The results of asking a deceptively simple question: what is for sale in Australian VET markets?

Abstract

Assuming Australian training markets represent successful policy implementation facilitates an exploration of the implications for their future evolution by querying what is sold in these markets. A Foucauldian discourse analysis of relevant documentation suggests that training markets overwhelmingly provide products and/or services. Further examination finds that these two are conceptually confused as is the contention of a single national vocational education and training market. Ontological rhetorics have been used to indiscriminately conflate products and services in pursuit of preferred political values. The performative work being done by uncritically mingling the discourses of two distinctively different markets for bureaucratic and political purposes, when combined with executive federalism, contributes to VET’s exasperating complexity. Brief transactions that provide multiple useful, yet low-value, compliance-driven products differ substantially from markets that deliver educational services by developing longer term relationships that increase the national stock of higher level occupational skills. Making explicit the different perspectives that have fashioned the product and services artefacts invites more tailored market operational and regulatory approaches as well as creating the possibility of a more inclusive approach to VET policy making and delivery of vocational knowledges.