AVETRA 'October VET' Federation University session

 The VET researchers at Federation University, offer a series of short presentations around the theme of 'The 'beyond COVID' OctoberVET'. The session is MCed by Annette Foley. This is the 14th session of OctoberVet from the university. 

The programme begins with an introduction and welcome from Professor Andy Smith, deputy vice-chancellor academic. Provided context, especially the current challenges posed by Covid especially the shift to online learning. VET will have to pay a significant role in the recovery as well and it is important to work towards the future. 

The programme's keynote is with Gary Workman, executive direction of Apprentice Employment Network. He presents on the topic 'Apprenticeships: what would it take?' Provided a summary of the state of apprenticeship in Victoria over the last two years and employer perspectives. AEN supports 6000 apprentices and works with 10,000 employers through a group apprenticeship training arrangement. Last 18 months has seen young people affected due to the long duration of Victoria's 'lockdown'. All apprenticeship have been affected but greatest across hairdressing, hospitality, childcare, automotive with Melbourne more deeply affected than regional areas. Vaccinations have also provided another stream of challenges. Now working on ensuring all apprentices are back to speed and able to continue / or move to another employer to continue their training. At the moment, apprentice numbers have increased due to the 50% wage subsidy offered to employers. Shared the project carried out to understand empployer needs. In general, employers considering more flexible arrangements rather than be locked in to a long period of time with most apprenticeship. Agility needed by employers as they cope with continual change (including to government subsidies) and challenge. Key findings revolved around financial levers, support models for employers, coolaborative pre-employment training models, use of the work/learning combination to suit industry needs and the implications of procurement and contracting from government funded projects. 

Researchers' presentations include:

'The curious case of jobs and training in retail and hospitality' with Professor Erica Smith, Associate Professor Darryn Snell (from RMIT) and Richard Robinson (University of Queensland) in conjuction with Skills IQ and funded by the National Careers Institute. Employ 20% of Australians, has low prestige but during Covid, increased understanding of their role. Reports on the preliminary phase on 'careers available' and evaluate how it is portrayed as post-school pathways and VET. Used census, Longitudinal surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) and NCVER VET data. LSAY data reveals only 3 - 5% of youth working in retail/hospitality expected to be working in these jobs at 30!. However, large numbers of young people work in these industries (50% of 19 year old workers). Hospitality has 200,000 plus enrolments but retail only 50,000 plus enrolled into VET qualifications. Therefore, large numbers of people in retail/hospitality were being trained. 5% in retail and 31% in hospitality. 

Then, Anthony Pearce with 'teacher-student relationships in alternative secondary education'. In Australia, the alternative secondary school sector is situated in VET. Students complete the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learing (VCAL). Shared story as a new teacher and a difficult student to provide rationale for his presentative. Interviews of VCAL students to tease out their perspectives on the importance of, value  and educaiton environment on the teacher-student relationship. Small study with 9 students who wrote one positive and one negative experience and followed up with informal interview. Key themes revealed students to be reflective, they attributed their opinions to particular environments, mainstream education seen to be negative, ways teachers responded often impacted on student outcomes; negative experiences revolved around perceived unfair treatment. Therefore, students can be at greatest risk when they are engaging with teachers, alternative education identified as the place students have more fulfilling relationships with teachers. 

A summary of "VET student employment outcomes during Covid-19' is presented by Peter Fieger. Analysed data from the NCVER student outcome survey - basically a graduate destination survey including indications of satisfaction with training/education. Impact of Covid was added to the last survey administered in mid- 2020 and completed by amost 1/2 million 'students'. Explained quantitative research process. As result of Covid, students who did not complete, tended to have decrease in hours whereas completers less affected. Larger decreases for people in creative arts and food/hospitality and younger people (no surprises). Similar patterns for people who lost their work but also high in 65+. Comparision of 2019 and 2020 data on training package labour market outcomes tell a similar story - younger workers more affected with regards to job outcomes.

