the northern institute quality: a contested concept in vet dr don zoellner – research associate

The Northern Institute

Quality: a contested concept in VET

Dr Don Zoellner – Research Associate

Quality: a contested concept in VET| 8-10 April 2015 |

• Australian National Training Authority’s 1 of 6 goals was to improve the quality of the system

• “Quality will be at the forefront of change”

• Quality is in the national training system’s DNA

• Why does no one speak against quality?

Overcoming the ‘confusion of institutional eccentricity’


• to justify their existence

• to make a claim for control of the system

• by discourse analysis of four exemplar documents

How 4 national bodies mobilised quality


• National Centre for Vocational Education Research - Annual Report 2012-2013

• Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency – Future Focus: 2013 national workforce development strategy

• Industry Skills Councils – VET quality project• National Skills Standards Council - NSSC

standards policy framework: improving vocational education and training: the Australian Vocational Qualification System

The claimants and their documents


• Legitimises organisation contributions both politically and philosophically

• Serves a very different function than envisaged by practitioners and users who often see quality as a warranty on the skills acquisition of students

Quality lubricates system operations


• Gallie – used as if it has permanent importance but actually has no fixed meaning

• Bacchi – giving meaning to a concept is what politics is all about

• Mol – a fuzzy concept shared by different paradigms allowing the system to function

Quality as an essentially contested concept


• Each gives a shape to particular political visions

• Not just the word but the proposals that accompany it disclose the intentions of the different bodies

• The 4 documents use ‘quality’ or its ubiquitous acronyms 750 times in 400 pages

Four different visions of quality


• “High quality independent information”• Can feed market efficiency and/or• Support bureaucratic programs and reporting

• Gives effect to an ideology that complex social phenomena can be best explained by reductionism, quantification and manipulation of data

NCVER


• Colonised the vacant ‘industry control’ space post-ANTA

• Markets are unreliable to meet workforce needs• Providers cannot be trusted• National consistency is both important and

elusive• An ideological position that ‘arm’s-length’

technical expertise is the best arbiter of “delivery (including quality)”

AWPA


• Quality can best address problems in providing nationally consistent:

• Qualifications• Assessment and reporting• Training content• Ideological position supports:• Centralised decision-making and rational planning• Micro-prescription and auditing rather than

untrustworthy markets and provider incapacity

ISCs


• Lack of quality tarnishes system integrity• Qualifications are the property of the issuing

minister• The system requires increased regulation and

standardisation• Ideological disposition views markets as

dangerous and occupied by unreliable providers• Superiority of state over individual knowledge• Centralisation of power is more responsive to

political imperatives

NSSC


• Proposed solutions to long-standing training system problems framed in terms of quality

• Quality’s transactional function provides entry into the debates from different perspectives

• Each organisation’s proposed courses of action give effect to their own political ambitions for our social and economic future

• They each give a different meaning to the concept of quality, frequently different from practitioners

The significance of quality


• By the end of 2014, only the grand survivor of the VET system, NCVER, was still operating.

• It plays its own transactional function in the system

• Provides the most politically useful meaning of the contested concept of quality at this time.

Of course, there are consequences


• Questions, comments and discussion

Thank you for attending

the northern institute quality: a contested concept in vet dr don zoellner – research associate

Documents

contested concept

system quality

fuzzy concept

forefront of change

system operationsquality

national centre

different bodies

issuing ministerthe