Critical Studies in Education ISSN: 1750-8487 (Print) 1750-8495 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcse20 Problematising vocational education and training in schools: using student narratives to interrupt neoliberal ideology Barry Down, John Smyth & Janean Robinson To cite this article: Barry Down, John Smyth & Janean Robinson (2017): Problematising vocational education and training in schools: using student narratives to interrupt neoliberal ideology, Critical Studies in Education, DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2017.1289474 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2017.1289474 Published online: 13 Feb 2017. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcse20 Download by: [Murdoch University Library] Date: 13 February 2017, At: 22:42 CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION, 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2017.1289474 Problematising vocational education and training in schools: using student narratives to interrupt neoliberal ideology Barry Downa, John Smythb and Janean Robinsona a School of Education, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia; bSchool of Education and Professional Development, Huddersfield University, Huddersfield, United Kingdom ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY In Australia, like many western countries, there has been a convergence of education policy around a set of utilitarian and economistic approaches to vocational education and training in schools. Such approaches are based on the assumption that there is a direct relationship between national economic growth, productivity and human capital development resulting in the persuasive political argument that schools should be more closely aligned to the needs of the economy to better prepare ‘job ready’ workers. These common sense views resonate strongly in school communities where the problem of youth unemployment is most acute and students are deemed to be ‘at risk’, ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘disengaged’. This article starts from a different place by rejecting the fatalism and determinism of neoliberal ideology based on the assumption that students must simply ‘adapt’ to a precarious labour market. Whilst schools have a responsibility to prepare students for the world of work there is also a moral and political obligation to educate them extraordinarily well as democratic citizens. In conclusion, we draw on the experiences of young people themselves to identify a range of pedagogical conditions that need to be created and more widely sustained to support their career aspirations and life chances. Received 17 October 2016 Accepted 28 January 2017 KEYWORDS Neoliberalism; school reform; school-to-work transition; vocational education and training; youth labour market; youth unemployment Introduction It’s tough getting an interview. When I go for an interview normally I’m like the third or second best. Someone always just beats me. (Lucas) Students can be extremely discerning about what’s happening in their lives. In the above comment, Lucas identifies one of the most pressing issues facing young people today, the challenge of ‘getting a job’ in precarious times. His comment provides the basis for our argument in this article. First, young people today are caught up within an increasingly predatory global capitalism and associated human capital views of schooling. In the Australian context, this involves ‘a policy convergence’ around a dominant version of vocationalism in schools (mainly public high schools) characterised by: (i) ‘VET in Schools’ programmes (any vocational course/subject/module or competency CONTACT Barry Down Australia b.down@murdoch.edu.au © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Murdoch University, South St, Murdoch 6150, Western 2 B. DOWN ET AL. provided through schools that comply with the National Training Framework); and (ii) School-based New Apprenticeships (requiring a contract of training with an employer and attendance at school on either part-time or full-time basis) (Malley & Keating, 2000, p. 643). Consequently, schools and what goes on inside them is largely seen through the prism of a narrowly conceived and instrumentalist version of competencybased vocational education and training (VET). The argument is that schools are failing to prepare ‘job ready’ workers who have the appropriate skills, dispositions and behaviours required by employers. Driving this agenda is an unwavering belief among many politicians, policymakers, teachers, parents and students that VET is a panacea to job creation and guarantee of secure and well-paid work. Whilst it certainly helps, the harsh reality is that neoliberalism is destroying jobs faster than they can be created. The flawed assumption that higher levels of education and training can resolve whatever problems exist in the economy is not only exaggerated, simplistic and naïve, but distracts attention from the real culprits – the organisation of work, the changing nature of labour markets and the economic consequences of globalisation (Aronowitz & DiFazio, 2010; Harvey, 2005). Second, there is an assumption that students from ‘disadvantaged’ backgrounds are less academically able and motivated because of personal deficits attributable to their class and family circumstances (Gorski, 2013; Valencia, 2010). This leads to the practice of streaming students especially of colour and working class background into vocational programmes based on their supposed interests, abilities and aspirations for the future (Oakes, 1985/2005). Kincheloe (1999) says, ‘no matter how you cut it, vocational education has always involved students marginalized