Honorary Professor Barry Golding and Associate Professor Annette Foley present their work on 'and now women's sheds': broadening the scope of thecommunity-based shed field internationally'. Introduced the field, with the concept of 'men's sheds' opening to include women, children, First Nations people, war veterans, people with dementia etc. and traditional sheds moving beyond older, white, rutal, conservative anglophone men. Small numbers of women's sheds starting up but only small numbers when compared to men's sheds (e.g. NZ 121 mens to 3 womens). The original book. now extended and includes more case studies for woment's sheds. Shared 2 case studies, one at Yeoval and another the Central Coast Community Shed (Ulverstone, Tasmania). Concluded with the intangible benefits for participants and the contibution of women's sheds. 

An interesting range of topics :) 

Learning in the landscapes of practice - concept summary

Had time over the weekend (wet and snowy) to catch up on various accumulated links, readings and notes. One thread I followed through was on Wenger-Trayner's re-conceptualisation of the 'communities of practice' towards 'landscapes of practices'.

The newer conceptualisation of practice as landscape extends on the original premises of the socio-cultural foundation of learning. Communities of practices are linked, interconnected (loosely or tightly bound). Individuals traverse the landscape of practices as they enter and become part of specific communities of practices, often boundary crossing various communities due to the multi-disciplinary and multi-organisational nature of globalised organisations.

The book  summarising all the arguments represents a good first port of call to review one's own understanding of how communities of practices have shifted. Parts of the book is on Google books. Book overview can be obtained at this blog by David Rubeli and book review summary with s Nordic slant.

Since publication, Dr. Wenger has delivered several conference addresses summarising the approaches of landscapes of practice. This powerpoint is similar to the one used at a presentation given in 2013 at the University of Manchester.  Although about an hour long, worth a watch as the salient points are discussed.

In short, the concept of landscapes provides a refreshed view in light of the complexities now inherent in work organisation and the mobility of workers across discipline areas as their careers develop. Workers / learners have to continually negotiate / re-negotiate new perspectives as they are jostled from within their established Communities of Practice into being peripheral to others or their existing communities morph due to socio-political pressures. The journey is one across a landscape which is familiar but also includes gullies, unexpected turns and bluffs. Learning to walk through the landscape is now also as important as becoming part of the landscape.

AVETRA 2013 day one morning

In Perth this week to attend and present at the annual Australian Vocational Education and Training Training Research  (AVETRA) Conference. Conference is at the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle, the cooler sea breezes temper the hot 30’C plus temperatures Perth has had over the week. Wifi seems to be working, so should be able to post through the conference.

Day one opens with a welcome from AVETRA president, Dr. Michelle Simons along with a welcome to country.

The first keynote is from Dr.EtienneWenger, who speaks on ‘Learning in and across landscapes of practice – developments in social learning theory and implications of VET’.

Wenger’s approach is to view learning as occurring across all aspects of everyday life and is social in nature. Therefore, the ‘body of knowledge’ of a specialist area is reflected in the practices of various communities of practice. Learning occupational skills is a journey across the various practice communities leading to individual’s vocational identity formation. His presentation provided background on his original work with Jean Lave, how the study evolved. Their premises were founded on Jean’s ethnographical studies on apprenticeship with learning viewed as a trajectory into a community of practice (the legitimate peripheral participation). Through learning, apprentices eventually belong to a community, through engaging in practice, producing meaning from the experience and attaining identity (becoming). Thus, the learning trajectory can be traced through changes in identity as learners progress. However, communities of practices cannot be designed as they arise organically through practitioners’ engagement and interaction. The ‘curriculum’ shifts to align with social, political and organisational imperatives in unpredictable / idiosyncratic ways.

Approaches?? Competence is defined within a COP – claims to competence negotiated in the politics of community formation. Knowledgeability – defined in relation to a landscape of practice – claims knowledgeabiliy negotiated in the politics of landscapes of practice. So there needs to be a negotiation of identity in a complex landscape connecting the individual to professional body, training, research in disciplines, colleagues, clients, workplace and regulatory bodies. Not all of these influences will be in congruence! Mechanisms include informal curriculums, institutes, NGOs, bloggers, COPs, informal communities, personal networks, twitter, google etc. becoming knowledgeable includes the need to modulation across the many influences and mechanisms. Learning is still interface between individual and the social contributions. Need to be shift from ‘curriculum’ to skills to negotiate through. Within the landscape of practice building the trajectory needs to include imagination (seeing the future, locating oneself); engagement (crossing boundaries, being creative, going deep); and alignment (making a difference, seeing a future).  Learning is therefore the need to ask regularly – who am I becoming?  For VET practitioners – how can theory and practice help learners and educators address the learning challenge of on-going becoming /identity transformation.

