I have not posted new items to the blog for the last three months, while I prepared a new book: Ideas for practitioners: a professional development guide to growth and change in the VET sector.

The book is available from http://www.ibsa.org.au/pubdetails.jsp?publication=6137

Based on over sixty of my articles in Campus Review, with the addition of hundreds of questions and numerous suggestions for further reading, the book identifies key issues for the future for VET educators and promotes reflection on current practice.

The book holds potential value for all stakeholders in the sector – from industry trainers and assessors to institution-based teachers and educational managers, workplace supervisors, industry personnel, public servants and policy makers. Everyone in the sector needs to develop new ideas, says the author.

The eleven chapters highlight core issues in the sector: innovation, policy, industry needs, industry partnerships, RTO structures, leadership and strategy-making, change management, workforce development, new work roles, e-learning and e-business, and teaching, learning and assessment.

The book is nearly 70,000 words and there are 66 articles, 231 questions and over 150 references for further reading: enough material for twelve months of professional development activities.

Given the increasing pressures and new challenges facing VET providers, innovative ways are needed to improve organisational performance. One way is described below, by a leader of an award-winning RTO, Neil Black, Director of TAFE NSW North Coast Institute, in an interview I conducted recently:

What strategies have helped the Institute become high-performing?

We have had a very deliberate strategy that goes back a number of years, to position ourselves to be the high performing organisation we are today. One of the things we did in 2000 was to develop a strategic plan, using a scenario planning process that identified what were the key environmental factors impacting on the institute. Of course those factors included the national training system and the changing expectations of industry and business, the impact of changing technology and the ageing workforce. From that we devised our strategic goals and our priorities.

Then we asked: Are we equipped to achieve those goals? So we undertook a process – the capability platform – which is based on the concept that there are key elements to an organisation’s capability platform, that is the culture, the structure and systems, the experience and competencies of the workforce, but most of all the organisation’s people. When we looked at the capability platform we identified that we had tremendously strong people: people who were highly committed, creative, experienced, technically strong and well qualified. But the other areas of the capability platform were potentially inhibiting us from being a high-performing organisation.

How did you address these gaps?

We put in place an organisational improvement strategy that was based around changing our structure and putting the right people in the right positions, particularly middle-management, because no organisation can be high-performing if it doesn’t have the right people in the right positions. Then we determined what sort of culture we wanted and worked on developing that culture, but that is an ongoing process, which has to be supported by resources. We reviewed our systems as well, and through working with the staff we looked at whether there were inhibitors to them doing their jobs more effectively and efficiently: whether there were bureaucratic barriers or too much paperwork. We put a lot of effort into building our online capability. We doubled our staff development funding and put in place a $250,000 research and development fund, to support the sorts of changes we needed to make.

What are the critical success factors for organisational improvement?

There must be a context for organisational development and improvement and that context is your strategic plan. But the strategic plan must be developed and owned by your staff and your stakeholders, otherwise that context is not very effective. Organisational improvement needs to be strategic, in that you need to determine what you want to change and improve and then the various initiatives need to support where everyone knows you are going. I’ve seen examples of where people put in place ad hoc strategies, like projects for morale boosting, without any framework for it. Another thing I have learnt is the value of involving the key unions upfront and throughout the change process. I’ve found that if the unions are part of the process and know where you want to go, they will provide excellent support. You must also be prepared to resource the change process, so that staff  know you are serious about change.

Is there one key to high-performance?

The key to a high-performing organisation is its people and its culture. There is absolutely no question of that, in my opinion. Getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats on the bus has to be the first organisational improvement strategy because you can waste a lot of time and effort if you have a lot of blockages in your organisation. At middle level management level, blockages can be totally destructive. So you’ve got to have all the people, particularly your leadership and development people, all committed and enthusiastic about this sort of culture you’re trying to cultivate and the direction you’re trying to head in. Then it’s a lot easier to support organisational improvement because everyone’s rowing in the same direction.

The full interview is provided in my ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review, October 2005.

For a strong and vibrant VET sector, leaders are needed who have a clear vision and innovative strategies. One such national VET leader is Malcolm Goff, Managing Director of Challenger TAFE in Western Australia, whom I interviewed recently for my ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review, 5 October 2005.  Following is an excerpt from the interview.

Does Challenger aspire to high-performance?

High-performance is embedded in our culture. We committed ourselves to it some six years ago because we recognised that even with public funding there are no guarantees these days. Our public funded activities depended on our performance in the marketplace and of course increasingly our income is depended on our commercial work. Increasingly public money is being put out through competitive processes.

Is Challenger future-oriented?

Our vision is to be a high-performing, visionary organisation and that is reflected in our strategic and business planning processes. We are always thinking about futures. Yes we learn from experience and so forth but we are focused on positioning, repositioning and positioning ourselves. We live in a changing world and we need to be a changing and a dynamic organisation.

What are the leadership principles within Challenger?

Leadership can’t be formula-driven, but it goes something like this. It’s about understanding the policy directions of government. It’s about understanding the needs of your clients, be they individuals or industry, and positioning your organisation to deliver against those. And most importantly communicating and discussing those directions within your organisation, and in so doing empowering staff to deliver against the needs of clients. It is not about directing. Yes of course, there are certain checks and balances that every agency has to have in place, but within those parameters it is about an individual staff member seeing an opportunity that is part of core business and knowing they can go for that opportunity and it is the right thing to do.

Is leadership at Challenger a team effort?

No one person can have all the knowledge or all the skills and therefore your executive team is a very important part of the ultimate performance of the organisation. We as a team spend a considerable amount of time in any one year in discussing and debating environmental issues then coming to a consensus about what are the key strategies and business actions we need to take to take into account in this environmental analysis. It is not just a one-off: it is a continual and ongoing activity.

What is your greatest satisfaction as Challenger’s managing director?

Leading an organisation to where we have today, where people are initiating, and creating and achieving without any direct involvement of myself.

What will a large TAFE college look like in the future?

If you can conceptualise a large TAFE college of the future as one that is built around having big campuses, then that’s a mistake. The future is about de-institutionalising. It’s about looking for industry partnerships, and they will manifest themselves in different ways: it must not be a one-size fits all. A very one-dimensional view of an RTO-industry partnership is that the RTO offers training to the industry. An RTO-industry partnership is about joint ownership, it’s about sharing, it’s about jointly contributing.

A key to the growth of Australia’s economy is the health of the service industries, such as the retail, tourism and recreation industries. These service industries are underpinned by workforce skills, but clarifying which skills are common across all of these industries and which skills are specifically related to any one industry is a challenge being addressed by the DEST-funded Service Industries Skill Council.

“Some of the customer service skills needed by staff in a retail enterprise are the same as those needed at the reception desk in a doctor’s surgery, but the context is different and therefore the application of those skills is different,’ says Jeanette Allen, Chief Executive Officer of Service Skills. “It is partly about how skills are applied. The contextualisation of skills is vitally important to that enterprise,” says Allen.

Service Skills is responsible for influencing skills development opportunities for approximately 3 million of Australia’s 10 million workers, covering over 637,000 businesses. Industries involved include the wholesale, retail and personal services industries, the tourism and hospitality industry and the sport and recreation industry.

The labour-intensive nature of these industries means that the quality of skills is a key determinant of productivity. “In a people-intensive industry, meeting consumer and customer service demand is the paramount driver of skill needs,” says Allen.
Skill needs range from the technical skills for new entrants to the ongoing currency of skills required by the existing workforce. Skill development in service industries is made all the more difficult because the industries are often characterised by a young workforce mostly engaged in part-time or casual positions. These industries sometimes operate in non-traditional hours and in many cases are highly seasonal. 

According to Service Skills, challenges for service industries include:

• Providing resource products and services that support workers to rapidly acquire or upgrade broad-based skills and to continually refresh product-specific skills
• Ensuring that workers are multi-skilled and have the skills to deal with a wide range of cultural demands by customers
• Meeting the demand by enterprises for workers to acquire or update discrete skills that provide ‘just enough’ skill to meet enterprises’ immediate requirements
• Facilitating industry career paths and qualifications to help attract and retain workers to the industries
  Meeting the demand for employability skills such as problem solving, adaptability and communication.

I discuss these issues further in my ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review, 30 September 2005.

Some responses to addressing skill shortages are simple and short-term, such as increasing the number of skilled migrants. In contrast, the NSW Department of Education (DET) has taken up the complex challenge of creating healthy ‘skill ecosystems’, capable of sustaining skill formation and use. Following is a brief discussion on the concept, from my column ‘Inside VET’ in Campus Review, 21 September 2005.

Originally the concept of skill ecosystems was used to explain the growth of the IT industry’s high-skill cluster in Silicon Valley, California. Following developments in Silicon Valley, skill ecosystems came to be seen as clusters of inter-related skills and knowledge within regions or industries. These ecosystems are driven by factors like technology, competition, culture, structure, regulation and the organisation of work.  

“Now we are extending the idea of skill ecosystems to understand and support more robust learning and employment clusters across all skill levels,” says Leslie Loble, Deputy Director General, Strategic Planning and Regulation, NSW DET. Over the last two years, Loble and her team have tested the theory through projects across Australia, with support from the Department of Education, Science and Technology (DEST) and the NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training.

According to Leslie Loble, a skill ecosystem perspective has the following characteristics:

• focuses on industry economics and the workplace context of skill development and use
• sees a set of common interests uniting organisations in the cluster or supply chain
• views the training provider as central but part of a diverse group of workers, employers, researchers, technology suppliers, industry regulators, contractors, consumers or purchasers
• believes that skill formation strategies must go beyond traditional training responses.

Each of the funded projects is taking a different approach to creating skill ecosystems, explains Loble: “Some are exploring ways to connect part-time and casual jobs across a whole industry so the jobs become full-time equivalent in hours, earnings and security. Others are linking training providers early and directly to other innovators, to get faster diffusion of new technology to skilled workers who can use it.”

New policy settings and new VET practices are possible, says Loble: “If we get it right, we just might have a policy and a process that will produce the mix of skills and jobs, productivity and prosperity that mark sustainable skill ecosystems.”

I recently interviewed RMIT Vice Chancellor Margaret Gardner about her ideas for VET, for my column ‘Inside VET’ in Campus Review. The interview focused on a number of ideas she raised in her recent Inaugural Speech. Following is an excerpt from the column.

What is distinctive about RMIT’s approach to vocational education?

RMIT has been involved in vocational education since 1887. That gives it a long history of engagement in the field and I think that has helped shape RMIT’s overall educational and pedagogic approach. And that is very important. One of the key features of RMIT is that across higher education and vocational education it is a university that is focused on professional and vocational education. It is focused on providing an educational experience that is engaged with industry, highly focused on application and very strongly work-integrated.

What are the origins of RMIT’s work-integrated approach?

Sometimes people have characterised our vocational and vocational education focus to be narrow.  Yet if you look at RMIT’s history and you look at its motto, which means “Skilled Hand, Cultivated Mind,” its beginnings were in this strong work-integration and professional vocational ethos. It began teaching one of the early beginnings of architecture as well as a range of what many people would think of as traditional vocational areas, but it also taught in a whole range of creative areas and in language and in music. In other words, RMIT has an understanding that a professional and vocational emphasis is not a narrow emphasis: it is about building a rounded and full educational experience and one that is very strongly work-integrated.

What are the features of your work-integrated approach?

An interesting thing about RMIT is the work-integrated focus in many of its courses. RMIT has a design-engineering paradigm which is a very heavily problem-solving emphasis. This is fundamentally a very creative approach to the world because what you are building when you say work-integrated is people’s ability to understand the problems as they appear in industry and the community and to problem solve. To do that, you actually have to have a fundamental generic skill – a set of tools to enable you to engage in effective problem solving.

What is the design-engineering paradigm?

RMIT’s design-engineering paradigm is different from the ‘why is it so?’ question: it’s a ‘how will we make it work?’ approach and I think that is what is characteristic of us. It is fundamentally a creative impulse, creative in the sense of how will we make this work, how will we approach this issue? You draw out of the practical, out of the industry, out of the applied. That has a long history in RMIT, but it is a rich history. It’s the underlying impetus about how we think about education. It’s about what are the issues and the problems in the world as we see them and how do we make things work.

