Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Education, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 227-231).

This thesis examines the impact of neo-liberal economic restructuring on teachers, specifically teachers in technical and further education. Historically, there has been limited research undertaken on teachers as workers, and even less on TAFE teachers. During the period covered by the study, TAFE was buffeted by the massive changes, social, political, cultural and economic, that were occurring on a global scale. As a result, TAFE has been a system in crisis. The consequences are addressed by an empirical study that examines NSW TAFE teachers' experience of the great changes that have occurred to their work since the late 1980s. Forty-one teachers were interviewed in tape recorded sessions lasting around one hour each. The respondents were drawn from twenty-seven teaching sections across all the major industry areas represented in TAFE. Twenty of the teachers were from metropolitan locations, twenty-one were regional. Nine managers were also interviewed, from Head of Studies to senior management levels, covering those with local as well as state-wide responsibilities. The changes to TAFE have been driven by a pervasive neo-liberal ideology adopted by both major parties in Australia. This study documents the experience of TAFE teachers as that ideology led to a corporatised vocational education and training system strongly oriented to the market. It also records their responses to the narrowing of curriculum that resulted from the "industry-driven" vocational education and training policies of governments. The study gives voice to their grief, frustration and anger as their working conditions deteriorated and their commitment to quality education was undermined. The study documents the teachers' resistance to the processes of organisational fragmentation, the increasing incidence of cost-driven, rather than educational, decision-making, and the commodification of curriculum driven by a series of policy decisions taken at both national and state level. The study compares these experiences with those of the TAFE managers, whose response to the crisis, while differing from that of the teachers, supports the teachers' commitment to public education as a social good. The study concludes that the NSW TAFE teachers' resistance has continued to act as a brake on the excesses of neo-liberalism. Some possibilities for an alternative vision of technical and further education thus remain.

This thesis examines the impact of neo-liberal economic restructuring on teachers, specifically teachers in technical and further education. Historically, there has been limited research undertaken on teachers as workers, and even less on TAFE teachers. During the period covered by the study, TAFE was buffeted by the massive changes, social, political, cultural and economic, that were occurring on a global scale. As a result, TAFE has been a system in crisis. The consequences are addressed by an empirical study that examines NSW TAFE teachers' experience of the great changes that have occurred to their work since the late 1980s. Forty-one teachers were interviewed in tape recorded sessions lasting around one hour each. The respondents were drawn from twenty-seven teaching sections across all the major industry areas represented in TAFE. Twenty of the teachers were from metropolitan locations, twenty-one were regional. Nine managers were also interviewed, from Head of Studies to senior management levels, covering those with local as well as state-wide responsibilities. The changes to TAFE have been driven by a pervasive neo-liberal ideology adopted by both major parties in Australia. This study documents the experience of TAFE teachers as that ideology led to a corporatised vocational education and training system strongly oriented to the market. It also records their responses to the narrowing of curriculum that resulted from the "industry-driven" vocational education and training policies of governments. The study gives voice to their grief, frustration and anger as their working conditions deteriorated and their commitment to quality education was undermined. The study documents the teachers' resistance to the processes of organisational fragmentation, the increasing incidence of cost-driven, rather than educational, decision-making, and the commodification of curriculum driven by a series of policy decisions taken at both national and state level. The study compares these experiences with those of the TAFE managers, whose response to the crisis, while differing from that of the teachers, supports the teachers' commitment to public education as a social good. The study concludes that the NSW TAFE teachers' resistance has continued to act as a brake on the excesses of neo-liberalism. Some possibilities for an alternative vision of technical and further education thus remain.

In this decade, the drive to improve the quality of learning environments at all levels has gathered pace, and accountability of providers has become a byword, particularly in secondary and tertiary educational institutions. In this process of meeting societal needs, the teacher's role is crucial to the provision of optimal conditions for learning. Teachers' adaptation to the changing clientele and technologies of the 1990's, also demands their flexibility and preparedness to contemplate anew their role in the learning transaction. Gage (1963) posed three topical questions about teaching: how do teachers behave, why do they behave as they do and what are the effects of their behaviour? The information gained by examining three types of variables, is required to answer these questions, the most central to research on teaching, is teaching behaviour, or the process of teaching. Secondly, there are the causes or determinants of those behaviours or processes and finally, there are the effects or consequences of the teaching behaviours or processes (Dunkin,1986). This research into teaching behaviours, conducted in three institutes of Technical and Further Education in the A.C.T., seeks to determine the quality of teaching for adult learners and the nature of the learning environment in TAFE. The design of the study incorporates comprehensive multi-variate instruments and a triangulating approach to data collection. In particular, a factor analysis of student questionnaires evaluates the main factors operant in the classrooms of the selected tertiary environments. The nature of the teaching behaviours and the contingent learning climate, enabled further conclusions to be drawn about the implications of these behaviours for adult learners eg. teacher expectancies, not found hitherto evaluated in a tertiary context.

This field study discusses curriculum evaluation in technical and further education in Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. The study has been developed to include a case study of evaluation undertaken at the Bruce College of Technical and Further Education. The case study forms an integra1 part of the field study and provides the focus for discussion of evaluation standards developed by Stufflebeam and others (joint Committee, 1981) for evaluation and meta-evaluation. The standards suggested by the Joint Committee (1981) were applied to the case study to examine the value of the case study itself as a form of a meta-evaluation, together with the advantages and limitations of the standards themselves. Following this analysis a modified list of standards has been prepared for application in the TAFE sector.

