Dr. Steven Hodge - Eroding the Social Role of Vocational Education in Australia
Post-compulsory education in Australia is sharply polarised around a binary of university education and 'vocational education and training' (VET) offered by public colleges of technical and further education (TAFEs) and a number of smaller private institutes. In the heyday of TAFE provision - 1970s - these colleges fulfilled an explicit social mandate. However, reforms in the decades since have eroded this mandate. The seminar examines factors in this trajectory including the advent of competency-based training as a system- wide curriculum model, the doctrine of industry leadership' and the concept of 'national skills formation'.
About the speaker
Dr. Steven Hodge
Steven Hodge is a curriculum researcher based at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. He has a special interest in vocational education and the ways occupational expertise is represented in curriculum. Recently, he has been considering how vocational educators interact with centrally formulated curriculum. Steven is Deputy Head of School (Research) in the School of Education and Professional studies at Griffith, and is Deputy Director of the Griffith Institute for Educational Research.