Teachers as active agents in recontextualising pedagogic spaces in vocational education and training

Abstract

This paper shows that policy reforms in Vocational Education and Training in Australia since the late 1980s developed with the specific intention of reforming the official pedagogic discourse and associated pedagogic spaces that existed at that time. The discourses of flexible delivery, flexible learning, online learning, e-learning and blended learning established pedagogic spaces that are described in terms of the primary purposes, actors, rules and resources that have characterised each. Drawing on the idea of recontextualisation, an existing model is used as a basis to propose a representation of the dynamics that shape practice in the transition from one pedagogic space to another. This model portrays teachers as active agents in the recontextualisation of official policy discourse. A proposition that challenges the ideas of rational actor theory that underpins assumptions about the implementation of policy changes in VET.