A pursuit for higher vocational education – comment by CEO Craig Robertson

‘Forget whatever you learned in your teaching degree, it doesn’t work in the face of 25 marauding kids.’ For all the teachers out there I’m sure you heard that during your practicum. I did. It was an important part of immersion into a workplace. I resolved to apply my theories of teaching and class management once I had my own classroom.

It tells the story of the dilemma in vocational education at present: where does theory and knowledge play its part in the learning equation?

The industrial complex guiding vocational education and training in Australia has organised industry defining job roles, yet it is the training organisation doing the lion’s share of the work. Providers are expected to design courses, develop theory content, frame the learning and skilling journey on sound pedagogical grounds, assess the outcomes and issue the certification – the human side of the learning journey.

This is why this week TDA launches the National Enrolled Nursing Advisory Council. The council consists of TAFE education leaders delivering enrolled nursing education. Each is an experienced practitioner in nursing with deep understanding of the professional standards and practices which underpin nursing, which they bring to the learning process.

Unpacking the current VET Enrolled Nursing qualification, demonstrates why we need the council. There are 20 core units of competency for the Diploma of Nursing and five electives. Just in five core units alone there are 112 functional elements a nurse is required to display and 212 discrete elements of knowledge. Industry may choose to list these requirements, but it is education that brings them to life and in a context that makes sense to the student.

It’s been a while since factors of production within modern economies, including services, relied on a Henry Ford approach – rote, segmented and decontextualised skills exercised in a production line. Yet this seems to be the construct of VET in Australia through the training package model.

Despite Recommendation 10 of VET Products for the 21^st Century (the policy framework guiding training packages) which ‘allow for VET qualifications to provide for identified knowledge and preparatory units of competence as appropriate’, the industrial complex has won out.

The modern economy is calling for adaptive workers, especially those engaged in human interaction.  The competency model as reflected in training packages doesn’t help. Leesa Wheelahan makes a fantastic contribution to this issue. In the chapter, Vocational qualifications and access to knowledge,^[1] Leesa examines the unit, Manage and Lead People, and writes, ‘the complexity and contested nature of management and leadership are absent, while an idealised notion of management and leadership is presented, contextualised by unproblematic notions of work in which all share the same commitment to the enterprise, regardless of what that may be.’ Leesa then goes on to say:

Required knowledge is specified later in the unit, and this also is listed as unproblematised concepts that have been decontextualised from disciplinary systems of meaning, such as ‘typical causes of workplace conflict, including cultural differences’.

The working life is more complicated and vocational education graduates need just that – education about the vocation, not simply training in processes.

In the case of nursing, and increasingly in care roles, a new approach is critical. Emeritus Professor Peter Coaldrake AO in his review of higher education provider categories called out the issue. Informed through his role as Chair of Jobs Queensland he indicates that ‘… roles providing pastoral and personalised care to our young, our sick, our elderly, and our disabled will be especially important areas of contribution to employment growth.’[2] The Aged Care Royal Commission is likely to call for new education models as well.

Submissions to Coaldrake’s review made the important point that the distinction between higher education and VET is becoming less distinct. A new educational flavour to VET is sorely needed, driven by the power of knowledge in the hands of the student. Surely, we can do it. Even the recommended changes to the Australian Qualifications Framework has knowledge as key across all levels.

In the end we in TAFEs seek the best for students so they can be the best they can be. The calibre of the educational experience comes first. It’s the ultimate in self-assurance we wish for our graduates. In TAFEs we are proud of our education leadership and the advisory council will bring that to enrolled nursing.

Knowledge informs practice. What use would it have been if I floundered in my teaching practice and had no organising theory and framework, even in embryonic form, to fall back on? The Advisory Council is an important first step in pursuing a higher vocational education.