News & Events
Putting the V-E-T in R and D
By Francesca Beddie
Campus Review
27 July 2009
I keep reading that innovation will help us climb out of the economic downturn and onto a path to a more sustainable future...but only if there is better collaboration so that good ideas can be turned into viable business solutions, delivered by a more creative workforce. Yet, when I turn to recent Australian policy documents on innovation and tertiary education, there seems to be an omission: vocational education and training (VET).
For example, VET is not mentioned in the government's innovation agenda for the 21st Century, announced in its May White Paper, Powering Ideas. That agenda sets seven national innovation priorities to focus on the production, diffusion and application of new knowledge, with a view to addressing the country's long-term weakness in business innovation, and on collaboration between researchers and industry.
This poses a question: does VET have a place in R&D and innovation?
Phil Toner from the Centre for Industry and Innovation Studies at the University of Western Sydney has been saying for years that VET is neglected in innovation policy. His recent review of the literature for an OECD Study into Workforce Skills and Innovation suggests there is too linear a view of innovation as being essentially scientific Research and subsequent Development of new projects and processes. In fact, he says, the supply of VET skills is influential in determining not only what goods and services are produced in a national economy but how they are produced.
Julia Gillard has also pointed the way to different ways of thinking about translating knowledge into action. In her response to the recommendations in the Bradley Review concerning building the relationship between higher education and VET, she told the Big Skills Conference:
Technological change is narrowing the gap between the realms of 'pure' knowledge - traditionally the preserve of universities - and vocational skills - traditionally the preserve of VET... Advances in environmental science are creating new 'green collar'industries...where knowledge of science and practical skills are equally important. It's the same in biotechnology, where our laboratory assistants and technicians need a sophisticated understanding of the building blocks of human life...The demand for higher levels of knowledge and skills is growing in almost every industry you could name.
The government's response to the Review of the National Innovation System (Cutler review) did not take up this theme, even though Cutler had articulated it in Venturous Australia:
The other great cultural divide is between the realm of the conceptual, the intellectual, and the artisan and craftsman. The role of crafts and trades in innovation has been massively neglected, particularly in the important areas of continuing incremental innovation in the workplace. ... There is an increasing need for multi-disciplinary practice and collaboration in virtually all areas, and there is a need to learn how to do it better.
Perhaps there is a place here for a VET-led industry system, in which the VET-trained artisan -- and even the VET teacher -- has a role in the research lab as well as on the factory floor. Such people could contribute ideas informed by practice in the field and take back to their workplace -- and training rooms -- increased analytical expertise. The end result might be, to borrow a phrase from John Buchanan of the Workplace Relations Centre at the University of Sydney, the practical intellectual, who would not only be contributing to R&D but would be better able to help students to apply theoretical knowledge in a practical context. It is these higher level skills that will drive technical and organisational innovation in the workplace.
The national skills council, Innovation and Business Skills Australia (IBSA), pointed out in its submission to the Cutler review that 'to deliver the benefits of a national innovation system Australia will need truly integrated and internally coherent policy across the whole of government'. This should include collaboration across the whole of the tertiary education sector and a reconsideration of where to direct R&D funding.
IBSA went on to argue for 'ongoing development for all VET professionals to build their capacity to train an innovative workforce'. One way of doing this would be to include them in the R part of R&D.
Last September, Kim Carr spoke about the art of innovation. He said,
My aim in innovation is not to flood the country with shiny gadgets, but to change the culture.
Of course we will need new technologies to answer the challenges and grasp the opportunities that lie before us.
But we will also need new institutions, new forms of community - new ways of understanding ourselves and our world.
In all of this, the humanities, arts and social sciences are critical.
Let's add VET to the Senator's list of the disciplines we need to power Australia's ideas.
Francesca Beddie is the General Manager of Research at the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER)
