"VET partnerships powering a dynamic workforce" is the theme for the 33rd National Vocational Education and Training (VET) Research Conference 'No Frills.' In keeping with the conference's theme, this discussion paper focuses on Australia's workforce demands and the importance of equipping the workforce with necessary skills through…

The significant shortfall of staff in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce identifies an imperative not only to recruit educators but to support ongoing qualifications and career advancement of those within. Indeed, "Shaping Our Future," Australia's workforce strategy for 2022-2031 identifies qualifications and career…

Concerns about the poor outcomes from school-based vocational education, which is heavily concentrated in schools serving disadvantaged communities, has led the State Government of Victoria, Australia, to implement major reforms, including abolishing the Victoria Certificate of Applied Learning. Instead, from 2023, learning in vocational education…

Despite decades of Equal Opportunity legislation, gender inequality persists in Australian universities. This is largely due to the shaping of universities by new market principles, discourses of individualisation that render the asymmetry of gender relations invisible, and privileging masculine epistemologies. Concurrently, industrial relations…

There is continued pressure on universities to develop future-oriented graduates given documented skill gaps and global talent shortages. Although work experience supports work-readiness and is prioritised among graduate employers, little is known about the labour market gains from student employment compared to work experience embedded within the…

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the shortage of teachers worldwide. Shortages have been reported globally including in countries such as the UK, Netherlands, France, Japan, New Zealand and the United States. In Australia, persistent challenges in teacher recruitment, and retention, especially in disadvantaged schools have worsened, with rural…

Teachers seeking work in market-oriented schooling systems confront a range of settings within which they might teach. This article presents the views of ten teachers on the cusp of beginning teaching in the market-oriented schooling system of Australia, regarding the school or schools they would like to work in as teachers. Data were gathered via…

Purpose: The article aims to identify the determinants of the urbanization process given the magnitude of this phenomenon and also its economic, social and environmental implications and pressure on public authorities to find viable solutions in the context of sustainable development. Design/methodology/approach: The research is based on…

The figure of the teacher is becoming increasingly significant in schooling systems around the globe. In this article, we consider how the market-oriented system of schooling in the Australian state of New South Wales may be reflecting and (re)shaping understandings of who teachers are and should be. To do this, we present a corpus-assisted…

Background: Productivity-based wage systems are intended to enhance the labour market participation of people with disabilities. Limited scholarship exists regarding the impact of such policies in practice. This qualitative study explored stakeholder perspectives on the Australian Supported Wage System (SWS), including perceptions of fairness and…

This paper summarises the exploratory quantitative analysis undertaken to investigate how vocational education and training (VET) students cluster and segment in the Australian VET market. This analysis is outlined in three sections. The first section focuses on 'clustering' as a technique for grouping data and the three clustering algorithms…

This study provides a "narrative synthesis" of the findings published in journal articles from a broad range of scientific fields about the impact of extracurricular activities (ECAs) on the academic success and employability of university students. The analysis included 39 articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases, published…

Within a neoliberal educational policy context, we are increasingly witness to educational leaders compelled to become strategic operators to ensure the survival of their schools. Drawing on the tenets of institutional ethnography (IE), this article traces the everyday work and experience of a school leader in one Australian private school site…

Purpose: This paper aims to understand the development track of skills mismatch research and discover the hidden internal connections between literature. Design/methodology/approach: The authors gathered data through scientometric quantitative analysis using CiteSpace. Specifically, this article applied basic analysis, journal cocitation analysis…

Purpose: Since new digital micro-credential technologies emerged a decade ago, there has been a rapid rise in micro-credentials in the education landscape. Much has been promised about these educational technologies, yet there is much confusion by key stakeholders in the digital micro-credential ecosystem. This confusion has led to significant…