This chapter provides an introduction to two contrasting vocational course: the Associate Diploma in Applied Science (Computing) award, based on the content driven curriculum model and the first year Diploma of Information Technology award, based on the National Information Technology curriculum model. It develops the research questions pertaining to each model. It provides a full description of the present study and the adoption of a system approach in evaluating two contrasting curriculum models. Finally, this chapter justifies the study in terms of the significant impact the Information Technology has on society.Chapter Two reviews the literature on the theories from different disciplines and research findings in order to guide the present study. This eclectic section discusses theories related to Cognitive Science, Instructional Theories, Information Technology (IT) and Science Education, and Vocational Curriculum Models.Chapter Three describes the environment in which the content driven model has developed. It examines the historical changes and influences that have occurred in the Western Australian Technical and Further Education (WA TAFE) computing curriculum in terms of educational goals, content mix and profile, and assessments types. It investigates the relevance of the curriculum and the syllabi to meet the changing needs of industry; and assess the desirable and undesirable consequences of the content driven curriculum model.Chapter Four evaluates the effect of the content driven model. It examines the degree of satisfaction of the graduates with aspects of their Associate Diploma of Applied Science (Computing) courses in 1991/2/3 based on the NCVER study (1993), Dawe (1993) and Arrowsmith (1993/4) surveys. The results from each relevant question are provided, discussed and evaluated. This evaluation provides an in-depth view of graduates educational ++ / backgrounds prior to enrolment in the course, their satisfaction levels of teaching effectiveness and course organisation, present employment status, their preferences for further studies and their demographic profile.Chapter Five evaluates the current state of affairs under the new policy directions of the National Curriculum based on the CBT approach. Through classroom surveys, this chapter provides an evaluation of learners degree of satisfaction with aspects of their Advanced Certificate IV of the National IT Curriculum. For comparison purposes, these surveys also provide information on students educational backgrounds, level of satisfaction, their present employment status and preferences for further studies. It is most useful for curriculum planners, wanting to be cognisant in implement a CBT driven curriculum model.Chapter Six compares, evaluates and summarises the differences between the content and the CBT driven curriculum models. This chapter pays particular attention to the shifting of graduates and students satisfaction levels with their two different courses and the effects of moving from a content to a CBT driven curriculum model. It examines the changes in learners satisfaction levels and explains the reasons of patterns of changes, given that learners educational backgrounds, teachers effectiveness and other factors have remained constant over the last five years. This comparison is useful for curriculum planners, computing lecturers and employers as it makes them aware of the strength and weaknesses of these two contrasting curriculum models.Chapter Seven answers the question of the effectiveness of these two contrasting models. This has considerable implication for curriculum planners, computing lecturers and employers in terms of the ability of students to transfer skills and adapt to the rapidly changing IT environment. This study cannot predict ++ / the future, however, it makes long and short term recommendations for the sector based on historical evidence, research findings from the literature, surveys and interviews.