Do RMIT staff support work-integrated learning?

One of the real joys about being here is that RMIT has had this rich history of work-integrated learning. When you talk to people here, whether they’re new or they’ve been here a long time, in the way that any institution that has a sense of itself will know, you can see that what has been built into the curriculum over time, built in to all sorts of assumptions, the ether, the culture, is an understanding that this is what we are about in education. I found when I came here that people were deeply committed to that work-integrated learning and deeply committed to that creative impulse. Both of those things are deep in the culture here and I think it is because they go back to where it started. Our motto is not a bad capture of that.

The full interview is set out in Campus Review, 7 Sept 2005.

There is a tension in VET between compliance and creativity, in meeting the requirements of the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF). Resolving the tension needs changes at all levels of VET, according to the final report of the High Level Review of Training Packages: at the level of government systems, at the level of training providers and at the level of the VET practitioner.

How the individual VET professional can resolve this tension was the focus of a recent series of forums on professional judgment, organised by Reframing the Future. The forums were conducted in Townsville, Newcastle, Perth and Melbourne and were attended by over 170 VET practitioners representing public and private providers from many industry areas.

A primary aim of the forums was to enable VET practitioners “to develop more confidence in making professional judgments,” says Reframing’s National Project Director Suzy McKenna.

The opening speaker at the forums, Dr Anne Jones from Box Hill Institute of TAFE, reported on her interviews with VET educators about their assessment judgements. “What I found was that assessment judgements are not always simple,” says Jones. “Individual educators and teams make judgements within a personal and an historical context and a range of problems need to be solved during the assessment process.”

Her research uncovered the difficulties that professionals traverse: “I asked participants to tell me about times when it had been difficult to make an assessment decision about a learner’s level of competence and the stories poured out,” says Jones. “The difficulties included ethical, political and personal predicaments, lack of resources and social issues.”

Jones concludes that, in successfully making professional judgments, VET practitioners are characterised by “a seriousness of purpose, an ability to deal with predicaments and an appropriate use of pragmatism.”

Jones finds that characteristics of VET professionals are as follows:

• Start with a base of vocational and educational  knowledge
• Learn more on the job, especially through specific cases
• Incorporate publicly available knowledge with their personal practice
• Use tacit knowledge to read a situation
• Reflect on practice as a basis for making hard calls
• Make sound judgments based on experiences of similar cases
• Do the best they can.

Jones was one of four speakers at the national forums, each of whom tabled ‘think pieces’ on different aspects of professional judgement. The other presenters were auditors Andrea Bateman and Dr Russell Docking and myself.

My presentation at the forums addressed the issue of professional judgement in training delivery. I put the case that VET practitioners need to make numerous judgments about teaching and learning, including how to customise and personalise training, how to analyse an individual’s learning style, how to support different learner groups, how to provide learning in a variety of workplaces and how to address the needs of both the employer and the employee.

I extend this story in my ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review, 31 August 2005.

Given the increasing trend towards a competitive training market, the VET sector needs more examples of how providers can make profits while delivering quality services. A commanding example is provided by a very unlikely candidate, the Victorian not-for-profit company training provider MEGT Ltd.

CEO David Windridge explains MEGT’s apparent split personality: “We are not-for-profit, but we are operating commercially. A term I use to describe what we are is ‘commercial not-for-profit’.”

MEGT (Australia) Ltd is a ‘not for profit’ company limited by guarantee. Established in 1982 and governed by a Board of Directors, MEGT currently has an annual turnover of over $40 million. This turnover may be boosted by MEGT’s membership of a consortium that was recently awarded an Australian technical college in east Melbourne.

Since its launch in 1982 as a Group Training Company, MEGT has grown to become an organisation offering a wide range of services. For instance, as a group trainer MEGT now employs 1,000 apprentices, while its Sydney operation provides training to 400 self-funded students. These services are delivered by 250 staff operating from 23 offices throughout Victoria, with another two offices in Sydney and Newcastle. Several weeks ago MEGT acquired Island Group Training in Tasmania, adding offices in Hobart, Launceston and Devonport.

When Windridge was appointed CEO, he believed MEGT had no option but to operate commercially. “When I joined thirteen years ago we were very focused on being not-for-profit. But there was no-one out there to help us and the only way to succeed was to do it ourselves. So we rolled up our sleeves.”

Growth strategies that RTOs like MEGT use include:

• Monitor trends and respond to new opportunities
• Build strong relationships with industry, clients, suppliers and peers
• Expect staff to add value and to improve business outcomes
• Enhance your brand, presence and visibility in the market
• Expand and refresh your existing products and services
• Remain open to unexpected or initially complex opportunities
• Balance expansion of current services with launching start-up ventures
• Merge with or acquire compatible businesses
• Form alliances and partnerships with complementary organisations.

One key to MEGT’s commercial success is the expectation of its staff. “We have a top quality staff, but organisations like ours need to have the capacity to move staff on, where they are not adding value to the organisation,” says Windridge. “Staff should enjoy working with you, and be happy at work. But they have to give something back: work shouldn’t just give them a pleasant experience.”

I develop this story further in my column ‘Inside VET’ in Campus Review, 24 August 2005.

One of the perennial quests for TAFE institutes in Australia is to find an organisational design that suits a demand-driven sector. A compelling new institute structure has just emerged which demands examination across the sector, because it challenges some long-cherished organisational designs in TAFE.

The new organisational model is all the more compelling because it is being implemented by the Large Training Provider of the Year in both 2000 and 2002, the Institute of TAFE Tasmania. This best-of-breed organisation also commands attention because, as CEO John Smyth points out, “In the NCVER report released last month, Tasmania was the only state where VET enrolments didn’t go down last year.”

While most TAFE institutes have many goals, TAFE Tasmania has just two, and the new structure is built around them. The two goals are, firstly, the provision of training that is driven by Tasmanian enterprises, and secondly, the provision of career courses aligned to Tasmania’s economic and skills development needs. John Smyth explains: “Rather than the traditional structure of a learning manager, a corporate manager, a business manager, we have two general managers, focused on each of the institute goals.” 

Features of the restructure include:

• customers, clients and the board are at the top of the organisational chart
• staff teams are in the middle of the organisational chart
• the CEO and support units are at the bottom of the chart
• some traditional layers of management are removed
• the 500 full-time teaching staff are organised into 80 enterprise-focused teams
• industry training is underpinned by research into each enterprise
• teams are empowered to negotiate directly with enterprises
• the 80 staff teams are supported by an Enterprise Development Team.

To achieve the institute’s goal of meeting the needs of enterprises, the institute abandoned the traditional faculties, department or school structures and organised the staff into numerous small teams, all with an enterprise focus. Each of the teams is a response to an identified industry need. This use of enterprise-based teams is “a thorough approach to repositioning the organisation to think about clients first,” says General Manager, Enterprise Development, Jules Carroll.

Carroll finds that identifying enterprise needs is challenging: “It takes some guts to look at the demographics, at the environment you’re servicing, and to really ask the hard questions about what’s important here, what’s going to make a difference, what’s going to support growth in this environment and how can we contribute to that.”

From this research it is apparent that attitudes within TAFE Tasmania are as follows:

• An agile enterprise provides learning opportunities that satisfy customer needs
• Foster a strong industry focus
• Make every customer contact matter
• Deliver a great learning experience
• Build a resilient business.

Compare these with the historical TAFE attitudes:

• A quality institution helps students to meet the teacher’s expectations
• Foster the institution’s reputation
• Ensure students appreciate our service
• Deliver a great teaching performance
• Build on our proud heritage.

I extended this story in my 'Inside VET' column in Campus Review, 17 August 2005.

One of the challenges to registered training organisations is to provide consistent, high quality services to enterprises that have branches across Australia. This challenge is particularly difficult for staff in long-established technical and further education (TAFE) Institutes who are only used to delivering in TAFE classrooms or campus workshops, at times and in ways that suit the trainer, rather than the enterprise client. 

This challenge confronted staff at the Geelong headquarters of the Gordon Institute of TAFE in 2000, when the Institute’s managers signed an agreement to deliver traineeships nationally to 650 Spotless Services staff. All the training was to be delivered in the many and varied workplaces of Spotless staff, not in Geelong.

Spotless is Australia’s largest provider of hospitality and domestic services, employing 35,000 people around the nation. Spotless also has a Defence Force contract to deliver all non-military services at sixteen military bases spread throughout Victoria, including services such as catering, warehousing, cleaning, laundry and housekeeping.

“The Spotless training contract marked a fundamental change in our business focus and in the way we deliver training,” says the Gordon Institute Director Martha Kinsman. “The contract signified a shift from a supply driven to demand driven approach for this 118 year old training organisation.”

The Gordon now focuses on delivering national workplace training services in the waste management and retail industries. Workplace training is delivered nationally to waste management companies such as Visy, Collex, Theiss and Cleanaway and to retail companies such as Jaycar Electronics and Bowens.

Today the Gordon maintains offices in Sydney and Brisbane with management and training staff sited locally. On any given day – weekends included – the Gordon has up to 135 trainers operating in the workplace. And there is a significant resource and administrative support network in place to ensure operational efficiency.

Tips for delivering nationally include:

• Align the training organisation’s strategic plans to fit the needs of national enterprises
• Develop relationships with enterprises that understand the business benefits of training
• Specialise in servicing enterprises from a small number of national industries
• Be client-driven in organising the training around the enterprise’s requirements
• Recruit or retrain staff who are able to deliver training in ways the industry clients prefer
• Ensure the workplace training is always high-quality, supported by customised resources.

I expand on this strategy-making story in my ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review on 10 August 2005.

Increasing the ‘voice and choice’ of VET students is the focus of a pioneering activity being conducted this year at Macquarie Fields, in Sydney’s south west. This activity is the subject of my ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review, 3 August 2005.

The Macquarie Fields TAFE College pilot is one of eight being undertaken around NSW TAFE as part of project called ‘Personalised Learning: Improving Student Outcomes’. The project is managed by the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) Centre for Learning Innovation on behalf of the NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training.

The intention of the pilots is to propose, develop, test and evaluate specific practices that would result in significant and beneficial change across the VET system.

I am evaluating the pilots for NSW DET. The evaluation involves identifying those aspects of the pilot project that provide a replicable, generalisable and sustainable model for significantly improving VET outcomes through the application of personalised learning approaches.

The personalised learning project was prompted by research in the UK. Leslie Loble, Deputy Director-General DET, says that personalised learning is what student-focused teachers do when they recognise and address the needs of individual learners. “It builds on the principles of flexible delivery and quality teaching to support individual students as they travel along their learning journeys.”

Elements of personalised learning include:

• a culture that embraces high expectations of students
• structures and technology that promote greater focus on the learner
• teaching strategies that reflect clear standards yet can be differentiated for individuals
• students taking responsibility for their own learning
• involvement of and collaboration between parties such as industry and the community
• workforce development that promotes personalised attention to students.

Currently I have completed a 22,000 word interim report on the project and will prepare a final report by mid-October 2005.

Given the current national debate about industrial relations, it is timely to explore the nature of the work required of the VET practitioner. The brief exploration below – based on my 'Inside VET' column in Campus Review on 20 July 2005 - indicates that the work required of the VET practitioner is becoming more diverse, more subtle and more complex, as the world of work changes.

A swathe of research reports in the last few years consistently shows that changes in the world of work are forcing changes in the way training is delivered in Australia. Changes in the world of work include the need for skill development that is timely, occurs in the workplace where possible and assists organisations to achieve a competitive advantage. Hence, VET practitioners need to develop new ways of working, in response to such changes in the world of work

In the NCVER publication ‘The vocational education and training workforce. New roles and ways of working. At a glance’ (2004), Guthrie notes that reforms in VET over the past ten years have had a significant effect on the work of its staff. VET staff now operate in more competitive markets and face increased demands from their various clients for higher quality and more relevant programs. Understanding and keeping up with these changes and working in new and more flexible ways are major challenges for the VET workforce.

