2013 Awards

Hugh Guthrie accepts the 2013 Berwyn Clayton Award

At the 2013 Conference, the following Awards were made by AVETRA, recognising excellence in research, services to AVETRA and early career researchers. Details of this year’s award winners are provided below:

1.    Berwyn Clayton Award for Distinguished Service to AVETRA

2.    AVETRA Journal Article of the Year Award

3.    AVETRA Paper of the Year

4.    Early Career Researcher Award

1.    Berwyn Clayton Award for Distinguished Service to AVETRA

Hugh Guthrie accepts the award from Berwyn Clayton

The Berwyn Clayton Award for Distinguished Service to AVETRA has been instituted as a way of recognising the exemplary and distinguished service of nominated AVETRA members who have through their endeavours worked towards improving AVETRA’s status as Australia’s peak association for VET researchers. This award is to be awarded on a bi annual basis and it will be presented at the AVETRA Conference every second year (in odd years, with nominations due in February of those years).
Eligibility: All nominees and those nominating them must be current AVETRA members.

2013 – Hugh Guthrie, Principal Research Fellow, Victoria University

Hugh spent nearly 25 years at the NCVER (and its predecessor) and was one of those instrumental in the establishment of the Australian VET Research Association  – AVETRA. He was elected a foundation member, and continued to serve on its Executive for a long time through its significant formative years. This was a key role as the interface between NCVER and AVETRA. In particular, Hugh co-ordinated AVETRA’s professional development program and was instrumental in the development of its website, especially the links pages. He also played a pivotal role in the development of the first national VET research and evaluation strategy which, at the time, was a first in the world.

Hugh has for a long time, even before AVETRA, had the interests of VET staff at heart. He has worked tirelessly to further the teaching and research of practitioners in the VET sector. During his time at NCVER he had responsibility for the ANTA- funded VET research and evaluation program as the inaugural NVETRE program manager when NCVER took over that role in 1996/97.

Hugh is widely respected throughout the VET research and broader VET community. Over the last 15 years he has been particularly concerned to ensure that VET research, and particularly NVETRE-funded research, is taken up and used by key stakeholders – including policy-makers and VET professionals. Hugh has authored or co-authored over 75 major training-related papers, articles and reports. While his research interests are broad, he has had a long and abiding interest in the VET workforce and professional development issues, and is probably best known for this body of work which is of crucial interest to AVETRA members.

2. AVETRA Journal Article of the Year Award – Steven Hodge Deakin University and Roger Harris University of South Australia

Discipline, governmentality and 25 years of competency-based training – Studies in the Education of Adults, Vol. 44, No. 2, Autumn 2012

Abstract
Among the many critiques of competency-based approaches to education and training (CBT) is a strain which draws on Foucault’s analysis of ‘disciplinary’ power and knowledge. Foucault offered an interpretation of modern institutions, such as prisons, armies and schools, which revealed subtle mechanisms of surveillance and systems of knowledge that shaped the self-understanding and activit  of participants. Robinson (1993) and Edwards and Usher (1994) were among the first researchers to call attention to the disciplinary potential of CBT. But Foucault went on to argue that discipline is a component in an overarching systemthe called ‘governmentality’. The analysis of governmentality augments the analysis of discipline by foregrounding the effects of knowledge of populations and modes of power that operate at a distance. In this article, the disciplinary critique of competency-based systems is extended by demonstrating the relevance of Foucault’s analysis of governmentality to a contemporary national system of CBT. The authors use a case of 25 years of CBT in an Australian vocational education institution as a scaffold for the argument. This case is germane because it presents a succession of practices of CBT which allows us to trace and scrutinise a shift from a disciplinary to a governmental framework.

3.    AVETRA Paper of the Year

Refereed conference papers will automatically be entered into the shortlisting for the  AVETRA Paper of the Year.  This on-going award is funded by AVETRA and is offered annually. The award will be presented at the AVETRA Conference.  Eligibility: All nominees must be current AVETRA members. AVETRA reserves the right not to make an award if none of the applications received meets the criteria for award.

Mary Leahy accepts the award from Michele Simons, AVETRA President

2013 – Mary Leahy for the conference paper titled:
“Person-centred Qualifications: Vocational Education for the Aged Care and Disability Services Sectors”

Abstract

This paper is part of a proposal for a symposium of four papers (by Kira Clarke, Serena Yu, Mary Leahy and Nick Fredman) examining links between education and work, to be entitled ‘Vocations, education and work’. The papers are derived from two related projects: a project funded by NCVER entitled ‘Vocations: Post-compulsory education and the labour market’; and a project funded by BVET entitled ‘From competencies to capabilities’.

Drawing on findings from BVET funded research examining the potential for capabilities-based qualifications, this paper analyses the impact of a person-centred approach on qualifications in aged care and disability services. The introduction of person-centred care and, in particular, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, is having a profound impact on jobs in the sector. It is changing practices associated with current positions as well as leading to the creation of new occupations. There is an expectation that vocational education and training (VET) will prepare people for employment or occupational progression. However, existing VET qualifications do not adequately reflect the nature of current jobs in aged care and disability services. These qualifications are even less able to prepare people for work under the new paradigm of person-centred care.

4.    Early Career Researcher Award

Relevant refereed conference papers will automatically be entered into the shortlisting for the Early Career Researcher Award Paper of the Year. This award encourages new researchers, that is, within the first five years of their research career, to present at the annual conference and become actively involved in the Association.

Damien Oliver accepts the award on behalf of the winners from Michele Simons, AVETRA President

2013 – Serena Yu and Tanya Bretherton University of Sydney

Defining Vocational Streams: Insights from Engineering, Agriculture, Financial     Services and Healthcare and Community Services

Abstract

This paper is part of a proposal for a symposium of four papers examining links between  education and work, to be entitled ‘Vocations, education and work’. The papers are derived from two related projects: a project funded by NCVER entitled ‘Vocations: Post-compulsory education and the labour market’; and a project funded by the NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training entitled ‘From competencies to capabilities’. The linked papers are those by Kira Clarke, Serena Yu, Mary Leahy and Nick Fredman.

This paper considers how educational and labour market progression is linked, and in particular how capability and vocational streams are shaped by different sectors or industries. A vocational stream is a set of occupations linked by common practices and knowledge, and is embedded in a broader skills ecosystem of regional, market and institutional forces. Based on a series of in-depth stakeholder interviews across the case study sectors of agriculture, healthcare/community services, engineering and financial services, we find that potential for the vocational stream framework is based on two preconditions: that there are commonalities in underpinning knowledge and skills across occupations; and that there is threshold level of social capital and trust between the stakeholders to mediate these links between occupations.