Gavin Moodie

University of Toronto | U of T · Department of Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education OISE

This article focuses on adult working learners who attend postsecondary institutions in Canada and the United States. We identify how these institutions deliver curriculum and instruction in the form of career‐technical education (CTE) and vocational education offering occupational credentials. In British Columbia and the U.S., most vocational prog...

This is an overview of the double symposium on the social role of colleges held at the conference of the European Educational Research Association at Glasgow on 24 August 2023.

This paper examines the difficulties in establishing the generalisability of so-called ‘generic’ skills. Whilst employers use a similar vocabulary to refer to general skills, ‘The same words meant very disparate things to different people, both between organisations and within them’ (Bennett, 2002, p.462). So-called generic skills such as critical...

We open this chapter by reviewing two varieties of human capital theory. We then review critiques of human capital theory on empirical, methodological, and normative grounds. We then consider two alternative foundations for post secondary education: human rights, and the capabilities approach. We develop the capabilities approach and its implicatio...

This paper argues that micro-credentials are gig credentials for the gig economy. Micro-credentials are short competency-based industry-aligned units of learning, while the gig economy comprises contingent work by individual ‘suppliers’. Both can be facilitated by (often the same) digital platforms, and both are underpinned by social relations of p...

This is a brief presentation for a general audience of some of the arguments made in the open access article Wheelahan, L., Moodie, G., & Doughney, J. (2022). Challenging the skills fetish. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43(3), 475-494, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2022.2045186

This article is published open access and so is available free from the publisher's web site. This article describes the process through which human capital theory came to dominate policy in post-compulsory education, to result in the fetishisation of skills. It relates skills policies to the contemporaneous development of policies on lifelong lea...

This chapter opens by elaborating the question it addresses: Where is higher vocational education in relation to vocational education and higher education? It then notes that the answer to this question is likely to have different implications in economies with different proportions of skilled work, levels of skills formation, levels of skills form...

This article reports on a study investigating the link between education and work. Instead of looking at the labour outcomes of graduates, the study examined the qualifications held by workers in technician- and professional-level jobs from three types of occupational fields: regulated, applied, and general. The approach shifts the focus away from...

This describes and critiques some prominent theories of learning styles. It argues that different knowledge and skills such as biology, creative arts, languages, mathematics, and music are best learned in different ways. In many circumstances it is better not to reinforce students’ preferences to learn in a particular way, but to help students over...

The provision of bachelor degrees in technical and further education (TAFE) institutes in Australia, further education (FE) colleges in England, and community colleges (CCs) in Canada and the United States is caught in a contradiction. On the one hand, this provision offers opportunities to groups of students who are not having their needs met in u...

This paper critiques the emergence of micro-credentials in higher education. It argues that micro-credentials build on the discourse of employability skills and 21st century skills within human capital theory, and that they increase the potential of human capital theory to ‘discipline’ the HE curriculum to align it more closely with putative labour...

The study examines what factors influence Taiwan’s Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) success in sustainable development. By using the quantitative data from survey, this study uses OLS regression and logistic regression models to investigate the relationship between TVET goals, achievements, and resources and what the factors influ...

This paper analyses the experience of the biggest international branch campus, RMIT Vietnam, and the literature to posit 7 factors for the success of international branch campuses: (1) if entering with a partner, choose one experienced in education, with strong financial resources and with high integrity; (2) choose a location carefully; (3) the ho...

Vocational knowledge originates from both research and from practice, each of which is transformed across several epistemic levels to become vocational knowledge. The several transformations of research to vocational knowledge have been described by Young and Bernstein as recontextualisations. Less well described are the successive transformations...

This categorises Australia's 39 public and private non profit universities at 2012 into 5 types by a combination of factors such as age, prestige, orientation, and location: technological, Group of 8, 1960s-1970s, new generation, and regional.

This proposes that the Australian Government converts its current grants to private schools into income contingent loans to parents to pay private school fees. The income contingent loans for school fees would be modelled on Australia's very successful income contingent loans for higher education.

This report observes several limitations of human capital theory, both as a description of the way qualifications are used in the labour market, and in severely limiting the potential roles of technical and vocational education and training (TVET). It proposes as an alternative the human capabilities approach which posits that the goal should be fo...

Recent research on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) argues that vocational education contributes to local social, economic, and cultural development by cultivating sustainable capabilities and promoting social justice in educational access (Wheelahan & Moodie, 2016). The paper examines the TVET systems and current situation in...