To meet the demand for customised workplace training, Mitchell, Clayton, Hedberg and Paine in ‘Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET’ (2003) found that one result of the industry-led national training system is that detailed and customised workplace training demands on VET are potentially as varied as there are enterprises in Australia. This is bringing about new and intensified professional, technical and educational roles for VET practitioners especially at the frontline, and particularly for teachers, workplace trainers and assessors, workplace mentors and supervisors.
 
In response to the increased number of settings where VET practitioners need to provide training services, Chappell, Hawke, Rhodes and Solomon (2003), in the Phase 1 report for the High-level Review of Training Packages project, suggest that VET is increasingly reliant on highly skilled VET professionals with a raft of new skills. They find that VET must rely more than ever on learning specialists who have an appreciation of the full pedagogical choices that are open to them and which are consistent with the context, clients and learning sites in which they work.

According to Chappell et al. ( 2003), new skills of VET practitioners include:

• have and choose from a sophisticated pedagogical repertoire
• use more learner-centred, work-centred and attribute-focused approaches
• eschew traditional transmission pedagogies
• can work with multiple clients, in multiple contexts and across multiple learning sites
• assist in the integration of learning and work in the contemporary work environment.

Dickie, Eccles, FitzGerald and McDonald in ‘Enhancing the Capability of VET Professionals Project: Final Report’ (2004) describe the environment in which VET professionals will work in the future. It will be an environment characterised by increasing diversity in the client base; increasing sophistication in client expectations; change in products and expansion of options for training delivery; changes in employment, work roles, team structures and places of work; increasing competition and increasing demand; and globalisation of the training market.

Simply put, to meet the demand for customised industry training, VET practitioners need to perform new and multiple roles and to develop a repertoire of pedagogical approaches. Numerous descriptions of VET practitioners performing different roles and developing fresh approaches to their profession are provided in a report recently released by Reframing the Future that I co-authored with McKenna, Perry and Bald, called ‘New ways of working in VET’ (2005). This article is based on the new report.

‘New ways of working in VET’ is available from http://reframingthefuture.net

Can VET providers do it all? I am constantly asking VET senior managers whether their organisations can continue to do everything: that is, to find the raw materials, to manufacture products, and then to market, sell, deliver and support those products. In VET terms, these activities roughly equate to preparing learning materials, and marketing, delivering and supporting training programs.

In other industries, it is becoming increasingly common for organisations to outsource some of their functions, particularly by forming relationships with multiple suppliers. For instance, retailers like Myers source their clothes from a raft of clothing manufacturers and the major banks in Australia commonly use mortgage brokers to find new borrowers. But in VET, many providers are used to doing everything and are finding it hard to relinquish some traditional functions.

I find that many VET providers are reluctant to outsource the preparation of learning materials and the delivery of training. Preparing learning materials is, for some, sacrosanct: it is the purest activity an educator can undertake. For others, it is impossible to contemplate delegating to outsiders the delivery of training.

These long-held attitudes are coming under intense pressure in contemporary VET from two unrelenting new forces. First, the emergence of a demand-driven VET sector means that providers are being asked to cater for the training needs of each and every enterprise, and Australia consists of literally millions of enterprises. Second, the emergence in Australian society of a consumer attitude that services need to be shaped ‘just for me’ and made available when I want them is now being applied to VET.

The truth is that VET providers can’t meet these rising demands on their own, so they need to develop innovative strategies to continue to satisfy their customers while constantly refreshing their product line and maintaining quality. One strategy is to stop providing some services: that is, to reduce the product line. And another strategy is to outsource some existing functions.

Some guidelines for outsourcing are:

• Determine those functions that can be outsourced
• Assess the costs, benefits and risks of outsourcing those functions
• Identify suppliers who are reliable and expert in providing the functions
• Develop quality control mechanisms to monitor the suppliers
• Require the suppliers to regularly refresh their services and products
• Actively manage the supplier relationships in a collaborative manner.

I extend these ideas and provide an example of a niche supplier to whom registered training providers outsource in my regular ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review on 27 July 2005.

I have just prepared with three colleagues a publication called “Critical Issues. A draft literature review on critical issues in teaching, learning and assessment in vocational education and training, version 26 June 2005”. My fellow researchers are Clive Chappell, Andrea Bateman and Susan Roy.

The draft literature review was developed by the above researchers as part of the Consortium Research Program: ‘Supporting vocational education and training providers in building capability for the future’. This program is funded by the Australian, state and territory governments through the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) and managed by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). The draft will be finalised in November 2005.

The purpose of this literature review is to highlight recent thinking and research at the national and international level that can inform the development of teaching, learning and assessment practices in the VET sector. The review may encourage VET practitioners to develop enhanced services to meet the increasingly varied demands of individuals, employers and industry. The review may also encourage VET organisations and systems to identify resources required to support the provision of these new services.

The review begins by indicating what the literature is saying about the environmental factors that are driving the changes and creating challenges in VET teaching, learning and assessment.
Although there is broad agreement in the literature concerning the drivers of change in vocational education, there are diverse suggestions regarding appropriate responses. In order to make sense of the diversity of suggested responses provided in the literature, this review poses a number of questions. The questions are:

1. What do individual learners and industry clients want from VET in terms of teaching and learning experiences, and services and support, and how can these best be met?
2. What skills are needed by VET practitioners in the design of learning programs and resources and in the provision of assessment services to meet the needs of different client groups, and how might these be developed most effectively?
3. What are the critical success factors – individual, organisational and systemic – for VET providers in developing and implementing innovative approaches to teaching, learning and assessment, and how might models about good practice be most effectively transmitted?

The full review is available at http://consortiumresearchprogram.net.au/html/

Please send any comments to Principal Researcher. Dr John Mitchell johnm@jma.com.au and/or join the online forum at http://consortiumresearchprogram.net.au/forums/index.php#2

Recently I interviewed the outgoing boss of TAFE NSW, Robin Shreeve, on the eve of his departure to London. The full interview appeared in my 'Inside VET' column in Campus Review on 22 June 2005.

His hopes for the future of TAFE were as follows:

• TAFE will remain the people’s provider, accessible and convenient
• TAFE will be the provider of skills for life
• TAFE will continue to be committed to quality and continuous improvement
• TAFE will stay customer-focused and improve its marketing
• TAFE will focus even more on teaching, learning and practitioners’ judgment.

His concerns were:

• The Federal VET Minister’s confrontationist style
• ACCI’s industrial relations agenda dominating VET
• TAFE Institutes wrongly seen as technical high schools or watered down universities
• A plethora of small providers dependent on Government funding
• TAFE becoming a ‘residualised’ system, providing where others won’t or can’t.

In a wide-ranging but insightful interview, some of his other comments included:

• The VET agenda seems to be dominated by discussion of industrial arrangements within the system. It seems to be one of the main reasons for the reform agenda, which is certainly an Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) view.
• I’m not denying we don’t need to have a look at workplace reform but we should be doing it in a consultative way rather than a confrontationist way. My successor will have to deal with an aggressive mono-policy view from the Federal Government which is pretty confrontational.
• I constantly find, especially in the VET sector, many people misunderstand what business we’re in and we’ve still got issues communicating to the world the business we’re in. Many people think we’re either technical high schools or watered down universities and we’re neither. The whole notion that TAFE is the post-compulsory provider for people who cannot get into university is not the conceptualisation I want.
• We want TAFE to be the Marks and Spencers, the provider who provides everything but is renowned for quality. TAFE is the mass provider, but we’re not a rite of passage organisation, we’re a provider of skills throughout life. Half the taxi drivers out the front are doing TAFE programs to get the next job. That’s critical and that’s where I get the excitement of taking the sector forward. TAFE is the provider of skills for life and the people’s provider in terms of being the mass provider.
• For the first time ever I can see a scenario where TAFE could end up as a ‘residualised’ system and I don’t think (Federal Minister) Gary Hardgrave or ACCI or anyone else wants that, but that could be an unforeseen consequence of an industrial relations driven agenda, and I think that’s the great danger.
• I think the British define quality in terms of educational quality which is rooted around making judgments about classroom or workshop practice. We (Australia) don’t do enough of that, but I don’t think that either in the UK or in Australia we’ve got the balance right: I don’t think we do enough observing of teaching practice and maybe they do too much.

One Australian industry that needs to withstand intense global competition is the food manufacturing industry. However, in attempting to provide world-class products, food manufacturers face challenges such as maintaining a high quality level and overcoming the shortage of skilled staff during peak seasonal periods.

New ways to address the demanding training needs of food manufacturers have been developed by the Innoven Food Industry Centre within the Goulburn Ovens Institute of TAFE in northern Victoria. Innoven’s Manager for Manufacturing, Sandy Powell, explains: “If training is not going to get performance benefits for a manufacturer, then they simply won’t do it. So Innoven’s not interested in delivering training unless we’ve identified how it’s going to help the manufacturer.”

Innoven’s focus on client performance is part of a broader Victorian Government plan to keep Victorian industries competitive internationally and to build the workforce’s knowledge and skills. Innoven is one of eighteen TAFE specialist centres established with seed funding from the Victorian Government that are helping to build Victorian TAFE’s capability to meet the skill needs of industry.

Innoven’s new approach to training has netted it partnerships with some of Australia’s biggest players in the food industry such as Nestle, Kraft, SPC Ardmona and Tatura Milk Industries.

Innoven’s Powell sees the new TAFE approach as a business-to-business relationship: “While business managers recognise TAFE as a provider to the community for training, we also want managers to see TAFE as a provider of services to industry beyond traditional training, by jointly working to deliver measurable performance outcomes,” says Powell.

“We find that industry will invest in training and pay fee-for-service if we get the relationship right and value add continuously,” says Powell. “Industry is happy to invest in training that has a measurable return on investment.”

The traditional model for industry training is provider-centric, characterised by the following actions:

• Advertise the attributes of the training organisation
• Promote the availability of accredited training
• Deliver ‘one size fits all’ training in the classroom
• Produce graduates who may or may not be able to improve their enterprise.

In contrast, Innoven’s model is enterprise-centric and learner-centric and includes these steps:

• Research the industry and each individual enterprise
• Establish and maintain relationships with enterprise managers
• Determine each enterprise’s needs and issues
• Identify individual learner’s needs within each enterprise
• Provide teaching and assessment in the workplace
• Assist individual workers to obtain relevant accredited qualifications
• Deliver a business improvement for the enterprise.

Not surprisingly, around 95% of Innoven’s training is on-the-job learning, not traditional full-time training at the TAFE Institute. One of Innoven’s trainers is “embedded” within Nestle, delivering training at Nestle’s premises in Sydney and in Melbourne.

I develop this case study further in my column ‘Inside VET’ in Campus Review, in the issue dated 1 June 2005.

On 14 April 2005 I delivered a paper on ‘Effective VET networking with industry in the marketplace’ at the eighth Australian VET Research Association (AVETRA) Conference in Brisbane. Following are some excerpts.

Abstract

Increasingly, the VET marketplace requires vocational education and training (VET) practitioners to network with industry representatives. ‘Networking with industry’ is a new catch-cry within VET, but more research is needed to understand the complexities and benefits of such networking. This paper is based on research conducted over two years, 2003-2004, of forty networks funded by Reframing the Future. The paper builds on a report entitled Building Industry Training Networks (Mitchell 2004), and shows that networks are complex and can be difficult to manage, as participants’ needs and ambitions can constantly change. To be sustained, networks also need to continuously provide value for all members. The paper provides the VET sector with guidelines of how to effectively build networks that impact positively on the individuals and organisations involved and that enhance VET’s achievements in the marketplace.

Summary points

A summary of the key findings is provided below and a fuller description is provided in Mitchell (2004).

• The trust, goodwill, innovation and collaboration in industry training networks can support the national training system
• The need for industry training networks is increasing, as VET organisations become more aware of their dependency on relationships
• Open or loosely structured networks suit the diverse and dispersed membership of many industry training networks
• Building industry training networks is made challenging by factors such as inexperience in networking and the limited resources of small business to participate
• A deep knowledge of VET and high-level facilitation skills help industry training networks function effectively
• Efficient information sharing processes help industry training networks function effectively
• Industry training networks generate new knowledge about practices and possibilities in the national training system
• Individuals, organisations and systems benefit from industry training networks
• The achievements of the 200-2004 industry training networks are impressive given the complexities faced.

