Have your say about the Australian national vocational education and training (VET) research priorities for 2010 and beyond

Introduction

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) is embarking on consultations to assist in determining a new set of research priorities on vocational education and training. These priorities will form the basis on which NCVER commissions research under the National VET Research and Evaluation (NVETRE) program. They will also inform NCVER's core research program and should be useful for shaping other research conducted within the sector. We encourage you to share your ideas on the future research priorities via this blog.

A discussion paper National VET research priorities: 2010 and beyond has been released which covers the background, context, themes, aims, and an appendix of NCVER's current research and statistics and information about other collections with VET components.

Summaries of emerging themes from consultations

Emerging national priorities - extract from handout to be discussed at 5 February forum and 9 February webinar

Approaches to research priorities for policy: a comparative study - Diana Wilkinson paper

Summary of consultation held in Sydney, 13 October 2009

Structure of the blog

To give some shape to the deliberations about the research priorities we have taken the five drivers set out by Skills Australia (economic factors, demographic changes, social considerations, technology, and sustainability) and focussed on how they relate to priorities for research into post-compulsory education and training in Australia under the following 10 themes:

1.   The implications of the economic downturn for education and training

2.   Social considerations

3.   Demographic change

4.   Technology and innovation

5.   Sustainability

6.   Supply-side pushes

7.   Social inclusion

8.   Reforms in the education and training system

9.   Internationalisation

10. Teaching and learning

Other issues or themes

In April 2010 the NCVER Board will consider submissions and blog commentary as well as feedback from discussions with researchers and other stakeholders, with a view to putting its advice on a new set of priorities in mid 2010 to the Ministerial Council for Tertiary Education and Employment. A paper providing a digest of the feedback will be published around the same time.