around the intersecting axes of race, class, and gender . . .. A better word for the process is “dumping”’ (pp. 217–218). Despite all the rhetoric around preparing young people for jobs and providing opportunities they may not have had, the reality is that VET is generally code for, low-paid, low-skill, insecure, casualised and repetitive jobs (Anyon, 2005; Furlong & Cartmel, 1997; Grubb & Lazerson, 2006). In this article, we seek to challenge these twin logics of schooling by drawing on evidence from a critical ethnographic study of 32 young people living in low SES school communities in Western Australia. In this analysis, we set out to explore the connection between what C.W. Mills (1959/1971) describes as ‘personal troubles’ and ‘public issues’ by which he means individual biographies are best understood when located in the context of wider historical, structural and institutional arrangements. Whilst Lucas’s experience is not unique in the context of the current crisis of youth unemployment both nationally and globally, or the other participants in our study, it does afford an opportunity to penetrate some complex issues related to the ‘savage sorting’ that occurs in an increasingly callous and precarious labour market based on personal experience (Sasson, 2014, p. 4). In short, we want to use Lucas’s experience to interrupt the seeming ‘inevitability’ of neoliberal discourses in the field of VET in schools (Bourdieu, 1998). In the words of Freire (1970/2000), problem-posing research endeavours to explain ‘the way they [young people] exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves’ (p. 83). This involves exposing the ‘deeper systemic dynamics’ (Sasson, 2014, p. 5) of the global economy and specifically, the barriers and obstacles young people face in ‘getting a job’ in the context of what Doherty (2015) describes as the ‘neoliberal juggernaut’. CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 3 Based on Lucas’s narrative, we endeavour to not only offer a critique of the damaging impact of global shifts in the economy on young peoples’ lives but also identify the kinds of conditions that need to be created and more widely sustained to assist their career aspirations and life chances. We have organised the article around a number of themes. First, we allude to some key theoretical ideas informing this analysis. Here we examine the ways in which neoliberalism increasingly subjects young people to the ‘new logics of expulsion’ (Sasson, 2014, p. 1) or what Bauman (2004) vividly describes as ‘wasted lives’ and ‘collateral causalities’ (Bauman, 2011). We then turn to Stovall’s (2007) notion of ‘the politics of interruption’ and Freire’s (1998) understanding of ‘critical hope’ to assist in the task of reconstructing a more socially just set of possibilities for young people. Second, we provide an overview of our research methodology and context to address the nature of critical ethnography and why it matters at this time. In the third section, we turn to Lucas’s narrative as a means of unpacking a range of emergent issues or ‘wicked problems’ (Rittell & Webber, 1973) impacting on young peoples’ lives and their desire to find meaningful work. Finally, we identify a set of alternative pedagogical principles and practices to help shift the conversation about what it means to be educated in precarious times. Neoliberalism, ‘wasted lives’ and ‘a culture of cruelty’ As far back as the 1930s George Counts (1932/1978) in his book Dare the school build a new social order? wrote: Whatever services historic capitalism may have rendered in the past, and they have been many, its days are numbered. . . . In its present form capitalism is not only cruel and inhuman; it is also wasteful and inefficient. (p. 44) Counts’ observation is perhaps even more relevant today than it was nearly 90 years ago. Capitalism, and its modern manifestation under the regime of neoliberalism, continues to wreak havoc on the lives of escalating numbers of young people especially those ‘living on the edge’ (Smyth & Wrigley, 2013). Over the past 30 years a substantial body of literature has provided a wide-ranging critique of neoliberalism and its impact on education (e.g. see Doherty’s special virtual edition of this journal, 2015). It is beyond the scope of this article to rehearse these arguments again but instead, we want to identify some key theoretical ideas that will be helpful in explaining Lucas’s narrative a little later. In essence, neoliberalism is wedded to the idea that the market should be the organising principle for all political, social and economic decisions. This involves trade and financial liberalisation, deregulation, the selling off of state corporations, competition, heavy tax cuts and a shifting of the tax burden from the top to the bottom (Giroux, 2004; Harvey, 2005). What makes neoliberal ideology so dangerous, according to Lipman (2011), is the manner in which it has developed as ‘a new social imaginary, a common sense about how we think about society and our place in it’ (p. 6). Therefore, we should hardly be surprised to find neoliberal ideologies pervading the ways in which policymakers, educators, parents and students think about the role and function of education. Lipman (2004) summarises the fallout in the following way: 4 B. DOWN ET AL. [The neoliberal project] has succeeded in redefining education as job preparation, learning as standardized skills and information, educational quality as measurable by test scores, and teaching as the technical delivery of that which is centrally mandated and tested. By defining the problem of education as standards and accountability they have made simply irrelevant any talk about