The concepts of Beruf, Bildung and Occupational pedagogies are central elements to how occupational skilfulness, working life work and occupational preparation through both how vocational and higher education are understood in the German societal context. The valuing of skilled work (i.e. Beruf), how it is integrated into the conduct of work, the quality of working life and the viability of enterprises (i.e. Bildung). Moreover, the development of occupational capacities and highly skilful work is also emphasised within the German the cash in education and higher education systems with the deve ..read more

Contemporary working life requirements are increasingly aligned with competence in electronically mediated tasks and work roles: i.e., the digitalisation of work. This alignment necessitates workers learning and utilizing the conceptual knowledge and ways of working needed for these kinds of occupational tasks. Yet, this knowledge is often distinct from and displaces workers’ existing ways of knowing thereby threatening their competence and sense of self as a working age adult. However, these kinds of knowledge can be difficult to access, learn and practice, requiring them to be mediated (i.e ..read more

My recent visit to the University of Stavanger reinforces the importance of collaborations, not only because of its international dimension, but engaging with colleagues who are entrenched in the field of healthcare, but also from different perspectives and orientations. The projects here focus on building both workforce capacity through individual development and system strength in promoting resilience through individual, collaborative and systemwide responses. For me this collaboration has been helpful in capturing a broader range of perspectives, views and approaches to conducting research ..read more

A short 16 minute presentation of a research project that sought to identify what would attract and engage young people in healthcare occupations, what would comprise effective models of preparation and what is required to retain those individuals in that work ..read more

Stephen Billett interviewed by Peter Sawchuck ..read more

The first keynote presentation by Professor Stephen Billett at the 12th Researching Work & Learning (RWL12) Conference organized by the University of Toronto (July 13-15, 2022). The Researching Work & Learning (RWL) International Conference Series is the world’s longest, continuously running international research conference series serving the field of workplace learning. It was initiated in 1999 by researchers at the University of Leeds (UK ..read more

This video provides considerations of and suggestions for how Clinical Teaching might be conceptualised and enacted. In particular, it proposes that it is important to go beyond telling and view this teaching more broadly. It also emphasizes how this teaching can occur, largely, through everyday activities and interaction in clinical practice. Ultimately, the focus needs to be on trainees’ learning and assisting them become active and agentic learners ..read more

The Parliamentary Committee today for Education, Employment and Training Committee.  The topic being “The Delivery of vocational education and training in rural, remote and regional Queensland”.  The link to parliament TV channel is here.  Stephen mentions HEEP and another project about social partnerships ..read more

The webinar draws on the findings from an Education Horizons project engaging Queensland school-age children, parents and their teachers to propose how vocational education might be considered a more attractive and viable post-education pathway. Beyond that specific focus, the findings informed about the influences on and the processes through which young people make these decisions and how that might be better informed and enacted. These findings have been used here to address how student-centred processes of decision-making best inform and empower young Queenslanders’ choices about post-scho ..read more

VET and worklife learning pathways To understand, evaluate and enhance how vocational education and training (VET) contributes to individuals’ learning of their occupational capacities and workplace requirements necessitates appraising those contributions across the course of their working life. It is particularly helpful to know more about how VET assists and supports working age Australians through key worklife transitions to appraise its contributions. Here, the concept of a personal curriculum – the individual pathway comprising across working life – is introduced and evoked to capture th ..read more