: work related learning’ and part two on ‘vocational education training: policies and practices in a globalizing world. I concentrated my reading on the chapters in part one although there are also a few chapters in part two marked for future follow up.

The chapters of relevance in part one are:

‘apprentices’ transfer of knowledge from school to workplace in the VET dual system: a study of a VET-programme for rescue officer’ by Vibe Aarkrog provides a good overview of the ‘transfer’ challenge. The main premise of the chapter is that more complex work situations tend to involve some form of customer service component. Least complex tasks tends to see a transfer of knowledge learnt at vocational school towards applying or replication of learnt knowledge/skills. Whereas more complex tasks involve interpretation / re-estimation and reflection of learnt knowledge/skills.

The second article by Faizul Bhyat is based in a South African printing press workplace context and discusses ‘From the particularities of practice to the generalisation of theory’. The author works with a team of printing press workers to enhance their understanding of printing based engineering through situated and applied learning of physics. An interesting article, detailing a strong theoretical framework, a good description of the challenges and case study and the possibilities for the approach to workplace learning. In the conclusion, the author summarises the approach as ‘consciously applying scientific thinking to industrial processes, through conscious introduction of concepts in their appropriate syntax and application context, provides a material basis for what has been previously been seen as the abstract language of science knowledge.’

Jeanne Gamble’s chapter on ‘what kind of knowledge for the vocational curriculum’ provides for a good overview of her work with apprentices in cabinet making. There is a good summary of Bernstein’s work on pedagogical practice and an attempt at explaining craft pedagogy in terms of the relationship between ‘externally visible performance’ and ‘internally held competence’. This leads to discussion on forms of knowledge in relation to the vocational curriculum. The main premise is that epistemology from academic and vocational traditions are both valid but need to be respected for what each has to offer. In respect to the vocational curriculum, theory and practice can be brought together, each with their context dependent meanings.

‘Cooperative education: learning to work- working to learn, and trying to make sense of it all’ is written by Garnet Grosjean to discuss the challenges of helping students learn through work based attachments / internships etc. The chapter provides overviews of activity theory, constructivism and socioculturalism as pertaining to cooperative education programmes, bringing the frameworks together to help students ‘become a professional’.

Tony Irizar and Adita Chiappy contribute the next chapter on ‘the concepts of ‘working knowledge’ and ‘zone of proximal development’ as applied to teaching English as a secondary language’. There is an overview linking the various concepts to enhance communicative language teaching and a call to acknowledge the contributions of zpd to assist students in learning a new language.

Last chapter in part one is from Liv Mjelde on ‘ workshop pedagogy in vocational education: working knowledge and the zone of proximal development’. Here the work of John Dewey, Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vygostsky are synthesised with Mjelde’s work to explain how to best utilise the zone of proximal development to assist ‘apprentices and master’ reach learning goals through ‘learning by doing’ to move from simple/concrete to the complex/general; learning through goal orientated activity and the integration of hand, mind and heart.

Plans for 2012

After last year’s interruptions, I am looking forward to a quieter and more productive year. However, the year ended with a good shake up on 23rd December with another aftershock and we have had several reminders the earth is still settling in with aftershocks in the first week of January.

I am hoping that plans for this year will eventuate as CPIT braces for another year. I have applied for two Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub funded projects. One with hospitality front office receptions tutors Debby Taylor and Heather McEwen to improve students’ critical reflective practice in front-office reception skills using net tablets to record and archive role plays. The other with the manufacturing (fitting, turning and toolmaking) team led by Tony Smith, to evaluate their project based learning approach and to do an impact evaluation of the effectiveness of embedding literacy and numeracy into their programme.


The other important objective for this year is to concentrate on dissemination of findings from the many projects completed over the last three years and the PhD thesis. Not only in the form of academic journal articles, but presentations at relevant forums. For instance to trade tutors and industry / employers forums on the first year apprenticeship project and the peer learning projects with Flip.

An article by Michele Martin via a November blog from the bamboo project, provides some direction for on-going professional development. She introduces the concept of being a ‘social artist’ linking to the work of Wenger’s ‘learning citizen’.

My Xmas present to self was the book ‘designing research for publication’ by Anne Sigismund Huff. This highly readable book, is a real ‘must-read’ for postdocs and aspiring academics. The book is full of insightful hints and provides good guidelines to plan a research pathway and trajectory. Of note is the need to ‘find the right conversation’, something I need to think through as I presently have a diverse (but I think connected) range of research topics. Mlearning/use of technology in teaching/learning, vocational identity formation for apprentices and trades tutors, skills acquisition/learning of novice trades students, apprenticeship processes, eportfolios and constructive/inquiry learning etc. to name the main strands! Bringing structure and cohesion to find synergistic links with these research topics makes life interesting, but they need to be carefully brought together.


So, there is much to look forward to this year :)

Review of 2011

This year is clearly one to remember. The earthquakes of September 2010, followed by the damaging February 2011 and large June 2011 aftershock, created a great deal of disruption for many and huge lose and sadness for large numbers of Christchurch residents. At work, we also had disruptions caused by two large snow storms (in July and August) and strikes from one of our teacher unions (September, October). So it has been a hard and trying year for students and staff. A year of having to continually cope with change. The good things that have flowed out of our experiences are the sense of community and solidarity that has arisen both at work, in our communities and with our families.


The challenges of rebuilding the city and its infrastructure continue. We are surrounded by constant reminders of the huge task ahead. Each day I view the shattered Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, situated across the road from CPIT. Workers steadily take it apart and carefully label and put aside each removed piece. For me the Cathedral represents what has happened over the year, shattered by the earthquakes but still symbolising that life goes on and that there is a future ahead involving the need to think creatively and to work hard at putting things back together again.

For me personally, the challenges of the year have been to complete projects, help staff cope with the disruptions and logistical issues brought about by losing access to CPIT for over 6 weeks. Completing these, along with completing final work on the PhD have been trying at times but rewarding now that all have been accomplished. Completing the ‘net tablets’ project with Katrina and Peter and their students has been particularly satisfying. This project has assisted much in building technology and research capability.

Over the year, I have also been supporting the writing of a new programme for approval both internally through the CPIT programme approvals committee and externally through NZQA. Despite the many starts and stops, the programme has now been approved and I am now working with the tutors on mapping the programmes’ learning activities and assessments.

A relatively quiet year for conferences but I managed to attend and present at the ones that were the most relevant. It was also good to be able to introduce Flip to the vocational education research circuit as we presented at the ITF NZ vocational education research forum and the NCVER no-frills in Coffs Harbour. I also did some good networking at the INAP conference that I hope to continue with.

As a whole, work on research outputs did slow down but one book chapter and one journal article (both on mlearning projects) have been published and there are two journal articles (from using video and multimodal discourse project) in press for next year. So overall, a good year to settle into my various roles as programme designer, staff developer, researcher and elearning advisor. I am now looking forward to a ‘thesis writing free’ summer with plans for several long tramping trips into the NZ Southern Alps / Mount Aspiring National Park.