The paper examines the strengths and challenges of Technical Vocational Education (TVET) under the influence of Confucian tradition in paralleled structure of Taiwan’s education system. Through analysis of qualitative interview data, the paper investigates the whole-person education perspective and its disadvantage of low status under the social va...

The paper examines Taiwan’s technical and vocational education and training (TVET) system using a capabilities approach framework. Specifically, the paper investigates the system’s goals, achievements, resources, and challenges. Although findings suggest that Taiwan’s TVET meets various stakeholder needs, the system still faces challenges due to so...

Taiwan is often held by scholars to be successful and they attribute the economic advantage and the rising prosperity of Taiwan to its system of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) (Chen & Shih, 1989; Yuen, 1993), which provides sufficient human capital for this economic prosperity (International Affairs Office, 2016). The distin...

This describes and critiques some prominent theories of learning styles. It argues that different knowledge and skills such as biology, creative arts, languages, mathematics, and music are best learned in different ways. In many circumstances it is better not to reinforce students’ preferences to learn in a particular way, but to help students over...

This report on further education in England was undertaken as part of a project funded by Education International to examine national case studies of technical and vocational education and training as a framework for social justice. The report applies the capabilities approach to technical and vocational education and training. The report argues t...

During the past two decades community colleges and technical institutes in several jurisdictions, including parts of Canada, the United States and Australia, have been given the authority to award bachelor degrees. One of the motivations for this addition to the mandate of these institutions is to improve opportunities for bachelor degree attainmen...

This chapter considers the nature of ‘applied’ bachelor degrees. It concludes that there are four characteristics common to many understandings of applied degrees: the curriculum is specific to an occupation rather than a general preparation for work, life or further education; the pedagogy includes more practical work, often at a work place, than...

This research explores links between tertiary education institutions and between tertiary education and the labour market as determinants of provincial and national transition patterns in Canada. The study consists of a provincial analysis that maps the typology of transition systems across Canada’s devolved federated tertiary education structure....

This is a review of Wisdom’s workshop: The rise of the modern university, by James Axtell, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2016. It was published in History of Education (2017), 46(6), 868-870.

This report is the culmination of a research project that explored the impact of college degrees on colleges and on students. We conclude that college degrees are largely fulfilling their intended purposes. The labour market outcomes for college degrees are strong, stronger than for lower level credentials. Degree programs are career-focused and ap...

This chapter recounts the circumstances that led to the dismissal of over half of the chairs of Victoria’s boards of vocational colleges, which the government and its officials treated as an instance of the classic principal-agent problem, where the government as principal exercised its powers to ensure that its interests were served by its institu...

The links between vocational qualifications and occupational destinations are weak in many Anglophone countries, even though the explicit purpose of vocational qualifications is to prepare individuals for occupations. Using Australia and Canada as case studies, this is explained at three levels of analysis: at the national level by systems of skill...

This book seeks to understand the effects of the current information revolution on universities by examining the effects of two previous information revolutions: Gutenberg’s invention and proof of printing in 1450 and the Scientific Revolution from the mid fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. Moodie reviews significant changes since the...

This chapter reviews progress in higher education teaching, research, and the dissemination of knowledge following the Gutenberg and Scientific revolutions. It considers prospects for the digital revolution transforming higher education by examining four characteristics of learning disciplinary knowledge: interaction, feedback, hierarchical develop...

Printing led to an explosion of books, which were initially the main means for disseminating new knowledge in all disciplines. Scholarly journals emerged during the Scientific Revolution and became the main mode for disseminating new knowledge in the experimental sciences, and subsequently many of the social sciences and other disciplines. The digi...

This chapter opens by describing contemporary cost pressures on higher education: Baumol’s cost disease, increasing participation, and the balance between government subsidy and student tuition fees. It contrasts this with tuition fees and financial aid in the Middle Ages and then observes changes in the number and composition of universities’ stud...

This chapter traces changes in universities’ curriculum from the Middle Ages to the early modern period and to the present as changes in emphasis between preparing for careers, transmitting culture, and advancing knowledge. Recently, there has been a continuing expansion of occupations for which universities prepare graduates and the chapter propos...

This chapter describes substantial changes in university pedagogy: the use of peer teaching in the Middle Ages and its revival in modern universities, the introduction of practical classes, the articulation of different levels of teaching–learning, and the move from ‘individual and successive’ instruction to classroom teaching. All these changes we...

Before printing, books were rare and expensive. Professors therefore relied on borrowing books from their university’s or college’s collection. Libraries’ role was thus to manage the scarcity of books. Printing made books ubiquitous and affordable for professors and in time for students. Libraries’ role in managing the scarcity of books became redu...