Conclusions

This research indicates that it is possible to effectively build and manage industry training networks in VET. The stories of human, organisational and systemic collaboration set out in Mitchell (2004) provide hope for the positive future development of the VET sector. Further encouragement is provided by additional accounts of the 2004 networks set out in Mitchell, McKenna, Perry and Bald (2005; in draft).

To sustain the achievements of the 2003-2004 networks, continued effort is required by the members of each network. All the networks will need to keep revitalising themselves, as members’ goals and ambitions change and external conditions shift. Effective networks are like every other type of healthy relationship in that they need continual care and attention. Ford et al (2003) caution that networks can easily become burdens and liabilities, if not managed effectively.

References

Ford, D., Gadde, L-E, Hakansson, H. & Snehota, I. (2003), Managing Business Relationships, Second Edition, Wiley,  West Sussex
Mitchell, J.G. (2004), Building Industry Training Networks, ANTA, Melbourne
Mitchell, J.G., McKenna, S., Perry, W. & Bald, C. (2005), New Ways of Working in VET, ANTA, Melbourne (in draft)

For a copy of the paper email me at johnm@jma.com.au

The creation of a one-stop-shop, primarily for the distribution of training packages and related materials, is one of the changes to the VET system proposed by DEST’s Skilling Australia and supported by the subsequent consultations. I investigate issues related to this shop in my ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review on 18 May 2005.

A national VET expert in learning materials believes that a shop that sells products is too narrowly focused: the shop needs to embrace the online trading of learning materials by teachers and trainers across the sector. “Simply selling a training package or related materials is a no-brainer. VET has a golden opportunity to revolutionise teaching in Australia, by embedding the new practice of online trading of learning materials,” says Dennis Macnamara, Business Development Manager for AEShareNet.

AEShareNet is one of the success stories of VET in the age of e-education, quietly constructing an effective online database of over 20,000 learning materials that can be bought and re-used by teachers and trainers. Macnamara advocates that AEShareNet’s “new-age practice” of trading learning materials should be fully endorsed and utilised in the proposed new VET one-stop shop.

The value of trading learning materials is potentially huge in the multi-billion dollar VET sector, says Macnamara. “At the recent AVETRA conference in Brisbane, an ANTA paper suggested that VET is an $8 billion business per anum in Australia,” says Macnamara.

“Let’s put that figure of $8 billion pa together with the fact that the standard VET teacher spends 20-30% of weekly time on lesson preparation or preparing assessment materials,” says Macnamara, “and you start to see that the development of learning materials consumes many hundreds of millions of dollars every year in VET.”

Twenty years ago a TAFE teacher needed expertise in using an overhead projector and operating a video recorder. Ten years ago the same teacher needed expertise in preparing PowerPoint slides. Five years ago the teacher needed expertise in receiving and sending emails and pointing students to useful websites.

“Today – in the age of customisation and just-for-you services – the teacher needs skills in producing learning materials and assessment tools to suit each and every learner, but can’t keep up,” says Macnamara.

There are two extreme models for developing learning materials. The old model is as follows:

• teacher/trainer hopes that uniform learning materials will suit groups of learners
• teacher develops own learning materials from scratch
• teacher unaware of who else has developed similar materials
• teacher doesn’t know how to buy and sell learning materials.

A new model for developing learning materials is:

• teacher analyses the learning preferences of each learner
• teacher decides what learning materials are to be built and what need to be bought
• teacher accesses online database to identify available learning materials
• teacher pays a modest license fee to use and modify available materials
• teacher decides which learning materials built in-house will be traded.

“There is a lot of reinventing of the wheel going on out there. Practitioners often don’t realise what learning materials already exist and how to get hold of them and legally adapt them,” says Macnamara. On the other hand, Macnamara’s research shows that “practitioners will remix stuff if we make it easy for them to do so”.

The solution is straightforward, says Macnamara: “Practitioners need to assess what resources are available for trading and to take out a licence that allows them to use, and if necessary adapt, the resources to their particular students’ needs. This trading gets materials into learners’ hands quicker."

There is increasing pressure on VET providers to find ways to link more closely with industry, to plan and deliver customised training. One my ongoing research interests is to identify different ways these links can be formed.

Forming such links is all the more challenging for large TAFE systems conducted by States or Territories. These systems are historically structured around a retail model of training delivery, where industry is expected to come to the TAFE campus and buy the training solutions that are sitting on the shelves.

These systems find it hard to change their supply-driven model, because the model is based upon historical factors such as the availability of campus facilities that are expensive and long-standing, industrial conditions such as the number of hours staff spend teaching in classrooms and records management such as counting the number of hours students spend in classrooms.

It is even more challenging for TAFE systems to form links with industry where industry is using new technology, because the TAFE providers need to design and deliver training in new fields.

This issue of TAFE-industry links in areas of new technology is the focus of my column ‘Inside VET’ in Campus Review, 13 April 2005. The column profiles an initiative by the Victorian Government, in funding specialist centres within Victorian TAFE Institutes.  The specialist centres established by the Victorian Government over the past two years support industries such as food processing, transport logistics, motor sports, engineering, printing, biotechnology, manufacturing and hospitality.

One of the nineteen centres established by the Victorian Government is Swinburne University of Technology’s TAFE Centre for New Manufacturing (CNM). The Swinburne Centre was established to collaborate with businesses in the manufacturing technology industry, focusing on new and cutting-edge technologies such as nano-technology, micro-technology and computer aided engineering.

Swinburne’s Centre has now developed alliances with over ten engineering companies including DMG, Festo, Headland Machinery and Marand Precison Engineering. This collaboration has resulted in a high standard of equipment being made available within the Swinburne workshop, enabling students to be trained in the use of the latest technology.

Recent examples of initiatives taken by the Swinburne Centre’s in linking with industry include:

• conducted training needs analysis with Precision Engineering and developed a course for laser operators
• conducted training needs analysis with an industry partner in advanced manufacturing control systems and manufacturing OH&S
• developed courses for company-specific needs: for example, Asi Field Bus Network donated $10,000 for the development of a customised course
• partnered Marand Precision Engineering, MiniFAB and Unidrive to host teachers in industry on release programs
• assisted a research company to develop a sophisticated wire cutting device.

I and others will continue to monitor whether the TAFE Victorian specialist centres, either in their original format or in modified formats, are effective long-term structures for TAFE-industry linkages. The Swinburne model is encouraging.

Australia’s manufacturing industries contribute over 10% of Australia’s GDP but are subject to intense global pressures, especially from countries with lower wage levels.

The urgent training needs of these industries were the subject of my column Inside VET in Campus Review, published 23 March 2005.

Bob Paton, CEO of the newly formed national Manufacturing Industry Skills Council, describes these pressures: “Manufacturing industries have certainly been the backbone for both domestic and export markets in Australia (but) many of them have been challenged in the last thirty or forty years by global markets and more significantly and more recently by the tightening up of subsidies and tariff regimes, to the point now where many manufacturing industries are competing without any tariff protection or without any favour from government.”

In addition, there are critical skills shortages for trade-based positions including cabinetmakers, electricians, furniture upholsterers, metal fabricators, metal fitters, metal machinists, refrigeration and air conditioning mechanics, sheetmetal workers, toolmakers and welders.

Features of manufacturing industries that contribute to skills shortages include:

• decreasing supply of available young people
• above-average age of employees
• inaccurate perceptions of manufacturing as a career option
• increased choice of career options for all ages
• increased labour mobility
• need for reconfiguration of training opportunities.

The newly formed Skills Council – Manufacturing Skills Australia – is the voice of over 75,000 businesses employing almost one million Australians, and co-ordinates research on manufacturing skills needs. The Council’s activities help the key Australian manufacturing sectors of metals and aerospace, process manufacturing, and textiles, clothing and footwear and furnishing to continue to play a pivotal role in the national economy. These sectors are determined to work smarter, says Paton: “In the last five-ten years there has been a strong focus on working smartly and finding the clever niches that Australian manufacturing can serve. We’re trying to compete with very cheap labour markets from overseas.”

A major response by the Council to the challenges of the global marketplace is the promotion of the new Competitive Manufacturing training package which covers ‘manufacturing practice’ and includes system management skills used at all levels in manufacturing, culminating in the skills needed by people such as manufacturing team leaders and operations managers.

The new training package typifies the Council’s whole-of-industry perspective, says Paton. “We will have a stronger focus on a more of whole-of-manufacturing approach to things and the competitive manufacturing initiative …is really coming home for us now, where we’ve got a range of new qualifications and competencies for people that are applying manufacturing practices across manufacturing, irrespective of the sector.”

The concentration on structural issues in the recent DEST discussion paper, Skilling Australia, contrasts with the passion of the Secretary of DEST, Lisa Paul, for relationship building - including with teachers - in the VET sector.

I interviewed Lisa Paul recently for my column 'Inside VET', in Campus Review. Following is an excerpt from the column published on 9 March 2005.

Keys to success

Paul acknowledges that the discussion paper does not address cultural issues such as the values and beliefs of participants in the sector: “I think it certainly is true the focus of this paper is on the mechanisms and arrangements for the national training system, so the purpose of this paper was not to spell out DEST’s view of culture for VET.”

However, Paul is aware that hopes and values play a critical role in the sector: “We recognize how vitally important cultural issues and the hopes and values that everyone in the sector shares are to the continuing success of the sector. I know we all share the same values in wanting the best possible VET sector for Australia and I’d like to think like everyone else involved that we have a world-leading, a world-beating national training system, so that the cultural issues and the values we hold and the quality of the teaching in the system are actually the keys to its success.”

Ways DEST proposes to engage with providers will include:

• Continuing ANTA’s FAST FACTS newsletter
• Maintaining the annual ANTA Awards
• Adding the Award category of ‘Practitioner of the Year’
• Providing a new national VET quality agency
• Simplifying the VET system for practitioners and students
• Valuing teaching and teachers’ responsiveness to industry
• Acknowledging providers’ rights to table their views.

The best teachers cater for the needs of each student, and will be supported by the new structures, says Paul: “We know that the best teachers are those who are able to respond to every one of their students in a unique and positive way. We hope that the flexibilities that are built in to the arrangements that we spell out in this discussion paper will support the wonderful range of teachers in the VET system, to be their best.”

Core values

Paul appreciates that the 'High Level Review of Training Packages' project concluded a year ago with an emphasis on a settlement between differing parties within the sector and a commitment to shared values: “I thought the word that was used in the Review of Training Packages, settlement, to be a powerful word. It was a powerful word because right across the country in the VET sector we need to share a set of values about the core features of our national training system and those core features do go to competencies and quality and quality teaching and responsiveness to industry and a range of other core values.”

The new order for VET is dependent upon quality, values and culture: “I can say certainly that the arrangements we spell out in the discussion paper can only succeed if the quality of teaching and the core values and … shared culture in the training system continues to be strong and positive and I am sure it will.”

Paul is determined to engage with providers, declaring “We are committing to the full range of ways that ANTA has engaged with providers.” She cites some practical examples of this commitment: “For example, the ANTA Fast Facts, which the sector regards highly, we will continue. We will continue the Student Satisfaction Survey. And also it is worth pointing out that if a new national VET quality agency is set up that is a terrific way for providers to have their interests addressed.”

Can TAFE adapt quickly to critical skills shortages and changing industry demands? According to the head of the largest TAFE department in Australia, Robin Shreeve, the answer is yes, but the public provider can also improve its performance.

Recently I interviewed Robin Shreeve, the deputy director general (TAFE and Community Education) NSW DET, for my column 'Inside VET', in Campus Review. Following is an excerpt from the column, published on 2 March 2005.

Learning from overseas

In search of improvements, Robin Shreeve recently acted as a guest inspector of a Further Education College in England. There were number of aspects of the quality inspection that were noteworthy for hime: “Number one, the term learner to describe all students, number two the inspectors viewed everything from the learners’ perspective, that is, how well is this college achieving for learners, which is very impressive.”