After morning tea, concurrent sessions begin (7 streams!) so as usual, will summarise the ones I attended and catch up on the others (refereed papers) when I get back to NZ.

My presentation ‘ enhancing deliberate reflective practice using situated technology enhanced learning with tablets’ is a summary of work with Debby Taylor. Improving the learning of hotel front of house receptionists’ check-in and check out processes. Writing the paper for this conference has helped to make more concrete, some of the learning we have gained. The final report, which includes 2 more sub-projects, has now been recently submitted to Ako Aotearoa for peer review.

I stay in the same stream ‘VET practice and attend Hugh Guthrie’s presentation on ‘institutionally based research and evaluation to advise practice: messages and lessons from three projects’. Based on Hugh’s work at the University of Victoria in Melbourne. The projects were to introduce a new approach to trades training - TradeApps; study of youth strategy programme for students who had not completed year 12; and a pilot trade experience programme for people to try out trades – Victoria govt. funded project . Methodologies for these studies are evaluated.  Issues included significance of these evaluations, institutional climate, change and politics, the evaluation approaches and methods, outcomes and utility of the evaluators and the effective planning of the evaluations themselves – shared objectives between evaluators and organisations.

Learning include: Evaluations need to be strategic and significant; evaluators must immerse themselves in the prevailing climate and culture not only to understand what is going on, but also to take what actions are possible to ensure the evaluation gathers the best possible information; and evaluators must spend the time to get ‘buy-in’ from key individuals and groups – at wide levels to unlock more and better sources of information; evaluators must validate the information gathered carefully using multiple sources to ensure veracity. Need to be aware of the limits of the evaluation methodologies and data sources used and what can reasonably be concluded based on the quality of info. collected. Evaluators need to be sensitive to organisational climate and climax. Evaluators need to work closely with their client to ensure that forms of reporting and their timeliness are fit for purpose. Effective institutional evaluation requires careful initial planning, leading to credibility and ability to effect real change.

Therefore, there is a need to have skilled and arms-length evaluative and research capability within VET providers.

Then Berwyn Clayton on ‘Keeping up with the Joneses: updating professionals in knowledge leading organisations’.

Berwyn’s presentation reports on a project examining industry views on the management and maintenance of industry currency on VET practitioners. Study included fields of science, health, engineering, and human resources. Not only need to establish importance of currency but to establish structures to support – including organisational strategies, collaborative undertakings, monitoring and review. Follow up on a NCVTR project on knowledge and professional obsolescence.
The presented project focused on what ways organisations may manage professional obsolescence and what can approaches to these problems drawn from industry and the professions be applied strategically in VET organisations? Approaches to updating professional practice include learning in and through work; collaborative learning; networking; problem-based and project-driven learning; shadowing, peer review and programmed knowledge exchange - eg. weekly seminars to share learning.

Lunch follows with opportunity to catch up with familiar faces and meet up with new researchers.

Participation in a community of practice - non-participation as peripheral or marginal

Re-reading parts of Wenger, E. (1998). Communities ofPractice (CoP): Learning, meaning and identity. Getting my head around concepts of participation and non-participation in answer to comments from a peer reviewer on an article I have just re-submitted on the topic of ‘proximal participation’.

Proximal participation arose as a concept in my PhD thesis - 'belonging, becoming and being a baker. The term was used to explain how young people with poor academic attainment and limited idea of career opportunities, fell into a baking apprenticeship. These apprentices had all worked as cleaners, dish washers, retail or catering assistants for period of up to a year in the bakery, before an apprenticeship came up and they were offered an indenture. All of these apprentices provided data about how working in the bakery as ancillary workers, provided them the opportunity to view work in the bakery. Many had started to build relationships with other workers in the bakery and establish a sense of belonging to the workplace. All had little pre-conception as to what the trade of baking entailed. Proximal participation as ancillary workers meant they were exposed to the many work roles in the bakery workplace and to the challenges of craft baking.