humanity, difference, democracy, culture, thinking, personal meaning, ethical deliberation, intellectual rigor, social responsibility, and joy in education. Challenging the dominant discourse and posing alternative frameworks are strategic aspects of reversing the present direction. (p. 181) In this section, we want to advance some theoretical ideas capable of interrupting common sense explanations of the way things are. Ball (2006) explains precisely why this kind of theory is paramount: . . . theory provides the possibility of a different language, a language which is not caught up with the assumptions and inscriptions of policymakers or the immediacy of practice (or embedded in tradition, prejudice, dogma, and ideology). It offers a potential location outside the prevailing discourses of policy and a way of struggling against “incorporation”. (p. 20) Of particular relevance to this article is Bauman’s (2004) notion of ‘wasted lives’, an idea that captures the essence of ‘the inevitable outcome of modernisation’ and the ‘inescapable side-effect of order-building (each order casts some parts of the extant population as “out of place”, “unfit”, or “undesirable”) and of economic progress (that cannot proceed without degrading and devaluing the previously effective modes of “making a living” and therefore cannot but deprive their practitioners of their livelihood)’ (p. 5). In short, he argues that ‘some human beings do not fit into the designed form nor can be fitted into it’ (p. 30). Thus, according to Bauman (2005), the exhortation to ‘get work’ and ‘get people to work’ is an attempt to ‘put paid simultaneously to personal troubles and shared social [public] ills’ whilst maintaining ‘individual life, social order and the survival capacity (“systemic reproduction”) of society as a whole’ (pp. 16–17). Elsewhere, Bauman (2011) refers to young people like Lucas as ‘collateral causalities’ of an exploitative economic system. They are ‘dismissed as not important enough to justify the costs of prevention, or simply unexpected because the planners did not consider them worthy of inclusion among the objects of preparatory reconnoitring’ (p. 8). Similarly, Giroux (2013) describes ‘a culture of cruelty’ in which ‘Debt, joblessness, insecurity, and hopelessness are the defining features of a generation that has been abandoned by its market-obsessed, turn-a-quick profit elders’ (p. 136). Slater (2015) warns that within the ‘crisis politics of neoliberalism’ described by Bauman and Giroux, there also operates ‘a process of recovery’ (p. 1). Drawing on Klein’s (2007) notion of disaster capitalism, he contends that as neoliberals create crises, they also position themselves as the sole medium of recovery (p. 3). In this context, young people like Lucas are told that vocational and educational training is the way out, the ladder of opportunity to escape the ‘spectre of uselessness’ by getting an education and special skill (Sennett, 2006, p. 84). Thus, when young people fail to find work, it becomes much easier to blame the victim thus obscuring ‘the primary pathogen’, neoliberal capitalism (p. 9). As Slater (2015) argues, recovery ‘is an insidious brand of politics because it seeks to normalise the exceptionality of crises to cultivate subjectivities that are increasingly accustomed to crisis, destruction, and neoliberal CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 5 rehabilitation’ (p. 11). In this sense recovery, on neoliberal terms, is not only ‘an empty promise’ but also functions to supress alternative possibilities (p. 11). In addressing this problem, we turn to Stovall’s (2007) idea of ‘the politics of interruption’ as a means of challenging deficit views of young people and at the same time, creating high schools where people question ‘the power of the status quo, while investigating racial, political, social and economic forces that impact on schools’ (pp. 681–682). Only then can we begin to develop what Rose (1995/2006) describes as ‘lives of possibility’ in which all young people can flourish, not only the privileged few (p. 413). In other words, we want to engage in what Fielding and Moss (2001) call ‘utopian thinking’ or ‘an expression of desire and imagination, an exploration of possibilities and potentialities, an affirmation of alternatives, and an attempt to anticipate the “not yet”’ (p. 139; see also Kraftl, 2015). This more optimistic vision of human potential and agency resonates strongly with Freire’s (1998) notion of ‘critical hope’, a term he uses to describe the ‘incompleteness’ or ‘unfinishedness’ of the human condition. Through this awareness, he argues, ‘the very possibility of learning, of being educated, resides’ (p. 66). Freire (1998) explains how critical hope ‘gives rise to a permanent movement of searching, of curious interrogation . . . for learning not only to adapt to the world but especially to intervene, to re-create, and to transform it’ (p. 66). Of particular relevance to our argument is Freire’s (1998) belief that future workers ‘need to engage in the process of becoming citizens, something that does not happen as a consequence of “technical efficiency”’ alone (p. 94). What Freire (1998) is alluding to here, is the pivotal importance of an education that includes both ‘technical and scientific preparation and speaks of the workers presence in the world’ (p. 92). So what we take from Freire (1998) is a double move that first, rejects an ideology ‘that humiliates and denies our humanity’ by accepting the view that youth unemployment is inevitable and the only option is to ‘adapt the student to what is inevitable, to what cannot be changed’ (p. 27); and second, adopts an ‘ethical posture’ (p. 94) that is committed