On track to what? A Foucauldian analysis of a recent Victorian post-compulsory education policy initiative.

Drawing on research findings, this article attempts an ‘eventalisation’ of the implementation of On Track, a recent initiative in Victorian postcompulsory education policy. Annelies Kamp argues that On Track can be understood as an act of surveillance that not only manages but also produces a risk that is deemed manageable by government. While there is a growing recognition of the need to understand youth transition in late modern times as being a ‘recursive state’, the governance framework persists in constructing youth transition as partaking of panoptical time that compels us to attend to progress, precocity, arrest, or decline through initiatives such as On Track

Policy, paradigms, and partnership potential: rethinking the governance of learning networks

**IP Unitl May 3**This paper engages with the idea of ‘joining-up’ as an increasingly common policy response by governments internationally in the face of so-called ‘wicked problems’ (Rittel and Webber 1973). In particular, the paper concerns the problem of young people in transition from a primary role in engaging with and progressing through the levels of formal education to a sustainable engagement in the increasingly fragmented labor markets that are the motor of individualized risk in the context of the risk society (Beck 1992). Drawing on seminal organizational theory, the paper takes up a a metaphorical lens to critique the governance arrangements that have evolved in concert with such policy responses. The paper proceeds in the following stages. Firstly, the problem of youth transition and its interface with socio-economic factors will be framed. Secondly, the policy response introduced in the research context ¬¬— the state of Victoria in Australia — will be sketched. Finally, the metaphorical underpinnings of the governance arrangements that were implemented as part of the policy will be critiqued. The paper closes with some thoughts for reflection

‘The teacher is here to ask for your help’: A story of schools, employers and networks.

This paper explores the development of the Jobs4Kids (J4K) campaign, a joint initiative of the SGR LLEN Employer Reference Group and the Beacon Foundation. Involving a three-year business plan, the J4K campaign aims to broker young people into employment in local jobs in the region. The campaign is the result of the intersection between an evolving project within the LLEN and the growth of an established program of the Beacon Foundation. The paper will use a Deleuzian lens to explore the ground shifts that have occurred in the process of forming this connection; I am concerned with the intersecting movements of different orders that have created a necessary transitory coordination. Within such a ‘rhizome’ there are only lines: dimensional lines of segmentarity and stratification and lines of flight as ‘the maximum dimension after which the multiplicity undergoes metamorphosis, changes in nature’ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987 p.21). My perspective of this metamorphosis is specifically focused on SGR LLEN; I close with a consideration of the possibilities of this change in nature for the continuing work of the LLEN

Jobs4Kids: Networking and learning for youth within one regional economy in Victoria, Australia

In this paper I present some of the insights generated by ethnographic longitudinal research into regional learning networks focused on education, training and employment for youth that were instituted by the State government of Victoria, Australia from 2001 onwards. The research, funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Project, was completed by a team of researchers at Deakin University working in partnership with one of the networks: the Smart Geelong Region Local Learning and Employment Network (SGR LLEN). In this paper I will undertake a number of tasks. Given the remoteness of the research context I will provide a — necessarily limited — overview of both the geographical and policy context before outlining what a Local Learning and Employment Network (LLEN) is, and does. I then move to outline the establishment of an Employer Reference Group (ERG) as a key strategy of the SGR LLEN . The paper closes with a synopsis of the research findings in regard to the possibilities within, and limitations around, a policy focus on networking and collaboration

Mature women and the New Zealand qualifications framework. realising the potential of recognising prior learning

Against a backtground of 'second-wave' lifelong learning in Aotearoa New Zealand a new framework for post-compulsory national qualfications was introduced. The restulting competency-based system was argued to present a number of benefits for mature women including flexibility in curriculum and delivery and portability across educational sectors. Competency-based education was to include provision for recognition of prior skills and knowledge gained in formal learning environments and the workplace as well as informal learning environments such as the home and the community. Such recognition was a significant factor in gaining support from women's groups given the potential to recognize and value the domestic labour of women and the skills and knowledge that flow from it. This article explores the rhetoric around recognition of prior learning and discusses approaches to realise its potential. It then draws on research undertaken in Aotearoa New Zealand to suggest that the potential of recognition of prior learning is yet to be realised

