This section examines the perception that changes in policy have resulted in inadequate LLN curricula. Most participants understood these changes as reflecting increased employment-driven outcome requirements that decreased teachers’ ability to be flexible in their approach to individual learners.
Concerned with the push to narrow the focus of LLN towards foundation skills for employment, Belinda complained that: ‘The government are telling us what to teach, it’s all workplace related now, whereas before it was whatever we wanted to do. It was if we liked it and the students liked it.’ Gayle worried that this limited her ability to focus on more holistic aspects of LLN, such as personal and community development. She stated: ‘When I first started ... it was based on the person, now I think in the VET sector it’s much more specific, literacy and numeracy about an employment outcome.’
Sharing Gayle’s concern, Helen lamented what she saw as a change in focus, from LLN curricula that had originally encompassed a broad framework, placing equal emphasis on goals in community engagement, personal development and employment, to a linear curriculum aimed at employment specific competency development. Her interview responses were influenced by her prior involvement with the 2013 re-accreditation of the Certificates in General Education for Adults (CGEA).4 Commenting on the new
curriculum format, which she viewed as more closely aligned to vocational courses, Helen stated:
I was included in the CMM [Curriculum Maintenance Management]5 when ... we were doing all these rewrites and the language of it just did my head in; it was just CBT [competency-based training]. I think that was a bit of a factor in me thinking, “I don’t know that I want to keep teaching in here”.
As a consequence of changes in the focus of LLN curricula over time, participants’ perceived that LLN’s original emphasis on community engagement had been lost, consumed by the need to have LLN skills directly linked to vocational outcomes. Some argued that this change did not suit the needs of learners, not least because there was less flexibility for teachers to create programs to suit individual needs. This view was highlighted by Gayle who stated:
I think that teaching practices are much narrower than they used to be. You do teach to the competency that’s required and the time that you get to teach it is really limited.
Others, such as David, expressed concern that close ties to competency descriptors were limiting teachers’ abilities to teach to individual needs. He contended: ‘Trying to match up the descriptors with what you actually do—it can be very challenging.’ Adding to this, Eve claimed: ‘You’re more driven by the requirements of the unit of competency than you are by the student’s needs which I think is a problem’. Karen believed that LLN teachers had become more focused on assessment that on providing meaningful learning experiences: ‘I actually think that teachers are so focused on assessment they are forgetting about teaching’.
Participants’ narratives illustrate that teachers spend a great deal of time on assessments that are driven by restrictive competencies that do not necessarily or easily meet learners’ needs. This practice was implemented, by and large, to satisfy the needs of auditors and a government driven funding formula.6 Articulating the concerns of many, Edwina stated:
The only way to fund work is to enrol students into curriculum but we aren’t able to necessarily fully deliver all the requirements to that curriculum because
5 The Curriculum Maintenance Management is an organisation commissioned by the state government to oversee curriculum maintenance and development work.
6 HESG created a funding formula that was linked to specific courses and student contact hours (SCH). RTO’s were required to demonstrate the full training activity linked to each unit of competency.
we are not in control of what actually happens in the classroom. So we’re always trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
Concerned about the inflexibility of this approach, Carmel claimed that:
You can’t always do what the students need, you’ve got a curriculum document that means you’ve got to show an auditor that you’ve adequately assessed this learning outcome and this assessment task whether the student really needed this assessment task or not.
This section has identified three broad, yet distinct, discursive repertoires that show participants’ responses to changed policy directives. At the macro-level, an interrelationship between funding, compliance and curriculum was evident. Participants reacted to the conditions caused by stricter controls and changes, leading to reduced funding, limitations of curriculum and a perceived over-regulation by auditing bodies. Each of these conditions intersected, producing a direct cause and effect reaction that influenced teachers’ perceptions and roles within their VET institutions. Limited to the macro-level, this section has highlighted a snapshot of participants’ understandings of the realities of policy reform. The following section drills down further, exploring the meso- level. It focuses on how reform has led to changed professional practices and roles within VET.