to the ‘educability’ (p. 100) of all students grounded in the principles and values of respect, dignity, curiosity, rigor, hope, joy, autonomy and freedom. With these principles in mind we want to organise the remainder of this discussion around the narrative of Lucas, one of our research participants introduced at the beginning of this article, to problematise the policy obsession with human capital views of VET in schools (Grubb & Lazerson, 2004). Based on his experience and the views of other students informing this research we move on to identify six key conditions that provide a basis for rethinking VET in schools. But first, we want to say something about the research and its context. About the research and its context We position this research in the tradition of critical ethnography. That is to say, we seek to investigate the experience of people historically excluded and marginalised from having a say on the things that directly impact on their lives. Madison (2005) explains how critical ethnography ‘takes us beneath surface appearances, disrupts the status quo, and unsettles both neutrality and taken-for-granted assumptions by bringing to light underlying and obscure operations of power and control’ (p. 5). The intent, in the 6 B. DOWN ET AL. words of Brown and Dobrin (2004), is to conduct research that ‘is theoretically informed, methodologically dialectical, and politically and ethically orientated given its concerns for transformative cultural action’ (p. 3). The research traced the experience of 32 high school students over an 18-month period in the years 2011–2013. The intent was to listen to young people’s stories so that we might better understand the barriers and obstacles they face in ‘getting a job’ and from their vantage point, identify the educational policy and practice context that needs to be created and more widely sustained to assist their career aspirations and life chances. The research was approved in accordance with university and institutional ethics committee approval and protocols. At the heart of this research lies a deep-rooted belief that complex educational problems are best understood by listening to the voices of students, by which we mean, a willingness to pursue research that is capable of illuminating experience from the vantage point of the most marginalised groups in society rather than the institutional, political or economic position of powerful interest groups. Down and Smyth (2012) summarise this research orientation in the following way: Our purpose is to try and get inside the issue of the vocationalizing of young lives, how young people are thinking about the world of work, how their aspirations are being formed, the way they see themselves as making sense of the prospect of entering the world of work, and the obstacles and impediments, how school is a part of this project, and how in the end, their stories enable the policy context to be radically informed in a different way. (p. 211) In conducting this research, we adopted a three-phase interview process – Aspirational Interview Phase, Following-up Developments Interview Phase and Life Events and Outcomes Interview (Down & Smyth, 2012, pp. 211–212). The research took place in a school community typically described as low SES or ‘disadvantaged’ by which we mean localities and neighbourhoods that have low levels of weekly earnings, low levels of adult workforce participation, low levels of parental education, reduced levels of life expectancy, a greater percentage of single parent families, high levels of welfare dependency and high rates of youth unemployment (Vinson, 2007). Against this backdrop, we identified 16 emergent themes (see Figure 1) based on the narratives of our informants. These themes provide a lens through which to examine in depth a range of issues relevant to VET in schools. Each theme is organised around a particular student narrative. Given the constraint of space, we have chosen one of these themes – understanding the complexity of the labour market – to illustrate how shifts in the global labour market impact on young lives and the implications for rethinking educational policy and practice. As Rist (1981) argues, this kind of qualitative research allows us to better describe the problem under investigation by paying particular attention to the manner in which the participants define the issue. In this way, we gain not only an awareness of the multiple realities of the education system but also a ‘validity check’ on the current fascination with statistical data to explain what’s happening in the social world. These insider accounts of school life act as a catalyst in shifting the focus from seeing ‘youth as a problem’ and instead, locating individual troubles in the broader context of structural and institutional arrangements as elaborated in Lucas’s story (Mills, 1959/1971). CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 7 Figure 1. Conditions supporting young people in ‘getting a job’. Lucas’s narrative: understanding shifts in the global labour market It’s tough getting an interview. When I go for the interview normally I’m like the third or the second best. Someone always just beats me. So when they say “Just not the best”, I’m wondering what else they want. They don’t really tell you what they were looking for. They say, “Oh you were good, you had everything we needed but this guy is just better than you”. I don’t know why. Someone always just beats me. (Lucas) Lucas was a thoughtful and mature young man who had a clear idea about his future – he wanted to be an electrician. He was one of only 16 students guaranteed a place in a pre-apprenticeship programme at a specialist electrical course. Lucas attended the local high school in a community described as ‘disadvantaged’. Approximately half of the students undertake studies orientated towards VET. Under the umbrella of Industry Links, the courses in years 11 and 12 have components of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) certificate studies, work experience and school-based instruction in numeracy, literacy and job preparation. When we interviewed Lucas in 2011 he had commenced a pre-apprenticeship course in the electrical trades and was well on the way to realising his ambition of becoming a qualified electrician. Although the school supported him, it was clear that he had to find his own work experience placements in the field. In the process, he approached approximately 200 potential employers before finding an employer willing to supervise his work experience. 