It had been apparent for some time that the supervision course taught by ACT TAFE (based on the 1970 NSW curriculum) was not meeting the training needs of ACT supervisors. This study is a detailed account of how the new curriculum in supervision was developed. The first section is a literature survey directed toward the most relevant problems concerning supervision: the duties and responsibilities of supervisors and their training. The literature shows how the perception of a supervisor has changed from that of a craftsman in charge of men in an assembly plant to that of a first-line or sub-manager, technical specialist or workgroup coordinator working with men and women in white collar occupations. Training research was surveyed in the areas of training needs assessment, curriculum, management development and evaluation. From these and further studies specifically on supervision courses in TAFE (the only post-secondary provider of training in this area), it was concluded that its piecemeal and haphazardly developed courses were unlikely to fulfil supervisors' training needs or gain the acceptance of employers. The second part of the field study is a survey of the opinions of ACT supervision students, supervisors and managers on their training needs in supervision. The techniques used were structured interviews with students and a postal questionnaire to managers and supervisors in the public and private sectors. Finally, the curriculum was formulated using results from the two previous sections. Although the response rate from the postal survey was low, the results were nevertheless useful, confirming the data obtained from past students. In the final analysis, three factors contributed almost equally to the design of the curriculum: ideas and findings in the literature, the surveys, and my own experience as a supervisor, manager and teacher.

This thesis addresses the argument that TAFE as an organisation has not significantly changed its concept of its purpose and place in Australian society over the last hundred years. It concludes that Industry Award Restructuring may possibly achieve what two world wars, two depressions, one economic boom, international civil rights movements and technological change could not: TAFE may change substantially over the next decade and move from its self-concept as an education institution into an overt training role. Due to award restructuring in industry, new demands will be made on TAFE which cannot be resisted if TAFE is to maintain its position as the primary provider of vocational education/training. In the course of the research it was found that it is possible to carry out direct observation of an organisation or industry without significantly affecting the processes of the organisation. This may be achieved by finding a role which complements, supports or supplements the organisation's objectives, but in which there are no line responsibilities and thus little or no interference. Such a role appears to be that of writer of documents, which gives unlimited access to all parties and sources without influencing either policy or practice. The outputs from the writing tasks are of value to the target organisation, so that the researcher gives as well as takes, and could be described as being in a symbiotic relationship with the organisation. The skill standards and assessment criteria developed during the study are presented as outcomes of a symbiotic case study, and the success of the method is evaluated by comparing the outcomes with those of other Streams of the same industry, which have been working on similar document development tasks over the same time period using traditional methods.

The research in this thesis attempts to study the ACT Institute of Technical and Further Education's marketing strategy, and it addresses a particular situation at a specific time. The research was undertaken in two studies. The first,through the use of a marketing audit, was focused on three key marketing areas within the Institute to indicate its overall marketing strategy. The second study involved a questionnaire to ascertain the effectiveness awareness of the Institute's advertising. The researcher first presents an historical review and an ordering of the historical aspects to illuminate the past and the current marketing posture of the ACT Institute of Technical and Further Education (ACTITAFE). The data are presented through four distinct historical periods from the establishment of the organisation in 1921 to 1991. Although technical and further education in the ACT has a history in excess of sixty years, data revealed that there is no clear evidence of a formal marketing strategy. The marketing audit interviews collected information from a broad but representative sample of eighteen staff members of the institution who are involved with marketing, media, career advice, publicity and similar marketing activities. The results revealed ACTITAFE has no formal marketing strategy. The attitude toward marketing and the marketplace has been ad hoc, uncoordinated, disjointed and reactive in its approach. Its principal approach is a reliance on awareness advertising. Because of the emphasis placed on advertising as the Institute's major concept for marketing, a questionnaire was distributed on advertising effectiveness and data were obtained from 252 completed responses. The results obtained from this study indicated that over the years the Institute has successfully built advertising awareness. Currently, it has no formal structured marketing strategy. The approach appears to be ad hoc, disjointed and uncoordinated. There are positive attempts to rectify this posture. However, the evidence available suggests that the journey will not be easy and the transition will not be rapid.

By using an interview survey of 30 randomly selected residents of Port Lincoln and the same number of persons from a country section of the Eyre Peninsula Community College region, an attempt has been made to ascertain profiles of participants and non-participants in adult education along with reasons for non-participation. It was assumed that lack of awareness of educational provision would be a major barrier to access and so a significant part of the study was addressed to this aspect. The town of Port Lincoln was considered separately from the rest of the Region because of the assumption that access and awareness were likely to be at a lower level amongst those persons in the more remote areas of the region. Assumptions that underpinned the proposal were: that Technical and Further Education was important, that community awareness of T.A.F.E. was therefore desirable and that barriers existed that precluded a significant section of the community participating in these activities.

Published research in Behavioural Sciences has indicated that there are some business and work environments which are more effective for the attainment of managerial objectives than others. In this study these research findings have been applied to learning activities of mature vocational students in TAFE in Canberra and to their teachers. Learning processes, learning theories and teaching are discussed. Teacher-student relationships and their impact on learning by creating sound learning environments are examined and a model of sound learning environment is created. This model is tested by investigation with final year certificate students. The impact of the model on teacher selection and teacher education is included in the discussion of results. The principal conclusion which can be drawn from the Study is that the sort of environment, which has been shown to be most effective in achievement of managerial objectives is also likely to be the most effective in achieving educational objectives for adult vocational students.