Analysing a dynamic dialogue: Jobs and Skills Australia’s foundation skills study discussion paper

Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) has been given a number of priority tasks including the construction of a national evidence base to do with language, literacy, numeracy and digital literacy. This paper presents results of a discourse analysis of JSA’s discussion paper expressing the agency’s framing of the issues. The research question seeks to identify what the problem is represented to be. This method also examines some of the silences that are inherent in issues representation; these are often more revealing than focusing solely on the dialogue the agency prefers. The absence of quantitative measurements of loosely defined concepts such as digital literacy and contested versions of literacy are uncritically linked to poor labour market outcomes for groups of Australian residents. This simple linear relationship requires further investigation in the skills development operating environment where no Jobs and Skills Council was deemed suitable to represent the education industry generally and foundation skills particularly. With 90 per cent of Australians employed to deliver services the preferred measurement dialogue apparently ignores or devalues the importance of bi/multilingualism as a contributing factor in employment considerations.