NCVER News #390

Defining STEM - how an acronym became a shopping list

Tuesday 29 November, 12:00pm - 1:00pm ACDT

The generality of the umbrella term 'STEM' (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) as a synonym for a diverse group of skills and academic fields poses various problems in terms of workforce planning and targeted interventions. This webinar brings together a synthesis from NCVER research investigating various educational and occupational concepts associated with STEM.

For more information and to register

An introduction to VOCSTATS

Thursday 1 December, 1:00pm - 2:00pm ACDT

Join us as we demonstrate VOCSTATS, a data tool that allows you to construct tables via an interactive web interface. VOCSTATS is designed for users who require highly tailored outputs and are willing to design and generate their statistical outputs directly.

For more information and to register

The Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) follow young people from across Australia over 10 years of their lives (from ages 15 to 25). Each year participants are asked questions about a wide range of topics, from student achievement and aspirations, to what they do when they leave school, providing a rich data set for researchers and policy-makers. Data from the 2015 interviews for the Y06 and Y09 cohorts are now available from the Australian Data Archive. Information on how to access these data is available from the How to access LSAY data page.

The LSAY user guides, information about how variables have been derived, and the listing of all the variables available in the data sets have been updated to include information from the 2015 interviews. These technical papers are now available from the LSAY website.

We’re constantly adding new items to VOCEDplus, our international tertiary education research database. Here are a few recent additions:

• Learning in a rich country: the normalisation of homelessness among apprentices in Australia
• Modernisation of vocational education and training: the international consultancy adopted by BIBB
• Passports to progress: how do vocational qualifications help young people in building their careers?
• Recent flattening in the higher education wage premium: polarization, skill downgrading, or both?
• VET FEE-HELP redesign: regulation impact statement

For more recent additions, see New Titles. To keep up with what’s new in VOCEDplus, follow @VOCEDplusTitles or subscribe to the New Titles RSS feed.

NCVER officially turns 35 years old this month. The National Centre for Vocational Education Research, originally the TAFE National Centre for Research and Development, was established in June 1980. The Centre was created as a company registered in the state of South Australia and limited by guarantee on 2 September 1981, and started its national operations in November of that year. Today we have an extensive library of over 70 000 publications relating to the vocational education and training sector.