TY - JOUR
T1 - (Re)thinking equity
T2 - the spatial and racial dynamics of managing learning and learning to manage
AU - Shore, Sue
N1 - Journal editorial notes (Butler and Ferrier, 2006, p. 389):
Women working as managers in VET in Australia are challenged by Shore, from Australia, to think about ‘whiteness’ in their decision‐making (as are readers and VET researchers). Her article underscores the hegemony of a patriarchal white culture within VET. She argues that VET systems are simultaneously spaces of equity and agency, and spaces of racialised learning, training and managing, which are always also gendered and classed. In negotiating their way in, through and against the often masculinist management cultures in their organisations, women managers find themselves in complicated and complicitous positions. Shore also challenges the willingness of VET literature, research and policy to confront the issues of whiteness that are inherent in its theorising, practices, production and reproduction.
PY - 2006/12/1
Y1 - 2006/12/1
N2 - The vocational education and training (VET) sector has experienced substantial change in the past decade, characterised by ascendant industry‐driven needs and mantras of flexibility and responsiveness. A number of public policies underpin these changes and simultaneously point to the need to manage diverse employing bodies, industry standards, learning pathways and flexible pedagogies. Learning is big business, as indeed is the business of managing learning, and women are increasingly visible as workers, educators and managers in Australian VET. This article draws on interview and focus‐group data provided by seven women to explore the challenges of managing learning and learning to manage, in systems which are simultaneously spaces of equity and racialised spaces of sustained inequality. While much work has addressed the managerialist ethos underpinning funding arrangements for contemporary VET providers, an unexplored dimension of this context is the complicated and complicitous position women managers find themselves in as they manage the colonial spaces of VET. This article attempts a conversation across contemporary equity discourses, postcolonial and critical interrogations of whiteness, and educational management literature questioning the usefulness of contemporary literature on managing learning and learning to manage, premised as it is on Eurocentric views of management theory.
AB - The vocational education and training (VET) sector has experienced substantial change in the past decade, characterised by ascendant industry‐driven needs and mantras of flexibility and responsiveness. A number of public policies underpin these changes and simultaneously point to the need to manage diverse employing bodies, industry standards, learning pathways and flexible pedagogies. Learning is big business, as indeed is the business of managing learning, and women are increasingly visible as workers, educators and managers in Australian VET. This article draws on interview and focus‐group data provided by seven women to explore the challenges of managing learning and learning to manage, in systems which are simultaneously spaces of equity and racialised spaces of sustained inequality. While much work has addressed the managerialist ethos underpinning funding arrangements for contemporary VET providers, an unexplored dimension of this context is the complicated and complicitous position women managers find themselves in as they manage the colonial spaces of VET. This article attempts a conversation across contemporary equity discourses, postcolonial and critical interrogations of whiteness, and educational management literature questioning the usefulness of contemporary literature on managing learning and learning to manage, premised as it is on Eurocentric views of management theory.
KW - vocational education and training
KW - gender
KW - managing learning
KW - equity
KW - whiteness
UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-34447577706&origin=inward&txGid=bb040255c4f26470aca73eb4e5cae9b5
U2 - 10.1080/13636820601005883
DO - 10.1080/13636820601005883
M3 - Article
VL - 58
SP - 497
EP - 513
JO - Journal of Vocational Education and Training
JF - Journal of Vocational Education and Training
SN - 1363-6820
IS - 4
ER -