Shreeve was also impressed with the way the inspection was conducted: “It was very rigorous and it was quite tough on the college and it was certainly resource intensive. I think there were fifteen inspectors in a college far smaller than each one of our Institutes and then all the results were published on the web.” While committed to quality improvement, Shreeve is not convinced of the cost benefits of fifteen inspectors participating for a whole week: “I feel that is a bit over the top, but on the other hand I believe our (quality) arrangements need to be tightened up as many reports have shown in Australia.”

The English experience also reminded Shreeve that “what we’re on about (in VET) is learners”.  He continues: “Something I’d like to import from the UK is the term ‘learner’. I don’t think we should call our learners clients, customers or students.”

Three learner issues

Championing the cause of learners, Shreeve cites three learner-related issues of strong interest to TAFE NSW: graded assessment, learners’ capability and tacit knowledge. First, Shreeve supports graded assessment: “TAFE NSW has always been interested in graded assessment in a competency based framework and we think you can do that, and we think it is important for a variety of reasons. Students and employers like it and demand it and it would make articulation with the university sector so much easier”.

Second, Shreeve likes the new emphasis on learners’ capability: “There is a lot of rhetoric about this at the moment but I really think it hits the mark – people are talking about moving from competence to capability”. Shreeve believes that TAFE NSW, as a VET provider, needs “to be about competence but we also need to be about capability. And to a certain extent this is the old generic/specific skills debate in new terms, but that’s fine if it gets it on the agenda in a new and exciting way”.

Third, Shreeve sees VET helping the learner to integrate explicit and tacit knowledge. Learning in VET is about both “codified and tacit knowledge”. Traditionally, says Shreeve, VET was about “knowing how”, but now learning is about “knowing what, knowing why, knowing how and knowing who”.

One of Shreeve’s hopes for the future is that more time could be allocated to counseling students at the point of enrolment: “One of the things that I find disappointing is that we don’t formally interview every student who seeks to enrol, not because we want to select them, but I just think we could counsel them to make sure they get into the right program.”

Engaging with staff about learning

Another of Shreeve’s passions is engaging with staff about learning: “We are an education and training institution so I am a great believer that we engage staff by talking about teaching and learning.” Shreeve wonders whether TAFE NSW has fully exploited the value of national projects that focus on these topics: “I sometimes worry we haven’t exploited in NSW some of the national projects. I think Reframing the Future and LearnScope have been really good projects because they have been talking about cultural change and they have also been talking about teaching and learning.”

Shreeve is clear that the primary purpose of TAFE as the mass, public provider is to assist learners: “In the debate about whether the function of education and training is skills formation to create human capital or a screening process to get people into good jobs, we buy the human capital argument. And really what TAFE is about is human capital and equity of access to human capital formation: that’s what we are about and that’s critical.”

Despite the international importance of the tourism and hospitality industry, there is a worldwide shortage of qualified and experienced staff. France urgently needs 30,000 cooks and waiters and Switzerland is facing “insurmountable problems” with a shortage of cooks that is “threatening the security of many hotels and restaurants”, according to Derrick Casey, Associate Director TAFE SA Adelaide North Institute, Regency campus. Australia has similar problems, says Casey.

Two common Australian responses to these problems are to train more young people entering the industry or to import qualified staff from overseas. Neither of these strategies has met the more urgent need of addressing the shortage of experienced staff. “There is a shortage of experienced chefs capable of holding a middle to senior kitchen management position, not of new trainees or graduates,” stresses Casey.

Significant numbers of experienced chefs are leaving the industry.  “While we appear to be training sufficient young cooks, we are not retaining them in the industry for long enough to ensure we have a reasonable pool of well experienced chefs or kitchen managers. 50% are lost prior to completion of their apprenticeship. A further 40% are lost within the first 8 years of their career, growing to an estimated 65% within 10 years,” says Casey.

With the support of key industry bodies and leaders, Casey is spearheading an innovative response to this skills shortage. The key strategy is the provision of long-term and structured training for young chefs promoted to the level of kitchen manager or above, as part of a “Young Leaders’ Program”.

Other strategies include changing the way funding is expended on each individual’s training, to better match the learner’s specific needs; the use of an electronic training plan for each learner to monitor individual progress; and the appointment of case managers to design a training plan for each chef.

Casey is confident that these multiple interventions will help retain more experienced staff in this critical industry for the South Australian and Australian economies.

I develop this story further in my Inside VET column in Campus Review - issue of 23 February 2005.

In 2005 I am the lead researcher of a national project called 'Analysing critical issues in teaching, learning and assessment' in VET. This is one of nine projects being undertaken by our consortium on behalf of the NCVER from 2005-2006. The focus of the research program is an examination of 'Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) of the Future'. My fellow researchers in the project on teaching and learning are A/Prof Clive Chappell, Andrea Bateman and Sue Roy.

Introduction

This is the consortium’s major project on teaching, assessment and learning – the core business of providers. The project acknowledges the challenges for VET practice identified by recent projects such as the Enhancing the capability project and the High Level Review of Training Packages project and the challenges reported in other recent research on VET pedagogy, both in Australia and internationally.

The purpose of the project is to identify critical issues in teaching, learning and assessment, in order to inform and influence VET practice. The project will examine learners’ preferences for how they approach their own learning and the implications for teaching practice. The project also will identify examples of good practice and the factors that help and hinder innovation in teaching, assessment and learning.

The research activity will:

• Identify what individual learners and industry clients want from VET in terms of teaching and learning experiences, services and support, and propose how these can best be met.
• Identify the skills needed by VET practitioners in the design of learning programs and resources and in the provision of assessment services to meet the needs of different client groups and propose how these skills might be developed most effectively.
• Summarise the critical success factors – individual, organisational and systemic – in developing and implementing innovative approaches to teaching, learning and assessment in VET providers, and propose how models about good practice might be most effectively transmitted.

Products

• Literature review that examines international and Australian trends in teaching and learning policy and practice
• Discussion paper as the basis for four focus groups
• Commentary on developments in England and Scotland in teaching, learning and assessment
• Description of major VET networks and how they contribute to building and promoting good practice in teaching, learning and assessment
• Fifteen case studies from Australian VET that demonstrate good practice in teaching, learning and assessment
• Two mini-conferences
• Final research report that summarises the findings of the research.

Benefits

VET practitioners will benefit from this research by:

• Finding out about the latest thinking around learners’ preferences, teaching practices and assessment strategies
• Increasing their awareness of the existence and value of networks in VET that focus on teaching, learning and assessment
• Comparing their own experiences with those recorded in the fifteen case studies
• Understanding factors that affect innovation in teaching, learning and assessment.

Simple ideas are often underpinned by sophisticated principles. This statement applies to a staff development initiative that commenced in 2004 at one of Australia’s high profile RTOs, TAFE NSW Northern Sydney Institute (NSI). The simple idea was to design, promote and conduct professional conversations among teaching staff.

Margaret Dix, the Institute’s R/Manager, Staff Learning and Development, explains the strategic need which led to the series of conversations: “Our Head Teachers expressed the opinion that there was a need for a greater emphasis on quality teaching and learning. Teacher’s practices needed to change and they particularly needed to embrace student-centred learning. But teachers were so busy actually doing their jobs there wasn’t time for learning how to do it better.”

Dix was also aware that teachers wanted to change, but lacked the time: “Practitioners have continually lamented that the quantity of planning and doing means that there is little time for them to check and act. There is little time to complete Kolb's experiential learning cycle by being what Schon calls a reflective practitioner,” she explains.

Having identified the willingness for change, Dix set out to find a strategy that would “allow teachers the time and space to talk to each other and to share their stories and practice across the Institute.”

With change agency funding from Reframing the Future and support from her Unit, Dix invented and implemented a strategy she called a “conversation space”, where members of the Unit regularly facilitate structured professional conversations at lunch time, around the Institute’s campuses. “The sparks that we use to encourage the conversation focus the conversation around topics that are current and sometimes challenging for VET delivery and assessment,” she says.

The conversations range over subjects such as holistic assessment, key competencies, the competitive VET market, funding, new qualifications and adult learning theory. 

There are immediate benefits, says Dix:  “Teachers feel energized. A conversation space introduces teachers to their peers and creates a network for sharing. It is reflective. It is based on goodwill. It enables teachers to review their practice about what they are doing and what they might do.”

Research and NSI’s experience shows that structured, professional conversations enable practitioners to:

• collaborate, reflect and clarify
• analyse challenges and identify solutions
• share successes and examine lessons learnt
• create the conditions for change and transform practice.

I extend this story in my Inside VET column in Campus Review, 16 February 2005.

One industry clearly affected by global change is the broadcast industry and organisations such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) are experiencing massive challenges. Jenny Ferber, Head of ABC Learning, says areas that are expected to experience the most change include media technologies, government requirements and audience expectations. “In response, we are quickly embracing digital technology and learning to use new tools to produce content for the new audiences which are coming through digital TV, the broadband internet and other platforms,” says Ferber.

Ferber believes that, in order to ensure its future, the ABC “needs to develop the capability to continually reinvent itself as a leading media presence.” This capability, she says, includes building a flexible and talented workforce, keeping up to date with new technologies and acquiring the skills to develop, deliver and broadcast leading-edge programs.

The ABC is a RTO, able to deliver fourteen different VET qualifications. Ferber considers that there is potential for an ongoing role for VET qualifications within the ABC, as the regularly needs new staff, many of whom arrive with university degrees, to develop technical skills. “We need the skills of knowledge workers combined with high-end technical skills. For instance, we might employ as a presenter someone with a PhD in agriculture, but the person needs to know how to conduct an on-air interview and operate  a control panel,” she says.

Ferber considers that the ABC and the VET system face similar challenges: “This need to identify competencies that capture soft skills, knowledge and attitudes and the need to allow for rapid change and flexibility are also the challenges that will be faced throughout the VET system over the next few years,” she says.

This story has many dimensions: for example, accommodating a national qualifications system within a progressive enterprise; and managing learning and workforce development within an enterprise affected by mammoth change. I expand on this story in my column in Campus Review, published 26 January 2005.

Providers of training packages sometimes focus exclusively on the individual learner’s development of new competencies, however new models are emerging in VET for how providers can also align training packages with the achievement of business goals.

The twin goals of assisting skill development and meeting the business needs of industry are contained in the official but awkward definition of training packages: “Training packages are an integrated set of nationally endorsed standards, guidelines and qualifications for training, assessing and recognising people’s skills developed by industry to meet the training needs of an industry or group of industries.” While these twin goals are officially promoted, in practice the emphasis is usually placed on supporting the individual’s skill development, with fingers crossed that business benefits will emerge later.

Consciously using training packages to achieve business outcomes is a focus of a major Australian company, Boral Australian Construction Materials – a registered training organisation (RTO) for the last eight years. I profile Boral's approach in my weekly column in Campus Review (edition 19 Jan 2005).

Boral offers its staff around Australia the chance to access twenty six qualifications from eight different training packages. With two hundred workplace trainers and assessors in place, in 2004 Boral’s national training managers decided to improve workplace training and assessment through customising the competencies described in training packages. The training managers also decided to improve the alignment of training packages with both the needs of individual staff members and with Boral’s business needs. In my column I explore some examples of how Boral training managers approached these tasks.

The Boral training model includes these ingredients:

• Goal: to have highly skilled people to assist Boral’s strong performance in the global economy.
• Method: develop connections between national competency standards, workplace outcomes, performance benchmarks, business key performance indicators (KPIs) and improvements in the capabilities of front-line employees.

Ultimately, Boral provides the VET sector with a model for linking training packages with both individual skill development and business benefits.

Training organisations in Australian vocational education and training (VET) are under increasing pressure to become more agile and customer-focused, to meet the growing demands of industry.

A conventional response to such pressure on staff in RTOs is to provide professional development through one-off workshops. But the use of workshops as the primary strategy for professional development is no longer acceptable to some RTOs, especially in those RTOs where staff are distributed over very large distances.

