- Title
- Factors impacting the choice of Vocational Education and Training (VET): perspectives of students in NSW schools
- Creator
- Ellis, Hywel Richard
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Student aspirations, or the lack thereof, have drawn considerable research and policy attention in recent decades, with their focus often linked to the dual goals of excellence and equity in tertiary education (Bradley et al., 2008). However, much remains problematic in terms of conceptualising student occupational and educational aspirations (Bowers-Brown et al., 2019) and understanding the mix of influences at play in their formation across the years of schooling (Gore et al., 2015). Questions for policy and practice remain about the weight and influence that the notion of aspirations deserves in analysing and supporting students’ post-school intentions. In Australia, and internationally, much of the focus on aspirations has been to direct students into university pathways, often under the guise of addressing equity issues or framed as widening participation (Bowers-Brown et al., 2019; Lumb & Burke, 2019; Rainford, 2017). Students who aspire to vocational occupations do so in a system that privileges university pathways in terms of the school system, the information available to help navigate post-school pathways, and broader policy settings (Atkinson & Stanwick, 2016). Many students and many of those who provide them with support do not seem to know or fully appreciate what Vocational Education and Training (VET) has to offer in the way of post-school options or the array of pathways available for students to achieve their vocational aspirations (Hosken et al., 2013). Nor do they understand the complex systems and possibilities for later articulation of VET qualifications to higher levels of education (Curtis, 2009, 2011; Grytnes, 2011; Smith et al., 2017) or to changes in career paths (Abbott‐Chapman, 2006; Hess et al., 2012). These uncertainties create and compound the often serious issues of misalignment between occupational and educational aspirations (Hargreaves & Osborne, 2017), flagging this as an area in need of additional research and policy attention. Drawing on a sub-set of students interested in VET (n = 2,978) taken from the full Aspirations Study sample collected in NSW public schools between 2012 and 2015 (N = 8,070), this thesis makes a detailed examination of the factors associated with ‘what’ choices students make and the reasoning behind ‘why’ students chose vocational occupational options and educational pathways in the broader context of post-school destinations. This was achieved by bringing together the distilled themes from the literature, the factors available from student surveys, secure linkage with extant system-held background, contextual, and achievement data, and to an innovative measure of student occupational reasoning developed from the coding of students’ open-ended survey responses. The question of ‘what’ choices students make, is framed within the Aspirations Study’s composite capitals construct (Albright et al., 2019), juxtaposing the theories of Bourdieu (1986) on cultural, social, and economic capital, with Becker and Tomes’ (1986) theory of human capital. This quadripartite framework was used to facilitate a detailed examination of the factors most salient in the formation of student aspirations. Importantly, this approach enabled the under-researched aspect of student aspirations for VET pathways to be considered within the broader field of aspirations research. Leveraging on the previous analysis of Gore, Ellis, et al. (2017), Multiple Cluster Analysis was employed to identify significant sub-groups of students choosing VET occupational pathways as defined by the most salient factors at play, mapping distinctive patterns of student choice. This provided new insights into the interplay of factors most relevant in the choice of VET occupational pathways for distinctive groups of students identified on the basis of their prior achievement, gender, cultural capital, and maturity. The reasoning behind ‘why’ students chose vocational occupational pathways was examined by coding their open-ended responses (N = 2,601) in terms of number, interaction, specificity, and proximity of influences (Howard et al., 2015). The coded data was then subjected to a quantitative analysis, which included devising and statistically verifying a new and innovative measurement construct, the Occupational Reasoning Index (ORI), to represent the level of student reasoning about their occupational futures. The statistical significance of year level, prior achievement and self-perception of relative academic performance, occupational skill level and prestige and, to a lesser extent Aboriginality and, alignment between education and occupational choice as predictors was established through subsequent bivariate and multivariate analysis of the newly developed ORI. In combination, these findings flag the importance of individual and inter-group differences in understanding and supporting students’ aspirations, and the need for differentiated strategies to support the development of student reasoning about their occupational and educational futures. Recommendations for practice and policy are made to better frame and developmentally support students with a focus on vocational education as an option that is too often undervalued or ignored.
- Subject
- aspirations; Australia; TAFE; VET; vocational education and training (VET); career; CHAID; choice; influences; justification; occupation; reasoning; students
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1423023
- Identifier
- uon:37893
- Rights
- Copyright 2021 Hywel Richard Ellis
- Language
- eng
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