Envisioning the 'worker as learner' in the reforms of vocational education and training in Australia

This paper, using the governmentality perspective of neo-Foucauldians (Rose; Burchell; Dean) presents a different analysis of the vocational education and training reforms in Australia over the past two and half decades. Rather than asking questions of what happened and why, the paper will focus on questions of how the problems were defined, by what authorities and through what strategies and techniques. By analysing policy documents and formal and informal reports of the key agencies involved in the reforms, the paper explores how and under what conditions the skilled worker was problematised and assembled as the, worker as learner' in the neoliberal inspired reform programmes of industry, industrial relations and vocational education and training, envisioned to ensure a 'globally competitive nation of Australia'. Rather than being a shift to 'empower' workers as often stated, this paper suggests that the reforms were about assembling an active, enterprising and flexible 'worker as learner' subjectivity which was necessary for the new market-driven economy and its streamlined and market-driven vocational education and training system, both in its more formal provision and in activities within organisations.