8 B. DOWN ET AL. Since finishing his pre-apprenticeship with TAFE in 2012 and graduating from high school, Lucas struggled in vain to secure a full-time apprenticeship in the electrical trades. In his words, ‘When I got my Cert[ificate] 2 [Electro Technology] I thought I would be able to get a job but everyone else also has a Cert 2. The problem is you’re trying to get ahead of everyone else but everyone else is also trying to get ahead’. This was a very frustrating time for Lucas and his family. In what could be described as an example of ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, 2006), he was led to believe there were plenty of opportunities for electricians in the job market especially at the time given the hype about a skills shortage in the Australian economy largely driven by a mining boom. Lucas therefore assumed it would be relatively easy to gain an apprenticeship once he completed school. When we last met with Lucas in March 2013 he told us that he spent much of his time searching online for vacant positions and when he did get an interview for a job, he invariably missed out because ‘Someone always beats me’ Lucas’s predicament offers an opportunity to pause and critically reflect on a number of emergent issues. In the Freirian sense of interrupting common sense explanations of everyday experience (Kumashiro, 2004), we now allude to six issues that provide a basis for rethinking educational policies and practices supporting young people in ‘getting a job’. The burden of joblessness falls heaviest on young people Despite evidence to the contrary, there is a common sense view among politicians, policymakers, industry groups, parents and educators (although not all) that education is a panacea to ‘getting a job’. Whilst Grubb and Lazerson (2004) argue that this ‘education gospel’ (or act of faith) is largely rhetorical, it nonetheless, serves to reinforce a set of educational practices around vocationalism dominated by the preparation of young people for economic roles based on the needs of employers (p. 3). Whilst education (and more accurately credentials) is certainly important in an increasingly competitive labour market, the power of schooling to fix social and economic problems such as unemployment is illusory for growing numbers of young people (Brown, Green, & Lauder, 2001; Ross, 2009). In Lucas’s school community, for example, youth unemployment is about 20% with official statistics showing that 37.3% of 15–19 year olds are neither ‘earning nor learning’ (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006, p. 17). Council of Australian Government (COAG, 2008) figures confirm a ‘worrying picture’ nationally where 27.3% of 17–24 year olds are not fully engaged in full-time work or study with 41.6% of poorer students and 60% of Indigenous students ‘falling through the cracks’ (Maiolo, 2013). These figures support an International Labour Organisation warning that the world’s richest nations face a shortfall of 40 million jobs by the end of 2011 (Wright, 2011, p. 17). Countries like Germany, for example, which have highly stratified school and VET systems, are already demonstrating significant ‘social inequalities in labour market opportunities’ (Protsch & Solga, 2016, pp. 19–20). These young people are indeed becoming what Bauman (2004) refers to as ‘wasted lives’, the ‘excessive’ and the ‘redundant’ (p. 5). Statistics mask the reality of joblessness Worryingly, these figures exclude many school leavers like Lucas who do not register with Centrelink – the Commonwealth government agency responsible for managing the CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 9 unemployed. Neither does it account for the manipulation of data that occurs to hide the real number of unemployed particularly in times of economic crisis (Baker, 2013). Young people like Lucas find agencies such as Centrelink to be far too complex and alienating to be of much use to them. The lack of job training opportunities hinders career aspirations Contrary to what Lucas was told by his school counsellor, few apprenticeships or jobs actually exist in the electrical trades. Governments constantly talk up the importance of schools in skilling young Australians – making them job ready – but the permanent full-time jobs simply do not exist and if they do there is intense competition for the few remaining positions available. This can be partly explained by the erosion of structured on-the-job training highlighted by: a 20% slump in beginning apprenticeships between September 2014 and 2015 and a 6% fall in the number of people completing an apprenticeship (Knott, 2016); a $1.1 billion cut to Commonwealth schemes to encourage the take-up of apprenticeships and traineeships (O’Connor, 2016); and the withdrawal of State government subsidies for young electrical apprentices in Western Australia (Perpitch, 2012, p. 