Standing Committee on Employment, Education
and Workplace Relations
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Submission 75
Professor Brian Mackenzie
Chair, Academic Board
University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury
I. The Context
This submission is concerned primarily with the nature and status of
professional education in modern universities. It addresses the terms
of reference:
* the appropriate roles of institutes of technical and further education;
and
* the extent to which those roles should overlap with universities;
with an emphasis on the second of these.
II. The Problem
These issues will be addressed by consideration of the
relationship between universities and TAFE institutes in the recently
established professional disciplines such as Hospitality Management, Nursing
and Accounting. There are sometimes views that the 'traditional' disciplines
such as Philosophy, Mathematics, and History are the province of universities,
whilst the professional disciplines should be taught in TAFEs. Some of
these discussions have also raised, in fairly pointed form, questions
about the relationship between universities and TAFE, and the apparent
overlap in the programs taught (at very different funding levels) in the
two sorts of institutions.
III. The Argument
The Academic Board of the University of Western Sydney,
Hawkesbury, felt that, in the light of these comments and discussions,
it would try to clarify the status of some of these professional disciplines.
We seek to do this for the sake of setting out our positive conception
of the nature and the social and economic significance of knowledge in
the professions.
We believe that UWS Hawkesbury may be uniquely well placed
to offer such clarification. From the time it was a CAE and before, UWS
Hawkesbury (or Hawkesbury Agricultural College, as it was known from its
founding in 1891) has taken a leading role in developing and refining
a range of teaching and learning paradigms that fully engage the intellect
and creative imagination of its students. Its approach to teaching and
learning has done much to build its national and international reputation
as a creative, interdisciplinary source of ideas and solutions to problems
of environmental management, environmental health, rural development,
and others.
UWS Hawkesbury is proud of its university programs in
Nursing, Environmental Health, Rural Development, Accounting, Hospitality
Management, Building and Construction Sciences, and a range of other areas
of modern professional activity. It is also very proud of the close relationship
it has developed with TAFE, which has colleges co-located with UWS Hawkesbury
on both its campuses. It is able to work cooperatively with TAFE, and
to share facilities and develop programs linked with TAFE courses, precisely
because it is confident about the nature and level of its own teaching
and how that teaching differs fundamentally from the extremely valuable
but conceptually more basic skills-based learning properly emphasised
by TAFE.
IV. The Examples
We can illustrate these differences, and outline UWS Hawkesbury's view
of the nature and level of TAFE and university teaching, with a few examples
from the Hawkesbury syllabus.
Hospitality and Tourism
In the general area of hospitality and tourism, UWS Hawkesbury
offers a Bachelor of Hospitality Management and a Bachelor of Applied
Science (Environmental Management and Tourism), as well as Masters degrees
in both specialties. These courses are concerned with the development
of generic skills such as critical thinking, analytical problem solving,
integration of diverse sources of information, and developing confidence
in students to deal with complexity, change and conflict. These capacities
are all put into context in a variety of hospitality and tourism topic
areas, to enable students to take leadership roles and autonomous action
in identifying issues, developing solutions, and evaluating and recommending
policy and practice in a variety of industry locations. TAFE teaching
in the area tends to be specific skills-based teaching, typically with
an operational focus on front office procedures, ticketing and booking
procedures, food and beverage management, etc. These skills are valuable
ones, and at UWS Hawkesbury we have experimented with making sure that
students acquire these specific skills at TAFE either before, or concurrently
with, acquiring the more wide-ranging management capacities emphasised
in our degree courses. We do not teach the TAFE subjects, or incorporate
them into our degrees, but we recognise the important part they play in
the development of professional competence that extends from the very
concrete and limited to the very abstract and general.
Nursing
Nursing is taught at undergraduate and postgraduate degree
course level at UWS Hawkesbury. Throughout Australia, courses in nursing
were converted to university level training from hospital-based and diploma-based
courses during the 1980s. The change in level of training was clearly
sparked by a professional -perception of a change in the roles of nurses,
and has in turn sparked further changes in those roles. Traditional training
in nursing emphasised specific skills and competencies in the care of
patients or the evaluation of symptoms in discrete and. particular contexts.
Modern education emphasises the open-ended perception of a change in the
roles of nurses, and has in turn sparked further changes in those roles.
Traditional training in nursing emphasised specific skills and competencies
in the care of patients or the evaluation of symptoms in discrete and
particular contexts. Modern education emphasises the open-ended role that
nurses must play as community facilitators of health education and health
practice. Increasingly, the boundaries between nursing and primary health
care are becoming blurred as health care becomes more integrated into
the everyday life and institutions of the community. In consequence, nurses
absolutely require the developed capacity, emphasised in our nursing courses,
to analyses evaluate and respond to health needs across a wide spectrum
of social contexts, to deal with ambiguity and complexity in their interaction
with clients, to add reflective and analytic skills to their traditional
clinical ones. Economic and social changes in Australian society require
them to work with increasing independence from medical practitioners,
and the heightened professional challenge and status that have resulted
have been generally welcomed within the profession.
Building and Construction
Building and construction are typical 'trades' areas
in which TAFE training has long been the standard qualification. Nevertheless,
they also constitute one of the clearest cases for the need for university
education that goes systematically beyond the training provided by TAFE.
Graduates of the TAFE Diploma of Building may effectively work as a site
foreman, site manager, or construction manager in a small to medium size
building firm. The technical skills learned in the Diploma course are
extremely valuable and practical. Beyond such skills, however, UWS Hawkesbury's
Bachelor of Building course seeks to develop in the student:
- Analytical problem-solving skills and superior communications skills;
- Skills or 'meta-skills' in critical thinking and dealing with complexity;
- Managerial skills involving technical, financial, legal and occupational
health and safety issues;
- In-depth understanding of materials science, building structures and
their behaviour;
- Superior construction planning and quality assurance skills;
- An appreciation of how the Built Environment fits into the natural
environment, and the role of building in the wider society.
As in the previous cases, the university level education
goes beyond the TAFE level training in enabling the graduate to deal better
with complexity and ambiguity, and to take more initiative in defining
problem situations and developing flexible and often creative solutions
to them.
V. The Conclusion
The principal difference between a typical university course of study
and a typical TAFE course is not to be found in the content of the discipline,
but in the approach to the learning and practising of that discipline.
University study properly requires and thereby facilitates the solving
of open-ended problems, flexible and creative conceptualisation of the
domain (and its elements) being studied, and the development of the student's
capacity to apply the principles of the domain throughout a range of familiar
and unfamiliar contexts. It follows clearly, although it is not a major
focus of this submission, that a research culture in the knowledge domains
of the professional areas is essential for establishing and maintaining
the learning environment for university undergraduates and postgraduates
alike. On the other hand, technical study, as offered by TAFE, properly
requires the development of a high level of skill and technical knowledge
in more clearly specified and delimited contexts.
Comments to:
Professor Brian Mackenzie
Chair, Academic Board
University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury
Locked Bag 1, Richmond, NSW 2753
e-mail: b.mackenzie@uws.edu.au
18 November 1997
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