As a result, coaching, rather than frequent workshops, is now a standard methodology for professional development within one TAFE Institute I profile in a coming article in Campus Review (edition 12 Jan 2004).

Over the last six months this Institute provided professional development for sixty of its line managers in the skills of coaching. For this Institute, coaching includes the following elements:

• involves the development of a trusting, structured relationship
• aims to facilitate learning and to foster and support change
• includes negotiated expectations and agreements
• respects the client’s self-determination
• requires coaches to have or to acquire specific competencies.

To ensure coaching is placed on a sound footing within the Institute, staff developed a range of documented tools including an explanation of coaching, a coaching agreement, a checklist of core competencies for coaches and a self-evaluation questionnaire for those to be coached.

Here’s my roundabout Christmas message.

Currently I am preparing newspaper articles on the following aspects of vocational education and training (VET):

• the innovative use of coaching to assist complex staff development needs in a geographically distributed registered training organisation (RTO);
• the insights of a VET thought-leader who heads up the training division of a large organisation that is bearing the brunt of global technology changes;
• the subtle skills of a VET HR manager in the use of professional conversations;
• the determination of a middle-level manager in an RTO, in championing nationally the cause of language, literacy and numeracy.

I will attempt in these articles to reflect the values, energy, skills and knowledge of some very different VET practitioners.

These inspired VET practitioners deserve public recognition and respect, as they are a key to the future vitality of the VET system. While we need policies and structures, buildings and equipment, the most valuable asset in the VET system is the group of practitioners who inhabit it. Let’s particularly celebrate the leadership provided by those outstanding VET practitioners, like the four I am writing about, who demonstrate what is possible.

Today I spent four hours in conversation with a good friend visiting from the UK who is the head of staff development in a very large international organisation. I had the pleasure of recently undertaking an assignment for his organisation in London, so I was keen for an update.

What struck me about this conversation was its similarity with a conversation I had yesterday with a Melbourne-based Australian in a similar role to him – a conversation which I summarized in my last weblog. This similarity indicates a number of things:

• that industries are becoming increasingly similar around the globe, so challenges in London are challenges in Melbourne or Sydney;
• that Australia is very much part of a global economy, so our work skills and quality levels and work outputs need to be world class, or we will fall behind. 

The conversation was invaluable for checking with him on the pressures on his organisation and the implications for learning and development. He indicated that the pressures on the creative industry in which he works are multiple and include the following:

• increasing competition from other suppliers
• increasing expectations from the government and other stakeholders
• increasing demand from customers
• increasing options made possible by new technologies.

A number of other points he made included:

• if his organisation stops innovating it will quickly become redundant
• creating new knowledge is critical to innovation
• to be innovative, organisations need to be driven by values and vision
• skill development is not a luxury in his organisation and in his creative industry: it is a necessity
• leadership continues to be a critical issue in his organisation, for without it the shared corporate vision will flounder
• change management that has 'heart' is essential in a vibrant organisation
• creating a coaching culture amongst managers is one of the most powerful ways of exchanging knowledge down the line.

He also commented on the value and success of coaching within his organisation – a major organisational focus over the last year. While he values mentoring and provides mentoring for a number of mentees, he sees a difference between coaching and mentoring:

“Coaching is non-directive, asking the person I am coaching to describe his or her goals, realities, options and likely responses and therefore owning the goals and targets by allowing the coachees to work it out for themselves. Mentoring is more about using your experience and knowledge as a mentor to help the mentee see the way forward and giving him or her the confidence to make different decisions or the breadth to see a more rounded context for work.“

The overall message from this conversation is that Australian organisations need to continue to improve both their skill levels and creativity, to ensure a viable future. Indeed skill development and creativity should go together: one is an indispensable adjunct to the other.

Yesterday I assisted with the convening of a national forum on staff development in VET. In one of the sessions I attended, the three speakers came from very different backgrounds, but interestingly each made the same major point.

The speakers were from the funeral, cement and telecommunications industries, but each of them reported that the best way to market the advantages of training within their organistions was to point to the benefits for the business from training. Some even talked about pointing to the possibilities of improving the enterprise's bottom line.

Other findings included the following:

• it is better to talk about KPIs than competencies
• it is better to talk about the potential to improve profit than to talk about how many staff gained a qualification.

This positioning of training as a key to business success is in contrast to the traditional approach, which was, crudely, that if the educator thought training was good for staff, then it must be.

My ongoing research into innovation in VET teaching and learning shows that VET teachers and trainers need to quickly move beyond conventional roles of designer, developer, deliverer and demonstrator, to becoming knowledge systems experts, learning brokers, learning strategists and facilitators of learning.

My research to date also shows that:

• There are considerable social, economic, political and technological drivers for innovation in teaching and learning in VET.
• Continuous innovation is needed in teaching and learning in VET, to meet the expanding demands of customers, clients and communities of interest who are all shifting their requirements towards much more customised and relevant training and training experiences.
• Students need innovation in their learning to better engage them as self-directed individuals and to encourage them to acquire the skills to meet the pace of change in industry and thrive amidst the changes in the world of work.
• Innovation is needed in teaching and learning in VET to cater for the trend towards lifelong learning, with the emphasis on self-directed, portable, timely, flexible and collaborative learning.

VET teachers and trainers need the capabilities to match the above. An important element is giving them better access to knowledge about the kind of professional teaching and learning practices that can help them fulfil their future roles. Continuous staff development, networking and other collaborative activities will help VET teachers and trainers meet these future roles.

On Wednesday last week, 1 September 2004, I enjoyed a long conversation with an outstanding VET practitioner who is a participant in a structured program I am currently mentoring. The practitioner is Margaret Dix, Manager Staff Learning and Development, Northern Sydney Institute.

Margaret set out for me the concept of a ‘conversation space’ that she has implemented in her very large TAFE Institute: ‘A conversation space is an opportunity for a professional conversation, for people with a passion for teaching and learning’. The features of the practice are as follows:

• In her Institute, a conversation space is created by offering colleagues the chance to discuss for an hour or so a topical issue in teaching and learning – while staff have their coffee and sandwiches.
• These conversation spaces are convened by the members of her Staff Learning and Development Unit and are attended by small groups of around 5-10 staff.
• The participants in the conversation space are normally challenged by a controversial quotation which sparks off conversation.

The initial motivation for the creation of the conversation spaces was that ‘teaching and learning often seem to be forgotten'. So she has asked her staff to spread the practice throughout the Institute, encouraging teachers to ‘talk about being a TAFE teacher’. Interestingly, many of the practitioners disclose that ‘this is the first time they have had the chance to think and talk about what they do as teachers'.

One of her initial findings from the conversation spaces is that the contemporary TAFE teacher needs to have an ‘eclectic range of skills and knowledge’ beyond skills of instruction and knowledge of an industry. For instance, she finds that ‘teachers need to be able to offer advice to students on a range of issues including career opportunities’. She also finds that the recent reports on VET pedagogy provide a useful framework for  understanding the breadth of skills and knowledge identified in the conversation spaces.

The discussion with this outstanding VET professional reminded me of the concept of a ‘professional learning system’ proposed by Hoban (2002) which I referred to in my unpublished report to ANTA in 2003 on a national – but locally implemented – mechanism for innovation in teaching and learning in VET. Hoban (2002, pp.68-69) suggests that a theoretical framework for a professional learning system should be based on the conditions required for teacher learning, discussed below:

• A conception of teaching as an art or profession, indicating a dynamic relationship between students, other teachers, school, classroom, curriculum and context. Because of these interactions, there is always uncertainty and ambiguity in changing teaching practice.
• Reflection is important - as teachers need to become aware of why they teach the way they do and to focus on understanding the patterns of change resulting from the dynamic relationships in which they are involved.
• Teachers need a purpose for learning to foster a desire for change and so content should be negotiated.
• The time frame is long term, as changing teaching means adjusting the balance among many aspects of the existing classroom system.
• A sense of community is necessary - so that teachers trust each other to share experiences such that topics for inquiry and debate may extend over several months or longer. As a result of this progressive discourse, teachers theorize and discussions are generative so that new ideas are always evolving.
• Teachers need to experiment with their ideas in action to test what works or does not work in their classrooms.
• A variety of knowledge sources are needed as conceptual inputs to extend the experiences of the participants.
• Student feedback is needed - in response to the ideas being tried out in the classroom.

The use of ‘conversation spaces’ for professional dialogue fits will with Hoban’s framework for a professional learning system. Sometimes there are good practices in Australian VET that are world class, such as this use of conversation spaces, but receive little recognition.

Change agents operating within their own organisation – what we call ‘internal’ change agents – often struggle to win legitimacy.

Paton and McCalman (2003) note that winning credibility is a challenge right from the start of a change management activity:

In terms of entry into a change management process as a facilitator, the internal change agent has to convince management and employees within a particular part of the organisation of their expertise in this area (p.189).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) also note:

This is a game of credentials, in which reputations established through time are important assets. The credibility of the players is crucial: will individuals keep to their goals and agendas and promises? (p.206)

Paton and McCalman believe that the internal change agent is constrained by his or her involvement and participation in the organisation and by his or her specified role which others may seek to exploit to their advantage (p.189).

The internal change agent may also be driven by the ‘intrinsic or extrinsic rewards associated with a successful change project’ (p.192).

Paton and McCalman acknowledge that this might also apply to the external consultant who is paid by someone within the organisation to operate as a change agent. These ‘external change agents’ may slant the approach to fit with the views of the person paying him or her.

My research shows that performing as a change agent – whether as an internal or an external change agent – is a complex undertaking requiring sophisticated skills, appropriate attitudes and extensive knowledge.

I discuss these issues further in Chapters 1 and 5 of my 2004 ANTA report The Skilling of VET Change Agents available from http://reframingthefuture.net (click on Publications then on Sub-program 2).

I am currently involved in various programs which are encouraging the development of skills in forming networks, particularly between providers of training and industry clients. I find that many providers have only a rudimentary conceptual framework for understanding the nature of networks: they have not thought much about how networks function. But when I talk to these providers about the theory of networks and invite them to critique their own networks using this theory, they normally have an ‘ah ha’ response: network theory resonates with their own experiences.

I would just like to discuss one aspect of networking theory here: the concept of open or closed networks; or networks with and without closure. Imagine five people in a network: person A, B, C, D and E. In a network without closure, or an open network, person A can impact on persons B and C; but B and C are not directly connected, with one linked to D and one to E. In this open network, there are a limited number of shared norms influencing behaviour. However, in a network with closure, the parties are all interlinked and can exert influence on each other to observe agreed norms of behaviour: obligations can be imposed (see Coleman, in Lesser 2000, p.27).

Regarding the various structures of networks, Adler and Kwon (2000) distinguish between those closed networks where there are direct or dense ties or connections between members and those open networks where the ties are weak. Closed or dense networks facilitate the emergence of shared norms and encourage trust among members while open networks may involve lower levels of trust (p.98).

The scope and structure of a network may change during its life, as members seek to gain different benefits from involvement:

• For instance, early in the development of a network, joint goals can be developed and collaborative strategies agreed upon, and at this stage the structure may still be fluid.
• As the network settles into operation, decisions may need to be made about how to gain optimum value from involvement and how to handle complex issues that arise, requiring a more formal and closed structure.
• On the other hand, a long-standing network may only need a loose structure, as there are increasing levels of cooperation, requiring limited coordination and planning.

Interestingly, some theorists argue that networks with weak ties between members have significant value, allowing for the easy flow of information between members without the need for many shared norms (Adler and Kwon 2000, p.98). This is important to note, because to form closed or dense networks may be difficult within many VET settings, where there are so many different stakeholders, from enterprises, to unions, to training organisations, often separated by distance and by different work patterns.

VET practitioners may wish to consider strongly the benefits of open or loosely structured networks, where a closed network is inappropriate or not feasible. For example, research cited by Adler and Kwon (2000) suggests that, in sparse or open networks, brokers who interact with many different community members can disseminate information of value to members without imposing extensive sociability or obligations on people (p.98). The potential activities of VET practitioners as brokers or intermediaries are described by Gientzotis (2003).