Wenger includes an explanation of non- participation as either peripheral or marginal (chapter 7). Peripheral participants are poised on the edge of entry into a CoP and transition into becoming legitimate peripheral participants (LPPs) if individuals are keen to become members of a CoP. On the other end, marginal participants may be prevented through lack of social capital or mismatch of interests from actually becoming LPPs. I sort of see the role of proximal participation as assisting individuals to find out if they are an affinity to the CoP they are partially immersed into. If they see a fit, then at some stage, the proximal participation itself provides opportunities for them to build relationships with other CoP members. These relationships may ease the transition of marginal participants into becoming LLPs, circumventing individuals’ difficulties in entering the CoP.

Whakakotahi: Communities of Practice , West Coast Tertiary teaching & learning conference

Yesterday afternoon, I travelled across to the West Coast to present a workshop at the inaugural West Coast Tertiary Teaching & Learning Regional Conference sponsored by Ako Aotearoa & Tai Poutini Polytechnic.

I was teaching all day yesterday so just managed to catch the opening of the conference that evening which featured a powhiri followed by welcomes from Russell Nimmo, chair of the West Coast Tertiary Education Forum, Dr. Peter Coolbear who is Director of Ako Aotearoa & Geoff Knight, ex- motorcycle gang member turned opera singer. Dr Coolbear introduced the audience to the work that Ako Aotearoa is taking on to improve the educational outcomes for all learners through. This is accomplished by the dissemination of funds to further research in the tertiary sector and providing opportunities for the building of communities of practices. Geoff Knight performed two opera pieces and gave a very inspirational, well delivered and thought provoking presentation. In particular, he was lucky to come across key mentors and supporters at crucial times of his life & these provided impetus & support for him to develop his gift.

The conference is a wonderful initiative to provide professional development to tertiary teachers based on the West Coast of New Zealand. A beautiful area which has a low population spread along 600 kilometres.

This morning started off with a keynote from Dr. Marion Bowl, from the University of Canterbury who spoke on communities of practice (COPs) & how the concept could be useful for both the formal & informal tertiary sectors of the West Coast. She also covered the factors that hinder or inhibit the formation and continuation of COPs, the supporting factors that encourage COPs to form & grow in organisations & at a local level eg. Buller ACE sub-network.
Workshops followed on a range of topics. I presented one, so only able to attend one by Peter McRae from Tai Poutinit about developing a programme beyond unit standards. Feedback from employers in the civil plant industry was that skills, knowledge & licencing were important but attitude was the most important. Therefore work attitudes need to be integrated into pre-trade programmes.

The after lunch keynote was from Dr. Tony Barrett (ex-Lincoln University) on how the social nature of learning shapes our student’s identity and ability to build knowledge. Activity, learning & identity are interlinked. Social activities are part of learning and becoming. COPs are easier to analyse than to describe ie COP formation is organic & based on the context, social organisation etc from which they evolve therefore to impose rules on how they form, stops them from forming in the first place. A good overview of the concepts of COPs including the need to offer authentic learning experiences, the roles of learners in COPs & the need to identify processes important to the understanding a concept and then making them visible to the learner.

A plenary panel session with Dr.Coolbear, Dr. Barrett, Dr. Bowl & Dr. Sheila Granger (principal of Buller High School) on learning as a social process followed afternoon tea. This consisted of questions collected from the audience & answered by members of the panel. Most of the questions were on the concepts for COPs, how to involve more people, keep the COP going, ignite passion for learning etc. The discussion moved across to the role of technology in supporting COPs & the ways in which technology may be used to better connect with learners. There was also a need for institutions to provide support to staff who are working on projects that have goals of improving learner outcomes. Suggestions for future conferences included having more students attending / presenting & looking at other models for structuring / organising a conference.

A successful conference was then closed by Marja Kneepkins who is the campus manager for Tai Poutinit Polytechnic (Westport campus) who provided a personal summary. A poropororaki then officially closed the conference.