The provision of vocational education and training is largely provided by the Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges and institutes, which have been established throughout Australia. All of these colleges and institutes are the responsibility of the respective State governments and are generally considered by those governments as strategic instruments of government particularly in regard to the preparation of people for employment and addressing deficiencies within the workforce. As more emphasis has been placed upon government entities to be more entrepreneurial and corporate in their outlook, pressures for reform of the TAFE sector have also increased. These pressures have included changes to funding arrangements, increased compliance regimes and a freeing of the training delivery to encourage the establishment of private providers. This thesis explores how Chief Executive Officers and Middle Level Managers within the TAFE environment are responding to those challenges. Forty-seven senior TAFE managers are interviewed to ascertain their perspectives on the community and government expectations of TAFE and how they believe TAFE is reacting to these challenges. Resulting from the research has been the emergence of entrepreneurship in TAFE. The notion of entrepreneurship in TAFE seems to capture a sense of change, a sense of emerging vibrance, and is often used to describe innovation and risk taking within the TAFE environment. The word entrepreneurial, entrepreneurialism, entrepreneurship and other derivations of the word are loosely employed by TAFE personnel to describe particular phenomenon within TAFE. Within this thesis the treatment of entrepreneurship as a definitive concept is recognised as problematic and it is therefore treated in a way that aligns to the TAFE environment and not necessarily as defined by traditional entrepreneurial theory. / The resulting research has found that TAFE leaders are working in an environment that has a multiplicity of expectations and demands that challenge the leadership of TAFE. The research finds that many of the TAFE leaders strive to act entrepreneurially whilst attempting to manage an environment that is constrained by its policy frameworks, industrial relations requirements, funding arrangements and national and state compliance frameworks. The research questions whether governments should provide TAFE with greater capacity to act entrepreneurially; governments might, as a result be rewarded through greater achievements from the TAFE sector. While the research points to a number of highly successful leaders and leadership practices in TAFE it has also found that many leaders seem to rely upon intuitiveness and past experience to lead within their environments. Finally the research posits a framework for leadership within TAFE where the leadership styles of emotional intelligence, path-goal and leader-member exchange (LMX) are merged and integrated to provide a comprehensive quality leadership framework that will achieve positive outcomes: A framework that seeks to provide a practical guide to future leadership training and development in TAFE. In addition to the leadership framework the research has identified a number of intrinsic transformational drivers and extrinsic transformational drivers, which contribute to the success of leadership in TAFE and similarly a number of impediments, which restrict TAFE leaders.

This study examines the reasons for student withdrawal from the Accounting Certificate Course at Woden TAFE College during the period 1981 to 1984 inclusive. The investigation concerns students enrolled in a demanding, four year course, which leads to a para-professional qualification including (subject to practical experience) registration with the Tax Agents Registration Board. A 100% survey was made of all students, both withdrawn and continuing for the relevant period. Students are adults, mostly between the ages of 20 to 50. Attrition rates in the early stages of the course were found to be very high, and reasons established were related to a variety of causes, including personal reasons. Follow up interviews by telephone were carried out and these showed no new trends from the results of the questionnaires. The main reasons for attrition within the control of the college, seemed to be related to inaccurate student perceptions of, and expectations from the course. The major recommendations and implications arising from the study suggest that counselling be given greater prominence at the time of enrolment. There is also a case for timetabling to include day classes at times and venues most beneficial for students. Another outcome of the investigation suggests that closer liaison be developed between the college, industry and commerce. An important issue which became evident from this research focused on staff development and the need for administrators and teachers to further their educational leadership knowledge and skills to provide the best possible service for students.

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.

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.

Thesis (M Distance Ed)--University of South Australia, 1994

The central arguments in this thesis rest on two premises. Firstly language and context are intimately bound up in the social construction of workplace gender inequalities. Secondly, organisational understandings and management of women�s access to employment opportunities and rewards in modern bureaucratic organisations are constituted through discourses or systems of organisational knowledges, practices and rules of organising. This study uses the concept of discourse to account for the productive and powerful role of knowledge and language practices in constituting the organisational contexts and meanings through which people make sense of and experience complex organisations.

This field study examines the comparative effectiveness of traditional and humanistic teaching methods. In part I the origins of humanistic teaching and their relationship to Gestalt therapy are considered. The influence of Humanistic education adult learning theory is also discussed. Part I concludes with an assessment of humanistic teaching. Part II: To measure the comparative effectiveness of the humanistic and traditional teaching methods, three groups of first year students in General English classess in a College of Technical and Further Education were selected. The effectiveness was measured in terms of differences in 1. Self-esteem. 2. Spelling Ability. 3. Attrition rates. 4 Academic Results. It can be concluded that there is: No difference in measures of self-esteem between groups, on the basis of the teaching method used. A large increase in the measure of self-esteem was observed in one of the groups that was taught with humanistic teaching strategies. Spelling measures showed no significant changes in any of the groups. Attrition rates were significantly reduced in groups that received humanistic teaching. Academic results of students completing the course showed no significant differences.