Networks are categorised other than by describing them as closed or open. For instance, Fulop and Linstead (1999) provide the following categories: vertical and horizontal networks, pooled and complementary networks, product and service networks and learning networks.

I discuss these concepts further in Chapter 1 of the report Building Industry Training Networks (ANTA, 2004), available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on Publications then click on Sub-program 4).

Earlier this week I had a meeting with a VET professional about a raft of organisational development issues at her large TAFE Institute. Just one of the topics we discussed was how to foster communities of practice.

But first a definition is required. There are many definitions of communities of practice in the literature but a simple and useful one provided by Lesser & Storck (2001, p.831) is that they are ‘a group whose members regularly engage in sharing and learning, based on their common interests’.

Although they recognise that each community is unique in the type of support it requires from the organisation, Lesser and Everest (2001) provide some general guidelines for communities of practice that can be applied in many situations: 

1. Focus resources on communities that have strategic implications for the organisation
2. Provide the community with the time and space to interact
3. Designate roles and responsibilities to support the community
4. Market the community and its success stories. 

Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) suggest seven principles for cultivating communities of practice:

1. Design for evolution, so that the community can grow and change, for instance when new members bring new interests to the group
2. Open a dialogue between the inside and outside perspective, with insiders providing deep understanding of the community issues and outsiders helping members to see wider possibilities
3. Invite different levels of participation, allowing members to participate in ways that suit their level of interest
4. Develop both public and private community spaces, so that all levels of relationships can flourish. Public spaces are meetings and using an online forum; private spaces are one-on-one encounters, either face-to-face or electronically.
5. Focus on value, because communities thrive when they deliver value to the organisation and to the members
6. Combine familiarity and excitement, satisfying members’ needs for both comfort and divergent thinking
7. Create a rhythm for the community, through regular meetings, teleconferences, online interactions and informal events, mixing idea-sharing forums and tool-building projects (pp.49-64).

Fostering and supporting communities of practice requires high-level skills. To develop these high-level skills we can tap into useful literature on communities of practice and the increasing expertise in the VET sector. But there is no escaping the subtle, sophisticated work involved.

I discuss these and related isssues in Chapter 3 of my report The Potential for Communities of Practice to Underpin the National Training Framework.

The report is available at http://reframiningthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ then click on ‘Sub-program 4).

Much of my work with professionals and their organisations is implicitly about knowledge management, but the term knowledge management is not easily defined. Some further explanation of the term is due.

In the mid-late 1990s, the concept of knowledge management became popular in the western world, based on the belief that a company’s strategic advantages often hinged on the knowledge of staff. Database companies were quick to suggest that the key to managing the knowledge of staff was to somehow channel all corporate knowledge into databases.

However, definitions of knowledge such as the following by McDermott and Snyder (2002, pp.8-14) stress the different types of knowledge that might exist in an organisation and which cannot be captured solely in a database:

• Knowledge lives in the human act of knowing. The knowledge of experts such as surgeons is an accumulation of experience that remains dynamic: part of their ongoing experience. Communities of Practice make knowledge an integral part of their activities and interactions, and they serve as a living repository for that knowledge.
• Knowledge is tacit as well as explicit. Not everything we know can be codified as documents or tools. In business, tacit knowledge, such as a deep understanding of the complex systems in an industry or in VET, is sometimes more valuable than explicit knowledge. Sharing tacit knowledge involves interaction and informal learning processes such as storytelling and coaching of the kind that Communities of Practice provide.
• Knowledge is social as well as individual. A body of knowledge, say about the NTF, is developed through communal involvement, not just from reading documents. 
• Knowledge is dynamic. What makes knowledge management a challenge is that knowledge is not static: it is not an object that can be stored, owned and moved around like a document. Knowledge resides in the skills, understanding and relationships of its members as well as in tools, documents and processes.

If one accepts such a multi-layered definition of knowledge, ‘managing’ such different types of knowledge requires a new response by managers. Both individuals and organisations within VET will benefit if managers encourage staff to collaborate and share their knowledge with their peers and across the organisation.

From my own research, I have found that the structure of a community of practice provides an ideal platform for such sharing of knowledge. On the other hand, communities of practice are complex, subtle and challenging undertakings, which require managers to use skills and knowledge not previously part of their conventional duties.

I discuss these concepts further in my report The Potential for Communities of Practice to Underpin the National Training Framework, available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ then click on ‘Sub-program 4’).

I recently conducted research on networks in VET which underlined the extensive benefits of networks to both participants and organisations.

Cohen and Prusak (2001, pp.61) find that networks provide an interlocking web of connections and help people develop their identities. Additionally, they find that:

• membership of a network implies a commitment to the group and its work and to cooperation
• network membership implies connection, based around the trust, understanding, and mutuality that support collaborative, cohesive action.

My research found that:

• networks help individuals to acquire new information and resources and share with their peers their explicit and tacit knowledge about their profession
• networks encourage members to reflect on and potentially improve their own practice
• networks help people further develop their identities, in this case, as VET practitioners or collaborators
• networks enable individuals to learn more about their own organisation – which is the common focus of networks reported on in the literature
• networks also enable individuals to learn about industry, if they are a provider, or about providers if they are from industry.

Cohen and Prusak (2001, p.61) find that many of the benefits that individuals derive from networks and communities – a sense of membership and purpose, recognition, learning, and knowledge – can also provide benefits for the organisation. Networks and communities contribute to the development of social capital in organisations, defined by Cohen and Prusak (2001) as a company’s stock of human connections:

Social capital consists of the stock of active connections among people: the trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviour that bind the members of human networks and communities and make cooperative action possible (p.4).

In addition to developing social capital, Alter and Hage (quoted in Fulop and Linstead 1999, p.446) find that the business benefits of organisations working together include:

• opportunities to learn and adapt and to develop competencies or products
• a gain of resources – time, money, information, raw materials, legitimacy, status
• an ability to manage uncertainty and to solve invisible and complex problems
• an ability to specialise or diversify and to fend off competitors
• rapid responses to changing market demands.

Many different types of organisations were involved in the 2003 networks I studied, from enterprises, to industry associations, to provider groups, to government agencies. The benefits of participation for these groups varied, but the benefits were many, including:

• developing a better understanding of each other’s needs
• working together on training programs
• creating a climate of trust for future collaboration.

The findings from the 2003 networks confirm research by Ford et al (2003) who found that networks are essential to viability in contemporary business:

All companies are becoming more dependent on their relationships with those around them. And all these companies and relationships must cope with pressures and capitalise on opportunities from wider afield in the network (p.xi).

My research on networks is contained in the following report for ANTA - Building Industry Training Networks - available from http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ and then click on ‘sub-program 4’).

If I was to suggest that change agents are inevitably involved in organisational politics, some senior managers might be horrified. Surely there are no politics in our organisation! Read on.

Last night I received the following email from a professional I am currently mentoring in a change agency program. He has given me permission to reproduce this section of his email, to illustrate the political judgment he needs to exercise in his work:

Progress to date has exceeded my expectations. The change model I documented has remained sound, but the way I've had to work it has required the maximum in flexibility with some stages not fully completed before I've moved on to the next. Tomorrow will be a challenge in precisely the way I thought - the tension between facilitating and directing. The CEO is keen for me to undertake some negotiations with other key stakeholders on his behalf (a desire shared by others involved). I've resisted thus far as I know this will require me to make some agreements on behalf of the organisation. I have a plan to avoid this while not totally walking away from it, however the likely issues are so technical in nature that my superior understanding of VET will probably force my close involvement at the very least.

The above email is an excellent description of a change agent balancing conflicting tensions; managing the client and the senior stakeholders; and jockeying with the client as to when he will become involved in internal negotiations within the client’s organisation. This level of professional reflection and judgment and sensitivity, combined with a knowledge of organisational politics in VET, is a fine basis for a change agent.

Buchanan and Badham (2000) provide a strong argument that change agency is inevitably involved in the politics that are a normal part of organisational life. They promote the concept that the change agent is a ‘political entrepreneur’ as this term rightly emphasises the following:

the risk-taking and creative dimensions of the role of the change agent, and also the personal commitment, extending on occasion to passion, toward the change agenda (p.5).

Burnes (2000) agrees that managers and change agents have the legitimate right to introduce changes, ‘but to do so they must use political skills in a pragmatic way to build support and overcome or avoid resistance’ (p.300). While Burnes advocates avoiding resistance, Buchanan and Badham (2000) suggest that the change agent who strives to be politically neutral or ‘squeaky clean’ will be ineffective:

The change agent who is not well equipped, or not willing, to deal with political issues and power plays is thus likely to be outmanoeuvred – and will probably fail. This argument is based on the presumption that organisational politics are pervasive, and cannot be ‘wished away’ or ‘managed away’ (p.5).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) suggest that because change generally stimulates both support and resistance, it is naïve to deny the political dimensions of change:

The ‘squeaky clean’ approach which ignores, avoids or otherwise denies the political realities of organisational life could be viewed as unskilled, incompetent, unprofessional and unethical (p.5).

Read more about the political nature of change agency in Chapter 1 of my recent report The Skilling of VET Change Agents (ANTA, 2003) available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ and then click on ‘sub-program 2’).

I find it takes professionals whom I mentor about two-four months to become aware of the range of skills and knowledge they need to become effective change agents. To their surprise, they also find out that being a change agent requires them to perform multiple roles.

Currently I am mentoring ten change agents who have completed two months of a six month program in change agency. The participants are becoming increasingly aware of the raft of skills and knowledge they need to perform the various roles of a change agent.

Let’s look at what some theorists say about the traits and skills that they require.

Kanter (1989) suggests that change agents or 'change masters' need to become business athletes, with the following traits:

Able to work independently without the power and sanction of the management hierarchy
An effective collaborator, able to compete in ways that enhance rather than destroy cooperation
Able to develop high trust relations, with high ethical standards
Possessing self-confidence tempered with humility
Respectful of the process of change as well as the substance
Able to work across business functions and units – ‘multi-faceted and multi-dextrous’
Willing to take rewards on results and gain satisfaction from success (in Paton and McCalman 2000 p.51).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) find that the behaviour repertoire of the 'change driver' is as follows:

A combination of change and project management skills, interpersonal skills in negotiating, persuading and influencing, and political skills, combined possibly with knowledge of the substance of the change itself (p.24).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) also find that during a change project, the agent will need to change roles:

The ability of the change driver readily to switch roles will depend largely on the substance and goals of the change initiative in hand, the formal position, power base and personal attributes of the change driver, and the positions adopted by other players in the game at any one time (p.183).

In summary, the literature suggests that change agents need many skills and a deep knowledge of organisations, people and change. One key skill is the ability to perform many roles.

These findings in the literature fit with my own research. Read more about this in Chapter 3 of my report on The Skilling of the VET Change Agents (ANTA, 2003)available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ and then on ‘Sub-program 2’).

I recently visited Scotland to compare the findings of my Australian research for Emerging Futures:Innovation in teaching and learning in VET (Mitchell, Clayton, Hedberg and Paine; ANTA, June 2003), with Scottish research on innovation. The Scottish Further Education (FE) system undertook an extensive action research project on innovation called Focus on Learning: New Approaches to Improving Learning and Achievement.

The Focus on Learning - Final Project Report (May 2003) explains that:

• the two-year project was funded by the Scottish Further Education Funding Council and led by four Scottish FE colleges
• the primary purpose of the project was to develop, pilot and evaluate strategies designed to enhance student retention and achievement
• the principal aims included motivating staff to explore new approaches to raising achievement; raising staff awareness of recent developments regarding effective learning; and enhancing staff skill levels with regard to change and to planning, delivering and evaluating effective learning for their students.

These purposes and aims have some similarities with those of the Australian project, described below.

Scottish FE staff were encouraged to develop their own proposals for the project and fourteen interventions were planned and implemented during the two year project. The projects were entitled:

• A case study for electronics non-advanced provision – emotional intelligence, thinking skills and computer-aided learning
• Developing personal effectiveness and emotional intelligence
• The effects of physical factors and learning styles
• Think Positive! – emotional intelligence and professional studies for design students
• Can’t Remember – memory and recall
• Integrating study skills in the classroom
• Learning styles and achievements in Information Technology
• Using emotional intelligence and students with learning disabilities
• Facilitating adult learners to achieve
• Early intervention to increase student motivation and achievement
• Practical approaches to electronic engineering
• Study skills
• Physical factors and learning in media studies
• Thinking skills in business management programmes.