2). Young people require school-to-work transition support There appears to be few employment support mechanisms for young people once they leave school. Whilst Lucas was able to avail himself of career counselling services at school, he ultimately relied extensively on family networks and his own initiative. He was active in pursuing over 200 potential work experience and apprenticeship opportunities with employers without success. Much of this legwork was conducted online (as required by many employers and employment agencies) as well as numerous face-toface ‘drop in’ requests. Aside from the largely inadequate Newstart Allowance, Centrelink renders little assistance to job seekers. For young people like Lucas, school is often disconnected from the world of work and ‘something you have to do’ (Smith & Keating, 2003, p. 15). Jonker (2006) argues that because students are ‘trained for nonexisting jobs’, schooling is largely irrelevant to their needs and interests leading to further tensions in the classroom (p. 125). It was not until the senior years of school where Lucas was able to enrol in a more practical vocational course that he eventually saw some relevance of his schooling to ‘getting a job’, albeit a largely instrumentalist view of becoming educated. Students can easily become ‘the problem’ if they can’t find a job It is a relatively short step to blaming students if they can’t find a job because of personal deficits (e.g. lazy, lack of ability, low aspirations, poor behaviour and ‘at-risk’) rather than focusing on the collapse of job opportunities and the cumulative effects of social and economic disadvantage. Jonker (2006), for example, reports that in the Netherlands ‘truancy, school failure and early school leaving are predominantly approached as a problem at the individual perspective, and a problem individual students pose to society’ (p. 129). In Britain, Piper and Piper (2000) note the 10 B. DOWN ET AL. pathological approach of locating the problem ‘with the young person’ whilst ‘only limited reference is made to their family situation, the local labour market, surrounding professional systems or the framework of relevant policy’ (p. 81). And, in Australia, Billet, et al. (2010, p. 485) observe the increasing emphasis on individual explanations of school-to-work transitions rather than the broader economic, social and political forces shaping individual lives. Lucas illustrates this point well when he says, ‘everyone else has a Cert 2. The problem is you’re trying to get ahead of everyone else but everyone else is also trying to get ahead’. Young people are competing globally for jobs The promise of the knowledge economy to create more high-skilled, high-wage jobs, especially in the communications and information industries, for so long the cornerstone of the developed economies and education systems, has been undermined by ‘the global auction for cut-priced brainpower’ as workers from the emerging economies such as China, India, Russia and Eastern Europe compete for the diminishing number of decent, well-paid middle-class jobs (Brown, Lauder, & Ashton, 2011, p. 5). Beck (2000) explains how ‘every location in the world now potentially competes with all others for scarce capital investment and cheap labour supplies’ (p. 27). For students like Lucas, ‘the promise of the good life for those with ability and the willingness to work hard’ is becoming increasingly distant (Brown et al., 2011, p. 5). As Standing (2011) points out, the real danger in all of this, is that we are creating a new ‘precariat class’ of young people afflicted by the four A’s – anger, anomie, anxiety and alienation (pp. 19–20). Under these conditions there is an urgent need – morally, economically and politically – to move beyond the way things are in order to rethink the field of VET from the point of view of young people themselves. Alternative scripts and possibilities In light of Lucas’s experience and the associated issues we have identified in the previous section, we want to now consider some of the implications in terms of developing socially just alternatives to vocational educational and training in schools. We believe the best way forward is to advance an understanding of what it means to think critically by which we mean a willingness to question everyday assumptions and behaviours operating behind our backs and in ways that may not always be in our own best interests. At heart, this kind of thinking avoids ‘oversimplications, compromises, and convention’ and is not beholden ‘to some particular ideology or policy, but to following one’s conscience’ (Berkowitz, 2010, p. 8). Schwalbe (2008) describes this kind of critical thinking as ‘sociological mindfulness’ because it provides a way of comprehending the social world, by which he means ‘taking the bigger picture into account and trying to see how one part of the social world – the economy, for instance – is related to other parts – schools, for instance’ (p. 12). The challenge then is to understand why things are the way they are, how they got that way and how they can be changed for the better (Simon, Dippo, & Schenke, 1991). CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 11 Contrary to a lot of pessimism around these bigger issues, we believe that schools and communities have the power and agency to change the way things are. In the words of Wrigley (2006), ‘another kind of school is possible’. Drawing on Freire’s (1998) notion of ‘critical hope’ we want to identify the kinds of conditions that are likely to support young people as they navigate their way in uncertain times. As Jonker (2006) puts it, we want to create schools that no longer inflict ‘serious pain and confusion’ on students (p. 123). Putting it another way, we want to challenge various versions of ‘false hope’ (DuncanAndrade, 2009) highlighted by students like Lucas. For instance: ‘hokey hope’ – ‘an individualistic up by your bootstraps [approach] that suggests if youth simply work hard, pay attention, and play by the rules, then they will go to college’ or get their dream job (p. 182); ‘mythical hope’ – ‘rooted in celebrating individual exceptions’ such as sporting champions and rag to riches stories (p. 184); and ‘hope deferred’ – in which students are asked ‘to set their sights on some temporally distant (and highly unlikely) future well-being’ (p. 185). In contrast to false hope, ‘critical hope’ ‘rejects the despair of hopelessness’ to convey a sense of how young people might gain ‘control of destiny’ (Syme, 2004, p. 3). In other words, we do not subscribe to the fatalism and inevitability of the neoliberal project (Bourdieu, 1998) nor do we see young people as simply passive objects to be manipulated by powerful economic and institutional interests. Rather, we take the view that young people are not only the best ‘pure witnesses’ (Kozol, 2005, p. 12) about what’s happening in schools but also have the power and agency to change things for the better (Ginwright, Noguera, & Cammarota, 2006, p. xviii). In the remainder of this article we want to draw on the stories of students like Lucas and his peers to begin the process of re-imagining an alternative set of educational practices. We want to begin by extrapolating a number of key principles from our earlier discussion to help reorientate the ways in which we think about young people in a more socially critical manner based on the importance of: ● ● ● ● ● ● Locating young people’s lives in the context of broader shifts in the global economy. Ceasing to blame young people for the problems of the economy especially unemployment. Challenging deficits, pathologies and stereotypes that serve to demean those most marginalised and excluded (Valencia, 2010). Interrupting the myth that it is acceptable for large numbers of young people to ‘work with their hands not their minds’ (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 139). Building a ‘different kind of politics’ (Boyte, 2003) with a range of community groups to guarantee all students a smooth school-to-work transition. Creating more well-paid, secure and meaningful jobs for young people. Expanding on these principles we want to advance some alternative scripts and possibilities (ideas, strategies and provocations) to assist those schools, teachers and community groups interested in doing school differently. Based on the interviews with young people in this research, we have been able to identify a range of interconnected conditions that need to be created to support young people in ‘getting a job’ (see Figure 1). In the remainder of this section we provide a synopsis of six key conditions 12 B. DOWN ET AL. arising from the narratives of young people themselves as crucial ingredients in rethinking the notion of ‘getting a job’ in precarious times. Going beyond menial, piece rate and poorly paid jobs One of the most common exhortations from politicians, industry leaders and conservative think tanks is for young people to ‘take any job’ (Ireland, 2014) rather than providing them with opportunities to develop what Bauman (2004) describes as ‘a“lifeproject”; a matter of self-esteem and self-definition, or a warrant of long-term security’ (p. 10). We argue that instead of seeing young people as bundles of pathologies or objects to be manipulated by powerful economic interests, there needs to be a much deeper analysis of the changing global labour market confronting young people and how these structural and institutional arrangements serve to either enable or constrain their ability to find meaningful work. Underpinning the narratives of all participants in this research project is a desire to find a ‘good’ job, no matter what the obstacles. For them, this involved secure jobs with good pay and conditions, interesting work and a sense of accomplishment. Kincheloe (1999) argues that all young people have a right to good work by which he means creating workplaces committed to the ideals and principles of: self-direction, judgement and problem solving; variety and freedom from repetitive boredom; co-operation; creativity; the public good and worker participation (pp. 68–73). This requires a willingness on the part of governments and industry groups to show leadership in conceptualising and supporting the development of a coherent and sustainable youth employment strategy that ideally provides an appropriate living wage, a concerted investment in job creation, training schemes and employment conditions. Moving beyond the self-fulfilling prophecy of streaming The practice of streaming students into academic (high status) or non-academic (low status) pathways serves to reinforce educational inequalities for the least advantaged by delivering different kinds of school knowledge to different classes of students (Connell, 1993; Teese & Polesel, 2003). As education systems become increasingly stratified and residualised public schools in poor neighbourhoods find themselves delivering ‘hands on’ vocational programmes as a means of encouraging students to stay on at school whilst excluding them from the benefits of academic knowledge (Oakes, 1985/2005). Piper and Piper (2000) explain how the labelling of students as ‘disaffected’ or ‘disengaged’ results in a social division; ‘those wealthy enough not to need to work remain socially included, those who are poor or disabled, or who choose to look after their young children, join the excluded’ (p. 82). In