The main form of summative assessment in medieval universities was oral disputations, which by the Renaissance were heavily criticized for being sterile exercises in an antiquated skill. Their eventual replacement involved several related changes, from medieval oral, individualized, public, and collective disputations of questions in Latin to moder...

This chapter introduces an investigation of how universities have been changed by three information revolutions: Gutenberg’s invention of printing, the Scientific Revolution, and the digital revolution. From these examples it is clear that major change in information technology is neither necessary nor sufficient for major change in education. Rath...

Writers expected that lectures would be made redundant by printed books soon after the introduction of printing and subsequently until the eighteenth century, as they later expected lectures to be made redundant by film, radio, television, cassettes, video, and now the internet. Yet lectures have been as important in the five and half centuries aft...

These notes for a talk for a Canadian audience discuss Australian colleges' current and potential contribution to innovation. It argues for colleges' role in preparing graduates to enter the workforce, to advance in the workforce, as an intermediary to disseminate new techniques amongst existing industry hubs, and to foment alliances amongst firms...

This double session presents, in the first part, data on transfer pathways of receiving and sending institutions, student transfer rates, and the geographical proximity of transfer partners. Findings suggest that most articulation agreements are being under used by students, and for the students who do transfer, most are coming from institutions wi...

Contributing to the four years of substantial research, knowledge building and reflection by ONCAT, this study synthesises current theories and research on student mobility, institutional partnerships and pathways, and presents the current patterns of student flows and institutional agreements in Ontario. The analysis and findings show unexpected r...

This chapter seeks to fill a gap between educational policy making and practice in the implications of the online revolution for higher education teaching-learning. The claims for the revolutionary impact or potential of information and communication technologies for higher education teaching-learning are put in the context of claims for educationa...

This chapter explores some of the developments in advancing knowledge or what is now called research that led to the Scientific Revolution. Printing was crucial to developing scholars’ tools for conducting literature surveys, for reproducing texts reliably, and for promulgating accurately illustrations, figures, and diagrams. The Scientific Revolut...

This project examined pathways within and between fields of education, and between fields of education and occupations, in Ontario and Canada. Using the 2013 National Graduate Survey, the project found that links between qualifications within the same field of education were weak, as were links between fields of education and occupations.

The session reports new data from the 2013 National Graduates Survey on graduates’ progression to further postsecondary education and the methods used to access the data. Of interest for policy-makers and institutional researchers, the research group finds that the NGS can provide valuable information on student pathways to inform policy and that m...

This reports an investigation of the feasibility of introducing a new approach to qualifications which would involve:  identifying 4 types of qualifications;  supporting 3 roles of qualifications;  introducing vocational streams; and  introducing ‘productive capabilities’.

This report tests these policy objectives by exploring the nature of educational pathways and the links between educational pathways and the labour market in Ontario, and it compares these outcomes with Canada as a whole. Its purpose is to inform policy and practices at the departmental level within PSE institutions, at the institutional level and...

This presentation reports on an Ontario government funded project on educational pathways. It explores whether graduates stay within the same field of study when they undertake a second postsecondary education qualification. It examines educational pathways within fields of study between educational institutions (college to college; college to univ...

Governments in the UK and many other countries have long sought to promote the diversity of their higher education institutions. However, diversity is hard to define, harder to measure and even more difficult to compare between countries. Most empirical analyses of the diversity of higher education systems use categorical variables, which shape the...

In a recent decision, Victoria University of Technology v Wilson & Ors, the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia decided against two academic defendants in a case brought by their university employer over the ownership of intellectual property. The case turned on whether the academics invented the property within the scope of their employment, and...

This article considers the effects on universities of Gutenberg’s invention of printing. It considers four major effects: the gradual displacement of Latin as the language of scholarship with vernacular languages, the expansion and eventual opening of libraries, major changes to curriculum, and major changes to pedagogy including lectures. The pape...

This chapter argues that the reforming Australian education minister John Dawkins observed a distinction between the competence and role of government and the responsibilities of academe, which many of his critics accused him of transgressing. It does so by examining the treatment of ‘quality’ in the antecedents to the Dawkins revolution, in the Gr...

In his 1988 Higher education: A policy statement John Dawkins argued that his changes would promote ‘greater diversity’. Simon Marginson and Ian Marshman argue in their chapter that Dawkins’ changes resulted in less mission diversity, with more institutions trying to do the same things. This chapter examines enrolment data to consider whether, at l...

