Providing Education and Training for At Risk ... - Victoria University

machinery, are also susceptible to large-scale disadvantage. And many suburbs of Melbourne,settled when assured livelihoods were locally available in large manufacturing, or smallbusinesses, have felt the chill winds of recession and long term unemployment for all agegroups.Thus, in these ‘new times’, it may very well be the case that new sorts of workers and newsorts of schools are necessitated. An example of the re-thinking that needs to occur in classroomsacross the country is shown in current research on schooling and workplace learning.Re-Thinking LearningCumming and Carbines (1997), in a report on schools’ involvement in workplacelearning, detail six case studies - all non-Victorian - where schools have challengedthe dominance of the traditional academic orientation in their structures,administration, teaching and assessment and then in the codification of student achievement.They discuss ‘creative tensions and unresolved problems’, as follows (pp21-22):The implementation and expansion of workplace learning resulted in various tensionswithin each of the case study schools. A common problem was the school’s ability tomaintain an appropriate balance between general and vocational education. Havingdevoted so much time, energy and resourcing to achieve a convergence, in many casesthey became victims of their own success. The more their reputation grew..., the greaterwas the level of demand...Yet Cumming and Carbines make some comments on teacher culture, in the light of thisdemand:A common statement from teachers in traditional subject areas...was that, while theyregarded the broadening of vocational options as desirable, it was invariably at theirexpense...the pendulum had swung too far for their liking towards an instrumentalapproach to education.Instrumentalism notwithstanding, students reported that their work placements had shownthem a different, and more preferable, learning style, and they were able to define this asarising in experiences such as...being given responsibility, working on ‘real’ problems, being allocated varied tasks,being treated as adults, having a chance to show initiative/take risks...and that back at school, learning reverted to boredom, provoked by...being talked and directed, working from work sheets or the board, doing the samethings over and over again, being treated like little children, and having to conform andto mask any form of difference from other students.It is clear that workplace learning confronts much of the traditional school and teacher culture.But it also confronts much of the traditional technical and further education culture. In somerecent research on teaching and learning for disadvantaged groups in vocational contexts,Anderson et al. (1997), drawing on the work of Misko (1994), state23