Many findings emerged from the fourteen projects. For instance, to raise the quality of student achievement FE staff can do the following: use emotional intelligence and reinforcement to build and support students’ self esteem; make students aware of their own learning preferences and styles and help them learn how to learn; and empower students to manage and assess their own learning.

Other findings include the value of helping FE lecturers to recognize the consequences for their own learning, of their learning preferences and style; to recognize that a narrow view of assessment and learning outcomes can limit achievement; to recognize that ‘soft outcomes’ and the ‘distance travelled’ as learners are real, if difficult to measure, achievements; and to understand the impact of emotional intelligence on the motivation and capacity to learn.

Finally, the Scottish study found that the FE system can be harnessed to help students and lecturers to recognize and overcome potential and actual ‘barriers to learning’ and help staff and students to re-focus on learning.

The Australian study, Emerging Futures, was funded by ANTA, managed by OTTE and published by Reframing the Future.

There were two aims of the Australian VET project:

• First, to provide a national review of good practice in innovation that is drawn from current provider activity and achievements. This aspect is addressed by the report Emerging Futures.
• Second, to investigate the development of a suitable national mechanism for ongoing information and support for the dissemination of teaching and learning practice and to strengthen and broaden innovation in the future. This is the subject of a second report which is with ANTA. 

The final report of the Australian project, Emerging Futures, is organised around six key questions: 

• Why is innovation in VET teaching and learning an issue?
• What is innovation in VET teaching and learning?
• How does innovation occur in VET teaching and learning?
• What fosters or impedes innovation in VET teaching and learning?
• Who gains from innovation in VET teaching and learning?
• What can be done to further support innovation in VET teaching?

Similar questions were asked in the Scottish study.

The titles of the fifteen case studies and vignettes in Emerging Futures provide insights into the breadth of innovative activity in the VET sector and are as follows:

• Learner-focused, continually-improved programs for 15-18 year old youths at risk
• VET in Schools program delivered in the workplace
• Assessment and training customised to meet the client’s strategic goals
• Re-engineering the teaching of textiles
• Simulation for assessment in trade areas
• An integrated approach to supporting and motivating distance students
• International benchmarking underpinning the assessment of key competencies in electrotechnology
• Multi-faceted innovation in teaching heavy vehicle mechanics in regional Western Australia
• Use of workplace-based mentors for training delivery of across a region
• Embedding innovation across the organisation
• Managing innovation in teaching in response to photography students’ and industry’s needs
• Simultaneously fostering multiple innovations
• Innovative training solutions in the metals area for trainees with cerebral palsy
• Innovation in teaching remote Indigenous students about mining operations
• Best practice delivery led by a national enterprise.

The titles of these fifteen case studies and vignettes show that the Australian study was different from the Scottish study in focusing on existing examples of innovation, while the Scottish project was based around new interventions. However, the findings from the two studies were similar, particularly that there is no one way to be innovative and there are multiple needs for innovation.

Copies of Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET are available from http://reframingthefuture.net (click on 'Publications' and then click on 'General Publications').

The central importance of professional judgment by practitioners emerged as a key finding from 2003 reports in Scotland and Australia on innovation in teaching and learning in vocational education and training.

The two reports were Emerging Futures:Innovation in teaching and learning in VET, which I prepared with Berwyn Clayton, John Hedberg and Nigel Paine (ANTA, June 2003) and Focus on Learning: New Approaches to Improving Learning and Achievement (Scottish Further Education Union, May 2003).

Emerging Futures found, like the Scottish study, that pressures for change are flowing with increasing force into teaching and learning practice within VET. As a consequence of this ongoing change, wider, deeper and more frequent innovation is now needed in VET teaching and learning practices.

However, as with the Scottish study, the Australian report shows that there are good grounds for optimism about the quality and scope of innovation in teaching and learning practices in VET. Positive futures for VET are emerging, as a result of practitioner innovation, in both countries.

The Australian and Scottish reports imply that the challenge for Further Education (FE) and VET is to work with and manage its practitioners in such a way that innovation can be supported to ensure new or improved outcomes for FE/VET’s constituents, including FE/VET organisations themselves.

The findings from Emerging Futures provide the basis for a conceptual framework for understanding and supporting innovation in VET teaching and learning. The framework shows that innovation in teaching cannot be reduced to a formula of step-by-step actions, as innovation in VET teaching and learning cannot be reduced to simplicities.

The framework demonstrates – as do the findings from the Scottish research – that extensive professional judgment, improvisation, experience and wisdom are needed by practitioners contributing to innovation in FE/VET teaching and learning.

The Scottish and Australian research projects show that:

• both further/vocational education systems are aware of the importance of not just identifying but also promoting innovation in teaching and learning
• there is value in understanding the complex nature of innovation and of highlighting the features of good practice
• we are at the start of a long journey in embedding and sustaining innovation across whole sectors.

One key message that emerges from the two national research projects is that innovation in teaching is a necessity if we are concerned with improved student achievement. Another key message is that a range of models for staff development is needed to engender innovation in teaching, as innovation has many dimensions.

A copy of Emerging Futures:Innovation in teaching and learning in Australian VET is available from http://reframingthefuture.net (click on 'Publications' and then click on 'General Publications').

I note with interest the words ‘change agent’ creeping into Duty Statements, along with dozens of other requirements. The inference is that change agency is just another standard skill, like the skill to negotiate with industry or to liaise with the community, that will be acquired over a career by aspiring leaders and managers. But what if only a very small proportion of personnel will ever be effective change agents?

My own research on change agency suggests that change agency is a high-order skill, not acquired by the majority of personnel. Paton and McCalman (2003) suggest that the change agent needs to be competent above all in dealing with people and helping an organisation find solutions, a skill which few have:

To help solve a problem, the change agent has to be able to offer some form of expertise. Traditionally, this is based on knowledge of the subject. However, for the organisation development agent, the knowledge, more often than not, is in dealing with people and helping the organisation find its own solutions …This is a skill that few have, and fewer still use effectively (p.191).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) summarise the complexities of the change agent role, including taking career-shortening risks:

The change-driving role is not an easy one. Major change makes the driver more visible, and more vulnerable. The role requires a behaviour repertoire that extends into different forms of Machiavellian actions, and other managerial character styles. This can involve the conscious switch from one position in relation to change implementation to another, to reduce risk and maximise personal advantage. It also requires energy and commitment – perhaps even passion – as well as creativity. It involves the acceptance of personal risk in career terms (p.207).

Is it time to re-work Duty Statements so that ‘skills as a change agent’ are only in the ‘nice to have’ not ‘must have’ category, as such skills are rare?

I recently prepared a research report on how an intensive six-month program, conducted by Reframing the Future, provided the conditions for eleven VET managers to develop a range of change agency skills. Note that a range of skills – not every possible skill – was developed over six months, and only as as result of structured, guided, intensive practice. To develop such skills involved hard work and high-order application on the part of the trainee change agents.

See The Skilling of VET Change Agents (ANTA, Melb, 2003) available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ then click on ‘Sub-program 2’).

In 2004 I am mentoring an educational manager who is developing an innovation strategy - in teaching and learning - for her large, metropolitan technical and further education (TAFE) Institute.

Developing an innovation strategy is a fascinating topic but it raises a raft of issues, which we are exploring together. Just one of the issues is what motivates practitioners to be innovative.

One of the findings from research I have undertaken recently is that innovation can be influenced by practitioners’ motivations or personality traits or sense of personal or professional identity.

My research indicates that VET practitioners have varying motivations, personalities and identities. For instance, VET practitioners may be motivated in one of the following ways:

• by a desire to model originality;
• or by a determination to provide improved services; 
• or by a desire for deserved recognition from peers.

Personality traits influencing innovation can include a preference for being unconventional; or a preference for operating in an ambiguous and challenging situation. A practitioner's sense of identity – say, as a humanist, an industry specialist or as an oracle or facilitator – may also influence her or his response to a proposed innovation in teaching.

The critical role of motivation has significant implications for an innovation strategy and for those managing such a strategy.

I discuss these and many other challenging issues around innovation in Mitchell, J.G. Clayton, B., Hedberg, J. and Paine N.,(2003), Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning, ANTA, Melbourne (available at http://reframingthefuture.net click on 'Publications' and then click on 'General publications')

While it is interesting to see the term innovation appearing in more strategic plans and in more duty statements, there is a concern that the complexities surrounding innovation may be underestimated.

The complexities of innovation are being addressed directly by a current initiative in Victorian TAFE. I am pleased that the report on innovation for which I was the lead author, Emerging Futures: Innovation in teaching and learning in VET (Mitchell, Clayton, Hedberg and Paine; ANTA 2003) is the focal point of a practitioner network in Victorian VET. Each month, this network organised by TAFE frontiers is taking a key idea from each chapter of the report as the basis of online discussion. See http://www.tafefrontiers.com.au/networks/emerge.html

The discussion in late June was around some ideas in Chapter 2  - What is innovation in VET teaching and learning? - of the report:

In response to the pressures for change, VET has established a reputation for being sensitive to shifts in community and industry needs and providing flexibility of educational content and provision. The scale, magnitude and diversity of ongoing change has created a need for wider, deeper and more frequent innovation in VET teaching and learning practices. The sharper focus is on learning that leads to better outcomes and performance for learners, including ensuring relevance, ensuring personal service, providing 'just for me' training, supporting 'learning in context' and supporting performance support systems.

In June 2004, two case studies were discussed online, in relation to the above ideas. Over a one week period, staff from the Fashion Department at Gippsland TAFE shared some of their innovative methods for engaging students. This forum had particular appeal to teachers involved in assessing practical subjects. Over a second week in June, another forum was based around a series of Gippsland TAFE case studies that have been compiled for TAFE frontiers.

By unbundling and dissecting specific innovations, Victorian TAFE practitioners are teaching themselves more about the variable nature of innovation in the world of teaching and learning. This analytical approach will set them up for future success in fostering and sustaining innovations.

TAFE frontiers is to be commended for the way it has constructed this focused practitioner dialogue.

The report ‘Emerging Futures’ is available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on Publications and then click on ‘General publications’).

A focus on innovation in teaching and learning is growing in popularity within educational organisations.

I am currently preparing a presentation on innovation for a conference to be convened by CURVE (Centre Undertaking Reseach in Vocational Education) and held in Canberra on 8 October 2004. The conference is called "New Thinking on Teaching and Learning" and more information is available from Thea Fisher at CURVE: Thea.Fisher@cit.act.edu.au

The title of the presentation is 'Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET: what we can and can’t change'. The title is a deliberate play on the title of the well-known book by psychologist Martin Seligman, What you can change and what you can’t, in order to emphasise the complex challenges of deliberately seeking to bring about innovation in VET teaching and learning.

The presentation will focus on key findings from the ANTA-funded OTTE-managed project that resulted in the 2003 report Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET (Mitchell, Clayton, Hedberg and Paine), particularly the finding that managing innovation in teaching and learning requires high levels of knowledge and skills, including extensive professional judgment, experience and wisdom.

The presentation also draws on findings from my recent research for Reframing the Future in two related fields: how VET practitioners can develop skills in change agency and how VET practitioners can improve their practice.

Key references:

Mitchell, J.G., Clayton, B., Hedberg, J. and Paine, N. (2003), Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET, ANTA, Melbourne (see particularly Chapter 6)  (http://reframingthefuture.net click on Publications, then click on General Publications)

Mitchell, J.G. (2004), The Skilling of VET Change Agents, ANTA, Melbourne (http://reframingthefuture.net click on Publications, then click on Sub-program 2)

Mitchell, J.G. (2003), Effectively Structuring Communities of Practice in VET, ANTA, Melbourne (http://reframingthefuture.net click on Publications, then click on Sub-program 4)