Making the most of technologies for learning in remote context
Making the most of technologies for learning in remote context Journal Article
VOCAL, The Australian Journal of Vocational Education and Training in Schools
- Author(s): Guenther, J, McRae-Williams, E
- Published: 2012
- Volume: 9
Abstract: This article, based on a Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP) research project - 'Pathways to Employment' - will canvas the proposition that mobile technology can be used as an effective vehicle for vocational learning in remote Australian communities. This proposition in itself is not new and indeed there are a number of examples in the literature that demonstrate the possibilities of mobile and emerging ICT technologies in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia and indigenous communities elsewhere in the world. However, the application of technologies in vocational learning is often applied to the delivery of mainstream training packages for mainstream employment outcomes. Further, the development of new technologies and 'apps' that go with them is changing at such a pace that past work in this field is fast becoming dated. The 'Pathways to Employment' research project considers pathways from a different starting point than many other research projects, which take as a given, the traditional notion of pathways to employment - typically linear, mainstream oriented and driven - with all the mainstream assumptions that go along with this notion of 'pathway'. The paper will focus on the opportunities presented by a relatively rapid uptake of mobile phone technology (in particular smartphones) and other information and communication technologies in remote communities for vocational learning that bases itself on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander standpoints. The challenge for VET practitioners presented in the discussion of the article is to build VET teaching and learning practice on a foundation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of being, knowing, valuing and doing. There is a temptation for trainers and assessors to consider pragmatic approaches of applying technologies to required competencies. Instead, the authors argue here that this should be secondary to the need for approaches using e-learning or m-learning to be grounded in learners' ontologies, epistemologies, axiologies and even cosmologies. On the surface this sounds like an academic exercise, but the authors argue that this approach is more likely to be effective, and further, it is doable for VET trainers working cross-culturally in remote parts of Australia.