This thesis develops a multi-faceted picture of competency based training
and the impact it is having on vocational education. The thesis is a personal
attempt to act agentically by deconstructing the discourse of vocational
education within which I am positioned in my working life. It is an attempt
to push back the boundaries of the discourse and to explore and create
spaces for contestation.
In order to do this I undertake three different readings of a set of texts. The
texts come from two sources. The first is a set of documents identified in the
Framework for the Implementation of Competency Based Training and which
represent the official government position on competency based training.
The second is a set of interviews I undertook with teachers at the Canberra Institute of Technology regarding their views about competency based
training. Details of the texts are provided in Section 2 of the thesis.
The body of the thesis is a set of three readings of these texts. The particular
view of 'reading' used in the thesis is a post structuralist one. Each of the
readings brings into play the understanding of the texts created within a
particular discourse. I draw on the work of Michel Foucault for the
understanding of discourse used in the thesis.
The first reading is from within the discourse. It is a reading which seeks to
understand competency based training in its own terms, and in relation to
the critical debates within the literature of vocational education. I argue in
this reading that competency based training emerges as a grand but flawed
vision for the future of vocational education.
The second reading takes the viewpoint of the work of Michel Foucault, and
in particular his book Discipline and Punish. It uses the metaphor of the
panopticon to explore the nature of power/knowledge within competency
based training and the regime of truth which it brings into being.
The final reading is from a feminist post structuralist position. I argue in this
reading that the discourse of competency based training is phallocentric. I
explore the liberatory claims of the discourse and conclude that the claims
are limited because they do not challenge the fundamental and powerful
dualisms through which competency based training is constituted.
Finally in the conclusion I briefly explore whether I have achieved the aim
of the thesis. I question what it means to act agentically and whether the
type of thesis I have undertaken constructs the possibility of doing so.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219298 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Robinson, Pauline, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Pauline Robinson |
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