Training reforms implemented over the past ten years have contributed to an extraordinary rate of change within organisations concerned with the delivery of vocational education and training. Institutes of technical and further education (TAFE) and the teachers employed by them have not been immune to these changes. The study reported in this thesis explored the meaning and process of educational change for TAFE teachers as they worked to implement one of the core components of the national training reforms into their teaching programs. / Much of the existing literature has failed to consider adequately individual teachers' responses to educational reform. It has not taken into account the unique character and position held by TAFE as the major provider of vocational education and how this might affect teachers' experiences and approaches to implementing major reforms across all program areas. / The aim of this study was to explore the implementation of one component of the national training reforms, namely the competency-based curriculum framework, from TAFE teachers' perspectives. Research questions formulated to guide the study focused on teachers' concerns and the different versions of the curriculum framework, and on ways of working with the framework that emerged over the implementation process. Questions also focused on illuminating teachers' experiences of the change process itself. / In order to address these questions, an orientation described as 'transcendental realism' by Miles and Huberman (1994) was adopted. This orientation, drawing on both the post-positivist and interpretive paradigms, asserts that social reality can exist both in the minds of individuals and can also be apprehended in the objective world. This world-view represents a pragmatic response to the challenges inherent in attempting to understand the nature of social reality that is multi-faceted, complex and subject to various interpretations. It acknowledges the role that the researcher is able to play in bringing together different perspectives in order to develop a more comprehensive and in-depth view of the social phenomenon under scrutiny. / In order to bring together these different perspectives on the meaning and process of educational change for TAFE teachers a multi-method approach to collecting data was utilised. This approach was built upon the assumption that both qualitative and quantitative data had the potential to provide valuable information that would be complementary and therefore of equal importance in addressing the central issues of this study. The conceptual framework for examining educational change was provided by the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), suitably modified and complemented by a detailed examination of the structural and personal factors that impacted on teachers' experiences of the change process. / The research process for the study consisted of a number of phases undertaken over a three-year period from mid 1994 until early 1997. A questionnaire survey was undertaken of a random sample of 503 teachers employed by TAFE South Australia across a variety of program areas. The selection of a random sample of teachers was a deliberate strategy to capture as wide a cross-section of teachers' voices and experiences as possible. Responses were received from 118 teachers. A sub-group of questionnaire respondents (46 in total) was then followed up and invited to participate in focussed interviews. Data analysis was undertaken in several discrete stages so as to provide a basis for examining each set of data and to investigate the ways in which each set supported and contradicted the others. / The outcomes from this study highlight that educational reform of the nature and scope of the competency-based curriculum framework that teachers were asked to implement is a complex and dilemma ridden process. The introduction of this framework required teachers to adopt new ways of working in relation to the conception, delivery and assessment of their programs. As a component of the training reforms, the competency-based curriculum framework also carried with it the imperative that the philosophy embedded in the Kangan reforms of TAFE in the 1970s be reworked in the light of a strong emphasis on the needs of industry to take precedence over the needs of individuals. As such, the reforms also sought to re-order the relationship between teachers and industry. / The data collected for this study provide a micro level, systematic focus on teachers' work across a variety of TAFE program areas. As such, they provide a fine grained perspective, particularly on the phenomenon of 'partial' implementation and how various 'versions' of the framework were constructed within the various implementation sites. / The data also illuminate the experience of the change process as an intensely human process. Teachers' feelings and concerns in relation to the curriculum framework had a significant impact on their ways of working, which, in turn, were realised in the outcomes of the implementation process. Teachers' experiences reported in the study highlight the importance of understanding and supporting the change process in an environment where the policy development process that mandates change is removed from teachers' spheres of influence. / These findings hold implications for policy makers, managers and TAFE teachers in relation to the manner in which they conceptualise the change process, the policy/implementation nexus within the TAFE environment and the influence of institutional and industry cultures in shaping teachers' responses to change. They raise questions in relation to the types of support needed to assist teachers to bring about real and significant change within their teaching environments. They also highlight issues about teachers' roles as pro-active change agents rather than passive recipients of mandated policies which seek not only to change teachers' practices but also to challenge their values and beliefs about their role as teachers and the ways they might relate to industry in a dynamic policy environment. / Thesis ([PhDEducation])--University of South Australia, 2001.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267328 |
| Creators | Simons, Michele. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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