An evaluation of the dominant assumptions and practices of training packages in Australian Vocational Education and Training and the extent to which they coincide with the emergence of mode-2 society and its imputed education and training needs

This research investigates the relevance of contemporary Australian Vocational Education and Training (VET) to economic development in Mode-2 society. Mode-2 society is a term coined by Nowotny et al (2001) which equates with changes in productivity and the triumph of free-market capitalism commonly referred to as knowledge driven capitalism or knowledge capitalism. Building on Schumpeter's economic theory of entrepreneurial competition and Romer's new growth economic model that have transformed capitalism into 'gales of creative destruction' by which new knowledge now generates national economic advantage, the thesis examines the literature of Training Packages as the prescribed instruments of VET in the milieu of knowledge capitalism. It could be expected that Australian VET, and in particular Training Packages, would have a greater justification for pursuing a knowledge and skill application-and-transfer policy that fits the growth of knowledge capitalism which Mode-2 society represents than it had for the former manufacturing economy. To test this contention, the thesis establishes eleven key transitions from Mode-1 to Mode-2

society and the imputed education and training needs of the latter as derived from the Nowotny et al (2001) Mode-2 thesis. These transitions are formed into an Evaluative Framework and underpin an ethnographic study involving thirty-three VET experts. The literature search and ethnography responses are synthesized and analysed with new material elicited from the ethnography. The outcomes of the analysis are equated with the eleven key transitions from Mode-1 to Mode-2 society and the imputed emergent education and training needs of each transition. It is concluded that the dominant assumptions and practices of Training Packages do not align with the imputed education and training needs of Mode-2 society as indicated by the eleven key attributes of the Nowotny et al (2001) conceptualisation. The theoretical implications of this conclusion had an impact on the Australian provision of VET because they indicate that the Training Package agenda is a potential liability for national economic advantage in Mode-2 society.