AVETRA - Day 2

 Day 2 begins with a welcome to Country. Dr. Lizzie Knight provides a overview of Day 1 and introduces the first keynote.

Keynote 4 is with Dr. Geethani Nair, the Chief Innovation Officer with Digital Skills Organisation. She presents on 'building a resilient workforce: The critical role of prioritising skills in VET'. Overviewed the Australian VET sector and its challenges; need to innovate at VET for dynamic industry demands; and opportunities on the horizon for the sector. Reminder of how VET covers community-based adult education, private RTOs, government and non-government enterprises,  TAFE, VET in schools etc. Some perspective of VET as broken but perhaps it is crumbly - fragmentated, eroded, dysfunctional :( The introduced a case-study from Sri Lanka. Has less than 1% of government budget in VET, in the bottom 20% for labour market efficiency and low in quality of education. Skills shortage etc. with low productivity, mainly in low/unskilled occupations and 1/4 of population employed overseas (majority in low skill occupations). In contrast, Australia focuses on VET are to assure active citizenship and community engagement; opportunities for under-represented groups and an inclusive and equitable society. Challenges include declining enrolments, low completion rates, employer satisfaction could perhaps be higher, student satisfaction quite high, and quality indicators indicate 20% could do better, and funding forecasted to decline. 

There are increasing skill gaps due to changing landscape of work and rapid technological advancement. To keep out requires agile and responsive skilling sector, new pedagogical models and teacher capability. Innovative VET needs to 'hit the industry bullseye', maximise relevance an transferability, and ensure mobility of skills. Adopting a skills-based approach (skills taxonomy) one way - from transferable skills across roles and industries, skills analysis of workforce, clustering for maximising tranferability and mobility, and skills development reflecting the evolving demands of industry. Application over acquisition, skills standards into clusters, skills developed close to action and skills for jobs - stackable, accreditated + non-accreditated. Explained skills pathways to job roles - pathway to job, job specific skills mapped to credentials/micro-credentials, blend accreditated and unaccreditated micro-credentials, training delivery could be skills, competency or curriculum based. In doing, learners are helped to stay ahead, have the ability to stack job roles, align micro-credentials to full qualifications, have rapid adaptation. Case study of cyber analyst role with alignment to digital skills standards. Curriculum with cyber core (info security, security infrastructure, security ops), cyber assessment, and cyber development. Completed through work-integrated learning. Shared mapping of digital job pathways. Opportunities to improve, increase, enhance, strengthen, improve and increase various key platforms of VET. 

Keynote 5 follows with Professor Rae Cooper who is the Professor of Gender, Work and Employment Relations at the Australian Research Council - University of Sydney Business School, presenting on 'ceilings, walls, floors and gaps: The architecture of gendered inequality in work'. Gender equity also related to equity for all others. Overviewed the architecture of difference and discrimination; the gap between aspiration and practice, and meeting these needs and filling the gaps. The pervasive and enduring architecture of gendered difference - stratification (glass ceilings), segregation (glass walls), undervaluation and bad jobs (sticky floors), hours disparity (paid/unpaid work), 'bad flex' (good flex is in short supply), and disrespect (harassment and bias still pervasive). Over 40 years, women stay in the workforce (post child birth) at high rates (40% return in 1960s and 80% now). Australian women best educated in the world, than at any point in history and better educated than men -50% now have a degree. Women at work want respect, security, decent pay, balance between work and care and flexibility. However, there is still a gap between what respect, security, work balance (53% gap) flex they want and what then would like going into the future and there is still a gender pay gap. Australian women are educated, engaged and ready to participate. However workplaces are not yet meeting their needs. Mutual benefits for women, government and business from filling the gaps and dismantling the gendered architecture.

Concurrent sessions begin after morning tea.

I present on our 'mobile learning' project with 'Applying mobile learning towards digital inclusion for vocational education learners'. The data comes from a study with Alan Hoskin to find out how trades students coped with the pandemic in 2021, the devices they were able to access, and their experiences of remote/emergency learning. As with other studies going back 2 decades, mobile phone ownership predominated amongst the participants. Yet, our LMS is PC/laptop centric, making the mobile learnning experience, much less fluid and userable. Therefore, there is still a need to design for mobile learning, in particular, holistic design across all facets of learning - communications, student support, pastoral care, learning activities and assessments, to assure a consolidated mlearning experience. 

Then Kylie Taffard from the ConCove presents on 'constructing women: investigating the influences on career development educators when advising young women on construction trades' and overview of her PhD thesis. Summarised research process - to understand trades academies and gendered occupations - with constructions trades as the context. Detailed her model - the opportunities and influences of gender socialisation and stereotypes; occupation stereotypes and segregation. These impacted on learners career decisions; career development educators focused on student interests; trades women also appreciated sympathetic career development support. Theory of career choice assumes self-efficacy but if this was tapped on, career choice much more aligned. Perceptions of the industry played a part, some saw the need to leave their femaleness to enter a male dominated industry. School culture contributed to perceptions of how to behave as a female and peer values often can be challenging. Family connections often helped pave the way into the industry. Career developers often had to help young people mediate their career aspirations with family expectations. Need to ensure support provided to young people if they pursued non-traditional career choices. Career developers themselves had challenges, working with other teachers who had biases with regards to gendered career choice, having to work through too much information on the range of careers available, heavy workloads, lack of support from school leadership etc. Summarised recommendations. 

