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Identifying effective strategies to grow and sustain a professional early years workforce. The National Early Years Workforce Strategy (2012) identifies the imperative for a larger, more qualified, professional, responsive and collaborative childcare workforce. This need is urgent. By 2014, Commonwealth legislation specifies that all long day-care centres must have a qualified teacher and minimum staff qualification of Certificate III. Yet high turnover, skill loss and failure to meet existing q ....Identifying effective strategies to grow and sustain a professional early years workforce. The National Early Years Workforce Strategy (2012) identifies the imperative for a larger, more qualified, professional, responsive and collaborative childcare workforce. This need is urgent. By 2014, Commonwealth legislation specifies that all long day-care centres must have a qualified teacher and minimum staff qualification of Certificate III. Yet high turnover, skill loss and failure to meet existing qualification standards persist. Nationally, multiple strategies are being implemented to achieve the new qualification standards but there is scant evidence about their effectiveness. This project aims to identify the most effective strategies to reduce loss and increase professional engagement in the early years workforce.Read moreRead less
How do qualifications delivered by enterprises contribute to improved skill levels and other benefits for companies, workers and the nation? This project investigates the role of employer-based qualifications training in developing the skills and prospects of the Australian workforce and the competitive capabilities of companies. It focuses on enterprises that are accredited to deliver qualifications to their own workers, providing data to improve and expand this form of training.
The commercial provision of schooling and its implications for Australia. This project aims to identify modes of commercial provision of schooling around the globe and the policy networks and changing forms and practices of the state that help this provision. The integration of public schooling and corporate investment has become relatively commonplace around the world, yet there is no academic research on how this phenomenon could affect Australia. The project expects to show how commercial pro ....The commercial provision of schooling and its implications for Australia. This project aims to identify modes of commercial provision of schooling around the globe and the policy networks and changing forms and practices of the state that help this provision. The integration of public schooling and corporate investment has become relatively commonplace around the world, yet there is no academic research on how this phenomenon could affect Australia. The project expects to show how commercial provision of schooling creates relationships between governments and private companies and the implications of this commercial provision for equitable and democratic schooling in Australia.Read moreRead less
Exemplary early childhood educators at work: A multi-level investigation. Exemplary early childhood educators at work: A multi-level investigation. This project aims to inform strategies to better attract, prepare, recognise, support and retain a high quality workforce, by investigating the complexity of early childhood educators’ work. Seemingly entrenched workforce shortages threaten the objectives that governments and families seek through investment in early childhood education. Popular imag ....Exemplary early childhood educators at work: A multi-level investigation. Exemplary early childhood educators at work: A multi-level investigation. This project aims to inform strategies to better attract, prepare, recognise, support and retain a high quality workforce, by investigating the complexity of early childhood educators’ work. Seemingly entrenched workforce shortages threaten the objectives that governments and families seek through investment in early childhood education. Popular images of work with young children as easy and instinctual, or of teaching as only school based, mislead potential workforce entrants and erode the status of educators, leading to attrition. This project’s audit and description of exemplary educators’ work, across each level of mandated qualification, will inform strategies to sustain a high quality early childhood workforce into the future.Read moreRead less
Building futures for young Australians at risk: a coordinated measurement framework and data archive. This project will build a national data base of evidence about and for programs that address the needs of the 16 per cent of young Australians currently at risk of school non-completion. It will generate important knowledge for program improvement and sustainability and coordination of evidence across diverse and fragmented programs.
Recognising the skill in jobs traditionally considered unskilled. Some jobs are regarded as skilled and others as unskilled, yet all jobs contain skill. This project will examine under-recognised and undervalued skills in the service and manufacturing sectors, and explores the implications of these findings for government policy, the training system, companies and workers.
Innovative partnerships for youth engagement in education and work. The project is a partnership between two universities and eight school system agencies across three states. The project will examine how collaboration between schools system, employers and other providers can enhance applied learning in secondary schools and build youth engagement with education and work.
Time-Use, Time Poverty and Teachers’ Work. Education systems and teacher unions have long expressed concern regarding the intensification of the demands of teaching and school leadership. Challenges with retaining early career teachers and recruiting new teachers are often blamed on increasing teacher workload and associated burnout. The primary aim of this study is to investigate teachers’ work intensification. This will provide important information for systems, unions and schools and suggest ....Time-Use, Time Poverty and Teachers’ Work. Education systems and teacher unions have long expressed concern regarding the intensification of the demands of teaching and school leadership. Challenges with retaining early career teachers and recruiting new teachers are often blamed on increasing teacher workload and associated burnout. The primary aim of this study is to investigate teachers’ work intensification. This will provide important information for systems, unions and schools and suggest areas for intervention at the school and system level. The secondary aim of this study is to examine how teachers manage the intensification of their work, with a particular emphasis on commercial digital tools marketed to them as time saving devices.Read moreRead less
A cross-national study of the relative impact of an oral component on PhD examination quality, language and practice. High quality doctoral degrees call for the most effective forms of assessment. This project investigates the role of oral examination in PhD assessment, common internationally but not in Australia, and is the first to compare the relative impact of oral and 'no oral' models on examination quality, language and practice.
Changing work, changing workers, changing selves: a study of pedagogies in the new vocationalism. Changes in the form of work have led to an emphasis on the development of new kinds of working identities. This project aims to map, analyze and theorize the way in which pedagogical strategies in vocational education produce new worker identities. It examines contextual differences across different sectors and industries as well as forms of inclusion and exclusion. For policy-makers it provides ....Changing work, changing workers, changing selves: a study of pedagogies in the new vocationalism. Changes in the form of work have led to an emphasis on the development of new kinds of working identities. This project aims to map, analyze and theorize the way in which pedagogical strategies in vocational education produce new worker identities. It examines contextual differences across different sectors and industries as well as forms of inclusion and exclusion. For policy-makers it provides a new mapping and evaluation of different types of institutional programs; for practitioners it brings new insights about effective practices; for theorists it offers a new, empirically-grounded theorisation of workplace knowledge.Read moreRead less