Abstract:
This presentation will report on findings from an interview-based case study of the impact of neo-liberal reform in an Institute of TAFE in Victoria. Data were collected in 1995-6 with a view to finding out how teachers and managers at the case study site experienced national training reform. The development of the training market based upon contestable funding appeared to have a major impact on the TAFE because it drove a commercialisation of Institute work. A number of analyses of these data have now been undertaken, highlighting the changes in management work, teachers views of competency-based training, innovative organisational responses to commercialisation including international education and the development of teaching more attuned to clients, and processes of identity formation in TAFE and its staff. The paper will flag some of the main findings in these different analyses and offer a more general assessment which highlights the contradictory patterns of continuity and change that neo-liberal reform has engendered in TAFE.