Followed by Professor Antje Barabasch, from the Swiss Federation University of VET, on 'how industry responds to new challenges for training apprentices in Switzerland'. Overviewed the school and VET system, with 70% of school leavers selecting - from a wide choice of options - apprenticeships as a post-school education option. Detailed the apprenticeship training process - in-company training, training centres and industry training (to cover the gaps). Summarised a project on 'innovative approaches to apprenticeship training'. Rationale is the changes in work and new conditions for work and learning. Across 6 years, 7 industry case studies have been derived- telecommunications, public transport, postal service, retail, pharmaceutical etc.  Stressed the need for 'transversal skills', support learners' enthusiasm and motivation and the roles of relatedness, competence and autonomy to support these. Shared innovations and examples to extend apprenticeship through mobility and exposition; responsibility and entrepreneurship; preparatory course and special training, and supporting creativity. Recommended conditions for success in innovations in VET - management commitment, leadership, trainer autonomy, openness and flexibility, culture shift, time for evolution to take place, and support of intrinsic motivation. There are challenges as well - apprentices' focus on social aspects, work environment is competitive, and stress and authentic learning at work. 

After a working lunch with the research dissemination sub-committee,  three presentations follow:

Dr. Warren Guest on 'VET learners as curriculum co-designers: examining the realities, opportunities and prospects'. Focused on curriculum design process and how apprentices see themselves in the process. Apprentice case study shared for exemplary and not as model workplaces. On paper, the enacted curriculum and training plans spell out things to be accomplished. However, workplace sub-cultures, apprentices' agency, expansiveness or restrictiveness of workplace etc. mean consistency between workplace/ learning sites will always be variable. Suggested the co-designing of the curriculum especially with regards to mode of training delivery (on/off job, who with, decision based on cost/time/availability), the structure of training delivery (how long, when, where), assessment arrangements (to work for apprentice), elective units (or relevance to the apprentice aspirations) and competency based completion timeframe (negotiated / flexible). Training plans, although supposedly apprentice-led, now mainly employer-led. So what is the apprentices' experienced curriculum? Investigated apprentices agency and understanding of the process. Development of occupational and vocational identity is important to establish the motivations and direction for their apprenticeship journey. For the experienced curriculum, apprentice knowledge augments engagement, off the job develops vocational belonging, gradual skills development leads to deeper knowledge depth, business needs prioritised over learning needs, and learning preferences are rarely considered. 

Then, John Blake from Eastern College Australia on 'engagement strategies that support retention of learners in higher education'. Model of student as being central to education. The class (teachers and peers) are wrapped around to provide immediate support and whole of school also required to provide positive support as well. Study to address high attrition rate of student with external students even more likely to withdraw. Summarised reasons for attrition and a content analysis to unpack solutions. Affective categories (mentor, support, belonging, communication, teacher-presence, feedback, collaboration etc.) seen to be most likely to assist. Multiple strategies, as all these categories intersect and intertwine, synergised to the context, useful as interventions to improve engagement to prevent attrition.

Last presentation from Dr. Karen O'Reilly-Briggs who presents on aspects of her ISS fellowship - report now published -  with 'VET school teachers in Norway and Finland: what Australia can learn from Nordic models of VET in schools'. Briefly summarised backgrounds of Norway and Finland - from an educational perspective. In Finland, Universities of Applied Science provide more practice-based education, school-based VET has improved prestige and young people view VET positively with 50% of upper secondary school students study a VET pathway. VET teachers must be qualified before teaching, and only a fraction of applicants able to enter the programme. For Norway, school VET integrated into general education. 51% of students are VET students and 80% on 2+2 which includes two years of school which is generalised and two years of industry-based learning. Two pathways into VET teaching - 3 year Bachelor or practical pedagogical pathway (1 year plus 4). In both countries, VET teaching well respected, have VET streams in schools and require higher qualifications before entry into VET teaching.

Panel discussion on building institutional research capability, chaired by Professor Michelle Simon follows afternoon tea. Panel includes Professor Sarojni Choy (Griffith University), Professor Michelle Simon (Western University University), Professor Stephen Billett (Griffith University), Dr. Henry Pook (Holmsglen Director of Centre for Applied Research and Innovation) and Dr. Joy De Leo (Manager, Research and Data Analytics, NCVER). Each shared their perspectives and recommendations as to how to build research capability in their own context. 

A plenary session closes the conference. 

Overall, a good re-acquaintance with conference presentation and networking. The conference committee was able to bring in a good range of keynotes, updating on important aspects of Australian VET policy. We need a similar event in Aotearoa NZ :)