This dissertation is a study of women's stories of learning in Vocational Education and Training (VET). / Equity strategies designed to include the interests of women students within the public Vocational Education and Training (VET) system in Australia are claimed to have been successful. Women make up almost half the current VET student population and an increasing majority of these women are mature aged. This thesis argues that VET's 'inclusivity' discourse elides the importance of the experiences, skills and knowledges of everyday life in shaping women's learning. Application of a combination of life skills, employment skills and sense of self indicates that in the VET environment an alternate type of vocational learning is operating. It is evident that women are becoming prepared for life as well as for work, and better informed to access opportunities across the spectrum of social participation. Stories that begin from the perspective of women's everyday experience of the VET system provide opportunities for understanding how women's experiences have been misrepresented in VET research and policy. / This study has found that women negotiate their 'eveyday' into their VET experience. Women understand vocational learning as a contextualised process in which the past and present, the family, the personal and the social, all play a role. Really useful learning and outcomes acknowledge this rich contextualisation of experience, producing learning that is enabling and exciting as well as skilling. Women's responses reveal that issues such as access and participation are understood differently to VET's framing of these concepts. In addition, the women offer rich descriptions of a vocational pedagogy that takes into to account the contexts of these women's lives. / Thesis (PhDEducation)--University of South Australia, 2008.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267001 |
| Creators | Daniels, Jeannie. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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