Skilling for economic, environmental and social sustainability

1. Skilling for economic, environmental and social sustainability Preparing the ‘integrated global educator’ Terri Seddon Monash University

2. Skills for the VET workforce? … challenges of human security and sustainability • Limitations of the market model and training ‘delivery’ We need institutional rules that affirm quality signals in VET and recognise that ‘goods’ rest on cultural conventions that anchor good practice • Skills required within a global VET market We must recognise and develop complex soft,intellectual, intercultural and interpersonal skills as well as technical competence • Skill levels for VET practice We could support a skill/career pathway: • Industry trainer - Cert IV, • VET practitioner - Dip VET • Advanced VET practitioner • Integrated global educator

3. Policy trends The Australian Government’s goal is to create a better Australia - a fairer, richer, healthier and greener Australia that can meet the challenges and grasp the opportunities of the twenty-first century. We will do that by improving the things we make and the way we make them - the services we deliver and the way we deliver them. We will do it by transforming existing industries and building new ones to provide quality jobs. We will do it by making new discoveries and having great ideas. Our aim is to make innovation a way of life (Cutler, 2009, p.1). • Innovation • Skills market • Lifelong learning

4. Price competition … drives occupational identity and expertise Training reform has produced benefits: • Increased access for learners to VET applied learning. • Reduced training costs through competition and commercialisation • Created industry-led VET industry priorities aligned to skill shortages. But has undercut VET teaching expertise: • TAFE as a place that valued vocational teaching absorbed into VET - standalone training providers. • Expanded demands and expectations of ‘VET workforce’. • Endorsed ‘industry trainer’ rather than ‘applied adult educator’. • Squeezed resources that sustain teaching expertise, especially in TAFE and non-profit ACE providers that invested in teaching expertise.

5. Occupations are a resource • ‘Occupations’ create their work and are created by it through collective agency • Expertise is anchored in occupational identity and culture, its organisation in space and renewal over time • Expertise underpins license and recognition, and the occupation’s claim to mandate within a societal division of labour • Jurisdiction is negotiated through boundary work relative to wider social (external) forces and inter- and intra-occupational conflict (internal forces) • Boundary work makes delineations of insiders (I-we) and outsiders (we-others). It constructs inclusions-exclusions.

6. Occupational expertise … critical in a global VET market • Teaching matters • Teaching expertise embraces knowledge, skills and dispositions • Teaching expertise is recognised in other sectors and countries (VET competitors) • Has Australian VET been designed for restricted rather than extended professionalism? • ‘Restricted professionalism’ institutionalizes teaching based on routine expertise within detailed accountabilities. These scripts limit innovation. • ‘Extended professionalism’ encourages teaching expertise that is responsive to changing conditions. It is non-routine, actively learns, and operates via unscripted pedagogies within system constraints that support innovation.

7. Skills for a global VET market?The CROSSLIFE project CROSSLIFE was a curriculum development project to support cross-cultural collaboration in lifelong learning and work. It examined: • What VET practitioners need to know and be able to do to support lifelong learning? • What additional knowledge, skills and dispositions are required to support lifelong learning in global times? • What terms and conditions of work and learning support their professional development?

8. Copenhagen London Malta Melbourne Tampere Zurich Link to EU Tampere Links with partner universities & home groups Planning Team Project design & governance Materials development Workshop design & implementation London Tampere Malta Evaluation Research CROSSLIFE:…a global work-learning place for tutors

9. CROSSLIFE:…a global learning space for students Process learning Content learning PEER LEARNING BOUNDARY CROSSING CRITICAL REFLECTION SYNTHESIS Learning security

10. CROSSLIFE: … building skills for global interconnectedness Success in the global work-learning space depends on the negotiation of human relationships, through dialogue, negotiation of meaning and relationships, and care. • Technical knowledge and skills • Soft skills - working together, team-building to realise outcomes, good communication • General education skills - a general knowledge base to sustain conversation and interpersonal relationship-building • Intercultural skills - for working across diverse, multiscalar cultural boundaries • Personal and emotional skills - capacities for care, working with difference, emotional labour ‘I did not learn what I expected (theoretical knowledge) but I learned more than expected in terms of insight in academic work, project making, cross-cultural interaction, group processes, as well as capability of working in this setting myself’

11. Skilling for VET practice 1Applied adult education expertise Requires: • More than ‘industry training’ - which requires skills to support ‘socialisation’ where cultural differences are small (or not acknowledged), • Knowledge and skills for vocational ‘education’ and cross-boundary work in organisational coordination and external stakeholder relationships • Recognition of ‘intermediaries’ (culture workers) who navigate, mediate and translate between communities in cross-cultural collaborations and communications

12. Skilling for VET practice 2 A skill progression Adapted from Mitchell, 2009

13. Skilling for VET practice 3 Skill levels The levels: • Industry trainer - supporting learning through ‘socialisation’ into community norms to encourage conformity • VET practitioner - combining educational and business values and thinking to support continuous improvement • Advanced VET practitioner- demonstrating ‘extraordinary capabilities’ in client relationships, customer responsiveness, and flexible delivery • Integrated global educator - engaging in multiscalar work, locally and globally, conscious of self in time-space, strategically building knowledge and managing information, ethical in contexts of risk & cultural ambiguity, enacting intercultural respect and care

14. Resources for professional development Programs that support inquiry: • Bachelor of Adult Learning and Development • Master in Adult Education (Global) • Master of Education • What counts as ‘quality teaching’ in TAFE? • What teaching skills do trade teachers need? Networks that support inquiry: • The early childhood educators professional learning networks Professional organisations that support inquiry: • TAFE Development Centre • VET Practitioners Network

15. The challenge: … legitimising occupational expertise • Rebuilding occupational identity: • Expertise - working knowledge • License - permission to carry on certain activities • Mandate - the elbow room while doing the work • Jurisdiction - the territory in which expertise can be exercised • Doing occupational boundary work inside • Aligning interests • Negotiating shared understandings about expertise • Inducting newcomers • Defending occupational boundaries • Doing occupational boundary work outside • Justifying occupational standing and relevance • Building external relationships • Negotiating support and recognition