This seminar series is offered by the Centre for the Study of Canadian and International Higher Education (CIHE) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. It explores the important role that community colleges and similar types of institutions play in supporting social, education, and cultural development in their local communities and regions.
CIHE Speaker Series - The Social Role of Colleges with Dr. Steven Hodge
Eroding the Social Role of Vocational Education in Australia
Post-compulsory education in Australia is sharply polarised around a binary of university education and ‘vocational education and training’ (VET) offered by public colleges of technical and further education (TAFEs) and a number of smaller private institutes. In the heyday of TAFE provision – 1970s – these colleges fulfilled an explicit social mandate. However, reforms in the decades since have eroded this mandate. The seminar examines factors in this trajectory including the advent of competency-based training as a system-wide curriculum model, the doctrine of ‘industry leadership’ and the concept of ‘national skills formation’.
About the Speaker
Dr. Steven Hodge
Dr. Hodge is a curriculum researcher based a Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. He has special interests in vocational education and the ways occupational expertise is represented in curriculum.
