The Practical Work of Scholarship in Australian Technical and Further Education Institutions

A recent trend in Australian education is the diversification of programme delivery outside institutions’ traditional sector of education, including delivery of bachelor degrees by some public vocational education and training institutions (known in Australia as technical and further education, or TAFE, institutes). The delivery of higher education programmes in non-traditional providers, such as TAFE institutes, has created significant challenges for teachers working in these settings. They work within a vocational education and training (VET) culture but confront the regulatory frameworks demanded of higher education providers. Scholarship is a particularly problematic issue because it has not been an expectation in VET providers but is a key feature in higher education. This article examines the emerging nature of scholarship in a TAFE institute offering higher education programmes. We report on an analysis of regulatory and quality assurance documentation, which begins to formalise the notion of ‘scholarship’ in VET. We then compare this emerging official definition with higher education TAFE teachers’ experience of scholarship using interviews. We argue that higher education teachers and their TAFE institutes are forming distinctive hybrid scholarly cultures and practices as they take on external expectations and navigate through existing orientations to industry, educational commitments to teaching and the absence of scholarly structures and values in TAFE

Living in a 2.2 World: ERA, Capacity Building and the Topography of Australian Educational Research

Early in 2011, the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) and the Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE) established a joint working party to create a strategic plan for strengthening national research capacity in the field of Education. This proposal followed the publication of Excellence of Research in Australia (ERA) 2010 results, which revealed that the national average weighting of Australian research in Field of Research 13 (FoR 13) - Education was well below the 'world standard' rating of 3.0. Moreover, the 2010 ERA data demonstrated that we had no up-to-date picture of who is involved in educational research, what their strengths are, or how they relate to one another. As an input into strategic research capacity building in Australian educational research, this project begins the process of documenting who 'we' are as educational researchers. The research described within the report used an ecological model to address the project's overarching question, which was: What is the topography of Australian educational research

Young people and social inclusion: Challenges for teaching

The Crounulla riots were a wake-up call for Australia. With a booming economy and an assertive government, the violence at Crounulla was a stark reminder that nations have to be made and remade culturally, as well as economically. An identity as citizen is as important as an identity as worker in forming sustainable imagined communities that can transcend and ameliorate socio-cultural divisions and conflicts. Yet being a citizen means more than simply belonging to a community. It means using power responsibly to further community (collective) action in pursuit of preferred goals. This paper examines the changing context of skill-building for work and citizenship in Australia. It highlights the role of schools and teachers in this learning, and the way lifelong learning reforms are now reconfiguring these roles. My main argument is that Australia has unfinished business in ‘building skills for work and citizenship’. Reform since the mid-1980s has emphasised skills for work but forgotten to consider how people develop skills for citizenship

Networking young citizens : Learning to be citizens in and with the social web

Many claims are made, both in the popular press and the professional education literature, about the significance of the social web in enabling civic participation. However empirical evidence supporting these claims is sparse and contested rather than strongly-indicative. The Monash University pilot research project, Networking Young Citizens, relates to the discussion about the ways in which the social web might support the civic participation, especially of young people, by examining the ways in which Web 2.0 was integrated into teaching and learning in the school, and any other processes of civic socialisation that were consciously adopted in three schools. This research examined general school administrative practices that could be construed as being supportive of the development of a school community and citizenship behaviours, and also teacher engagement with their students in terms of explicit Civics and Citizenship curriculum and activities. The research was predicated on the view that both of these strands of educational work have potential for inducting students into citizenship dispositions and civic behaviours, and also the norms and practices, rights and responsibilities of democratic citizenship. The research also examined the young people’s experience of Web 2.0 and other social media platforms (Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and shared content sites (such as flickr, blogs, discussion forums) and sought their views and understandings of the potential of these processes for broader civic engagement

Seddon, Terri, The Hidden Curriculum: An Overview, Curriculum Perspectives, 3(May, 1983), 1-6.

Reviews literature on the hidden curriculum and analyzes it into its various aspects

Seddon, Terri, Curriculum History: A Map of Key Issues, Curriculum Perspectives, 9(October, 1989), 1-16.*

A thorough review of the state-of-the-art of doing curriculum history published in English. Discusses focus, boundaries, conceptions, and theory