Raymond Williams was a literary critic, sociologist, novelist, and political activist but above all a teacher, with a theory of education as a societal process running through his work. He styled the UK's educational establishment of the 1960s 'Old Humanists'; guardians of a dominant elite culture who were losing their influence to the new…

The distinction between external assessment and internal assessment underpins a major reform to vocational qualifications underway in England. To be approved by the Department for Education, vocational qualifications must now include a minimum proportion of external assessment, regardless of subject. This paper discusses the nature and…

Vocational education is supposed to improve work and employment skills, but many of the vocational courses developed in schools and colleges after the collapse of industrial apprenticeships in the 1970s have not offered real opportunities for young people in the labour market. Instead, a succession of new qualifications was introduced, which…

This article presents an interview with Tammy Kenney, who teaches a yoga-Pilates class in several different gyms. In this interview, Kenney talks about her career as a group fitness instructor and gives her best advice for someone who wants to teach group fitness.

Despite the fact that students are often articulate about qualifications policy matters, their perspectives are rarely listened to. This is because governments shape qualifications policy according to pre-set beliefs and are unwilling to countenance dissonant or outsider views. Using the Diploma qualification and inclusion of vocational…

The Editor of "ALJ" has invited me to comment on my 2001 article "Losing the quality battle in Australian education for librarianship" (Harvey 2001). The article was prompted by a period I spent as a visiting professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA (the University of California Los Angeles) and was written while I was there.…

The utilitarian spirit of Australian education has meant that since the nineteenth century the notion of tertiary education has embraced all post-school learning, delivered in sandstone universities or working men's institutes or on the job. This is not the definition the peak bodies TAFE (Technical and Further Education) Directors Australia (TDA)…

Disability support personnel within Australia include those who provide direct and daily care to people with intellectual disability (ID), largely in residential and day service contexts. Their roles and responsibilities are many, calling on far ranging skills. Yet, they come to these roles with levels of education that range from incomplete high…

The circumstances of tenure have changed and will likely continue to change, perhaps even dramatically. The proportion of university and college faculty members with full academic qualifications--which usually means those with earned doctorates--who either have tenure or are serving a probationary period for tenure has been declining steadily over…

This article features the University Forum for Human Resource Development (UFHRD), a voluntary network or an informal association stemming from two separate initiatives in the UK in the late 1980s. The first of these was at national government level and was the introduction of national competence based vocational qualifications (NVQs) following…

In every assistant professor there seems to lurk a Karate Kid seeking a Mr. Miyagi who will train his acolyte to be a skilled warrior in the art of research, teaching, and service and impart pithy life lessons along the way. Such singular folks exist. But it's far more likely that one will find several mentors who, while not well-versed in all…

Five years after the Government announced plans to replace the National Qualifications Framework (NQF), the author anticipates the arrival of the new Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF). Now the new Qualifications and Credit Framework is a reality. The regulatory arrangements for the QCF came into force on 1 September 2008 and the…

While the research, theory and policy literature on race, class and gender discrimination in education is extensive, the problem of education-based discrimination itself has been widely overlooked. Indeed, the dominant ideologies of meritocracy and human capital (into which we are inculcated throughout our lives by schools, media and the state)…

Examines two interpretations of the purpose of licensure examinations: (1) as predictors of future professional performance, and (2) as measures of critical abilities. Holds that is is difficult to accurately predict professional performance, and, therefore, that licensure exams should be seen primarily as evaluations of certain abilities related…

The 2006 Education Act provided an entitlement for all 14 year-olds to take a specialist diploma from 2013. Despite concerns of many educationalists and politicians, the first diplomas will begin in September 2008. New Labour claims that the diplomas are innovative and challenging; however, this article argues that they exhibit many of the…