This thesis research reports on the Adult Community Education (ACE) sector in the Australian State of Victoria. Although it concentrates on Moreland Adult Education Assoc. (MAE) as a case study, it places MAE in the wider context of ACE in the local area of the Northern Metropolitan region of Melbourne. Although periodically referred to as the 'fourth educational sector' and funded by the same government departments as mainstream post-secondary sectors, ACE has always had a low profile and quasi-educational status due to the extreme variety of its venues, courses and locations, making it difficult to define and market as an entity. This study uses a range of qualitative methodologies suited to historical, educational research to provide a framework based around the initial guiding questions: 'Is ACE becoming TAFE?' and 'Who uses ACE and Why?' MAE was used as a case study because it was created by its local community in 1982 after which it expanded and developed from one-to-one pairs of volunteer tutors and literacy students to being a nationally Registered Training Organisation delivering accredited courses up to Diploma level. This expansion placed great strain on the infrastructure and personnel of the organisation, particularly during the main period of this research (1994 to 2004). Beginning with a review of the ACE sector, the thesis then describes the northern region of the Melbourne suburbs by using the data gained from a survey questionnaire. Further narrowing the research focus, the thesis analyses the development of the organisation over the ten year study period. The second half of the thesis emphasises the people of MAE through 18 interviews by analysing their opinions, life-experiences and perceptions of change to create a sense of their connectedness to the local community and MAE. The primary aims of this thesis are to document an example of the development of an ACE centre and how it managed change during a ten year period. It records a sense of how and why people engaged in the sector and some of their lived-experiences and their responses to changes. Data analysis results in three sets of findings and propositions in the categories of sectoral, organisational and personal. These key findings involve a range of externally applied pressures being brought to bear on both ACE and MAE. This is counteracted by individual resistance to change, creating a tension which threatens MAE's long-term sustainability.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/210221 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Curlewis, Margaret Judith, meg.curlewis@gmail.com |
| Publisher | RMIT University. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.rmit.edu.au/help/disclaimer, Copyright Margaret Judith Curlewis |
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