The boundaries between vocational and academic post compulsory education have been blurred by students combining vocational and academic studies and by students transferring increasingly between the two types of education. Institutions are also blurring the boundaries between the sectors by increasingly offering programs from two and sometimes thre...

This paper considers the rate at which students are crossing the boundaries between Australian vocational and higher education. It finds that public universities admit a higher proportion of students on the basis of a vocational education qualification than do private colleges and that private colleges broadly do not admit a higher proportion of st...

Vocational education presents a quandary for many governments. Its core purposes are to develop new and extend existing occupational skills – skills that may be applied directly in work. So the close involvement of employers and employees is central to the successful operation of vocational education. Indeed, there is no apparent reason in principl...

What Peter Drucker described as the "knowledge economy" in 1969 is now a competitive global market, with higher education at its centre. While Australian universities have competed for full-fee-paying international students since 1985 and enrolments have grown spectacularly since 1996, the real global competition is in research for the best researc...

Various pathways and forms of articulation into higher education are classified, described, and discussed: direct entry, vertical and horizontal transfer, transition programs, adult and continuing education, work experience, open entry, dual award programs, and twinning and nested awards. Some data on the diversification of pathways are presented....

For the foreseeable future Australia will continue to need vocational education – education to develop in people new and to extend their existing occupational skills, that is, skills that may be used more directly in work than those developed by other forms of education. This is because the economy and society will continue to need to develop large...

Vocational education provides an educational but not a social ladder of opportunity to Australian higher education. The five dual-sector universities with significant enrolments in both vocational and higher education admit about twice the proportion of students transferring from vocational education as other universities. However, since the studen...

Incl. abstract, table, bibl. This paper posts a classification of tertiary education institutions into four tiers: world research universities, selecting universities, recruiting universities, and vocational institutes. The distinguishing characteristic of world research universities is their research strength, the distinguishing characteristic of...

This paper considers higher education programs that are offered by institutions that have historically and still predominantly offer vocational education programs. These arrangements are called higher education (HE) in further education (FE) in England. The paper compares HE in FE in Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand and the US. The paper not...

The purpose of this support document is to: (1) provide a fuller version of the literature review than in the report and issues paper; and (2) provide the interview schedules that were used to gather the data for this project. (Contains 7 footnotes.) [Funding for this report was provided through the Australian Department of Education, Science and T...

From the turn of the 21st century five Australian universities started describing themselves as a 'dual sector university'. This chapter describes the use of the term in Australia, the characteristics of the universities so described, and speculates why other Australian universities with otherwise similar histories developed as single sector univer...

In 1986 an estimated 11% of Australian 18 to 24-year-olds were enrolled in higher education (Dawkins, 1987b, p 109). By 2005 just under 20% of 18 to 24-year-olds were enrolled in higher education. In 1986 Australia had a structure but not the financing to support mass higher education in Trow's (1974) terms; 20 years later it has the financing but...

This book seeks to increase our understanding of how vocational and higher education are structured as tertiary education systems in developed countries and possibilities for alternative structures. The study uses the method of comparative education to yield these insights and the book develops an analytical framework for international educational...

This study considers whether formally segmenting 4-year institutions by admissions selectivity affects the admission of transfer students. It develops a new measure, the student admission ratio, to compare the admission of transfer students in formally and highly segmented systems, informally and less segmented systems, and in formally unified syst...

This paper describes the changes in the recognition of universities made or proposed in England, Australia and the USA since 2004, and posits a broad shift from the permanent designation of institutional types to the periodic recognition of qualification-granting authority. This is associated with increased private funding and operation of universi...

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This paper considers whether the vertical stratification of universities in Scotland and Australia is steeper than in other countries. It seems plausible that the formally unified systems of Scotland and Australia are less stratified than the formally segmented higher education systems such as those of some US states. The paper tests that suppositi...

This paper observes that vocational education and training's identity has been founded on four types of characteristics: epistemological, teleological, hierarchical and pragmatic. No single characteristic is found to be adequate to identify vocational education and training across jurisdictions and across historical periods. Both Rushbrook and Stev...

This article distinguishes research—the discovery of new knowledge—from innovation, which is understood to be the transformation of practice in a community or the incorporation of existing knowledge into economic activity. From a survey of roles served by vocational education institutions in a number of OECD countries the paper argues that vocation...

This chapter opens by considering the effect on learning and teaching of Europe's Bologna process and the United Kingdom's National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education chaired by Sir Ron (now Lord) Dearing. These set the context for the case study for this chapter, the attempt by the Australian government to improve learning and teaching in...