Teaching teachers: Building a post-compulsory education training and employment sector through teacher education

This paper captures the experience of implementing an educational reform strategy. The development of Deakin University’s Graduate Diploma of Education (Applied Learning) (GDAL) was understood by its instigators as a platform for reform. The GDAL would respond to the challenge being put before education and training providers in late modern times: to prepare young people to create and engage with a learning society through their capacity for lifelong learning. These teacher education students would, ideally, bring skills and knowledge already gained in a professional career. While they would gain teacher registration they were better conceptualised as professional educators for an emerging post compulsory education, training and employment sector in the Australian state of Victoria: it was expected that graduates would not only teach in schools but would also move readily within the network of learning spaces that young people increasingly experience in their formal education. In the process, they would be a force for change, seeding reform within secondary schools. As a ‘teacher’ these graduates would have the credibility to challenge the entrenched practices of other teachers. It is the story of ‘what happened’ as a consequence of this specific aim that this paper concerns itself with

Collaboration in education: Lessons from Actor Network Theory

This chapter concerns the growing interest in networking and partnership in post compulsory education and training in the face of increased risk and uncertainty in the globalised context. Internationally, the sector is evolving in a context of globalisation, and now the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), where schools and other education, training and employment providers are facing increasing challenges in facilitating young people’s transitions to secure employment in the context of the risk society (Bauman, 1998; Beck, 1992). The chapter is theoretical but draws on empirical research undertaken in Victoria, Australia to illustrate its arguments around the insights into collaboration that can be gained through the use of Actor Network Theory

‘Experimentation in contact with the real’: networking with Deleuze & Guattari

This paper draws on data from an longitudinal case study of a Local Learning and Employment Network (LLEN) instituted by a state government in Victoria in the arena of post compulsory education and training to explore the possibilities of a new approach to thinking about networks, their formation and operation, one that is inspired by ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Using a rhizomatic approach my focus is on the middle — the plateau — a space that is made of lines moving in multiple directions. Looking at the middle disrupts taken-for-granted understandings and perceptions of linearity; it is in considering middles and plateaus that it is possible to move beyond a concern with joining-up ‘fixed’ entities within existing, and constrained, ways of knowing and, in the process, finding new ways of understanding and realizing the potential of a phenomenon that is ‘fast becoming a standard explanation of structure and action in both the public and private domain’(Considine, 2002)

Constructing inclusive education in a neo-liberal context: promoting inclusion of Arab-Australian students in an Australian context.

School systems are a major social change agent capable of challenging social inequalities and economic disadvantages. Yet, while schools in Australia are being confronted with increasingly culturally diverse populations as well as an increasing focus on student retention, this transformative role is increasingly being played out in a broader educational context that has been found to replicate rather than challenge patterns of social inequality. Successive governments in Australia have responded to this context with a raft of policy initiatives. This paper, based on three-year longitudinal research undertaken in the city of Melbourne, outlines this policy context and introduces the theoretical approach that underpins its innovative approach to managing cultural diversity in educational institutions. It argues for, and presents, a multidimensional model for managing cultural diversity in schools, one that provides the tools for transformative practices to be undertaken to effect positive change in school environments for the benefit of all students

Deleuze and the teenage mother: trouble makers for education and transition

The title of this chapter is doing some work, albeit in a somewhat awkward fashion. Giles Deleuze appears, philosopher of a “bastard kind” (Massumi 1992, 1). Deleuze opens the work because he, and his concepts, do something they are rather good at: a bit of troubling, a bit of “prying open” of habitual ways of thinking (Massumi 1987, xv). In this chapter that bit of troubling and prying open is directed toward a rethinking of youth transition and the role of schools in that particular form of ‘becoming’. Teenage mothers appear as they, too, are ‘known’ to be trouble makers: the ‘teenage mother’ signifier is by default a negative one. As Sara found, ‘teenage mother’ as a signifier doesn’t rest easily alongside ‘school girl’ as a signifier. It is this assemblage of teenager+parent+school student — a gathering in which I too was once involved (Kamp and Kelly forthcoming) — that is the focus of this chapter