This seminar series is offered by the Centre for the Study of Canadian and International Higher Education (CIHE) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, ²ÝÝ®ÎÛÊÓƵµ¼º½. It explores the important role that community colleges and similar types of institutions play in supporting social, education, and cultural development in their local communities and regions.
CIHE Speaker Series - The Social Role of Colleges with Dr. Steven Hodge
Eroding the Social Role of Vocational Education in Australia
Post-compulsory education in Australia is sharply polarised around a binary of university education and ‘vocational education and training’ (VET) offered by public colleges of technical and further education (TAFEs) and a number of smaller private institutes. In the heyday of TAFE provision – 1970s – these colleges fulfilled an explicit social mandate. However, reforms in the decades since have eroded this mandate. The seminar examines factors in this trajectory including the advent of competency-based training as a system-wide curriculum model, the doctrine of ‘industry leadership’ and the concept of ‘national skills formation’.
²ÝÝ®ÎÛÊÓƵµ¼º½ the Speaker
Dr. Steven Hodge
Dr. Hodge is a curriculum researcher based a Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. He has special interests in vocational education and the ways occupational expertise is represented in curriculum.
