About our themes

• Students and individuals
• Teaching and learning
• Industry and employers
• VET system
• VET in context

To ensure NCVER's full resources - quantitative and qualitative - are used to their maximum potential, all our work is organised into five themes.

Students and individuals

This theme deals with a main client group of the VET system. It is a large and varied group – students differ in their personal characteristics, their motivation for training, what and how much they study, and what happens to them after training.

Better understanding of these subgroups is essential if the system is to become more client focused, a stated objective of the new national strategy.

Indigenous students are a particular focus, consistent with the fourth objective of the national strategy, Indigenous Australians will have skills for viable jobs and their learning culture will be shared.

Teaching and learning

The diversity of VET's clients makes teaching a particularly challenging task. Young people still in school require different approaches to mature-aged adults. VET learning also takes place in diverse arenas – schools, community-based centres,TAFE, workplaces and at home – and what works in one context may not work in another.

The range of skills and knowledge to be taught and learnt is also widening to include generic or employability skills, including learning how to learn. There are issues around assessment within training packages. Influential ideas on teaching and learning have not always been the subject of rigorous evaluation.

Industry and employers

This theme deals with a key group within the national VET system. Employers are providers of VET, customers of VET, and employ staff whose skills were acquired in the VET system.

The work we do on this theme ties in directly with the first objective of the new national strategy, Industry will have a highly skilled workforce to support strong performance in the global economy.

Factors motivating our work under this theme include:

• the creation of ten new industry skills councils,
• replacing the industry training advisory boards,
• special interest in older workers as the population ages,
• the formal evaluation of the New Apprenticeships program by the Department of Education, Science andTraining, and
• the availability of data from the 2001 – 2002 Training Expenditure and Practices Survey.

VET system

This theme concerns the institutional structure of the VET system and the surrounding policy framework.

The VET system is complex, with all state and territory governments involved in its provision, and with the Australian Government playing an important role in national coordination. The past decade has seen very considerable policy changes, such as the New Apprenticeships program, increased competition between private and public providers, training packages and the development of Australian Quality Training Framework standards.

Understanding how the system works, and the effects of these policy changes, are important research priorities.

VET in context

Education and training is increasingly viewed in terms of a broader system involving workplaces, educational institutions, and other government and community organisations.

Objective three of the national strategy, Communities and regions will be strengthened economically and socially through learning and employment, is explicitly concerned with the contribution of VET to communities and regions.