the context of the current obsession with standardised test scores and private benefit, there are fewer opportunities to engage students and expand their learning in more creative, rigorous and meaningful ways. Wheelahan (2010) argues that one way to address this problem is by overturning the competency-based training model (which is presently the dominant curriculum in VET) and instead, emphasise disciplinary knowledge in context (see also Young & Lambert, 2015 for discussion). Thus, rather than creating an artificial division between academic and non-academic knowledge we argue the need for integration of academic and CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 13 vocational learning so that all students can learn to use material and conceptual tools in authentic real-world contexts (Kincheloe, 1995). As Oakes and Saunders (2008) contend, students today require both ‘academic and real-world foundations’ in order to achieve ‘advanced learning, training, and preparation for responsible civic citizenship’ (p. 6). Building cultural capital We know that students from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to do well at school because they come from supportive middle class families that have the cultural capital to help them succeed at school and navigate their career options (Circelli & Oliver, 2012, p. 23). Lareau (2003) terms this ‘concerted cultivation’ as parents learn to draw out their children’s talents and skills (p. 243). In general, middle-class families feel more comfortable in dealing with their children’s school and feel a greater sense of entitlement, whilst working-class families feel much more ‘uncomfortable and constrained’ (p. 243). It happens to be the case that the knowledge, values and behaviours that characterise the middle and upper classes are the same as those required as one progresses through the education system. Unfortunately, the converse applies to the predispositions of students from working-class backgrounds (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). It is, therefore, imperative that schools work collaboratively with the strengths, skills and assets of young people as well as improving alliances between schools, families, community and service agencies. Schools by themselves cannot alleviate the escalating levels of youth unemployment, homelessness, poverty and welfare dependency (Anyon, 2005) but they can provide opportunities to imaginatively re-engage young people by drawing on their own ‘funds of knowledge’ as rich resources for students’ learning (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). Creating hospitable places for learning Hospitable schools are places where ‘students are [not] propelled through the education system in pursuit of a credential’ but are more ‘inclined towards living multiple forms of transition’ (Smyth & Hattam, 2004, p. 136). Creating hospitable places for learning involves a willingness to put the needs of students first, being flexible and responsive, building relationships based on respect, trust and care and providing opportunities to engage with the adult world through meaningful relationships and projects (Smyth, Down, & McInerney, 2010). Emphasising the creation of capabilities Drawing on Sen (1992), the idea of building capabilities provides a way of assisting students like Lucas to gain the knowledge, skills and dispositions to navigate their way in the world. We argue that a capabilities approach is far more useful than narrow competency-based approaches because it is about assisting young people to: (i) identify the kind of lives they want to lead; (ii) providing them with the skills and knowledge to achieve that and (iii) helping them to understand the political, social and economic conditions that enable or constrain them (Smyth et al., 2010, p. 74). However, as Wheelan, Moodie and Buchanan (2012) argue, VET in schools ‘continues to struggle 14 B. DOWN ET AL. within the constraints of the senior secondary certification structures’ (p. 8). What is required, they argue, is the development of a ‘capabilities approach . . . contextualised by the broader social and economic environment in which people live and work’ (p. 22). Similarly, Oakes and Saunders (2008) argue that students need opportunities to develop capabilities as preparation for further education, careers and civic participation. In short, students need many more opportunities to: (a) negotiate aspects of their learning; (b) integrate their personal concerns and interests into the curriculum and (c) deepen the capabilities and skills gained from out of school learning experiences. These are consistent themes among all of our participants. Reinventing schools around the emotional lives, needs, interests and desires of young people School-to-work transitions for young people today are neither straightforward nor linear (McLeod & Yates, 2006; Wyn & Dwyer, 2000). Many young people are forced to be mature beyond their years in handling obstacles, usually in their complex lives outside of school. Others have to seemingly contend with less of these kinds of impediments and we are left wondering how schools can possibly level the playing field so that all young people can flourish. We suspect that this can only occur through the sensitivity, awareness and humanity of individual teachers and schools in the way they get up close to what is happening in young lives and accordingly adjust their way of doing school. Although schools may not be able to compensate for students lack of cultural capital or the circumstances in which they find themselves through no fault of their own (e.g. poverty) they can make a difference by engaging all students in a curriculum which acknowledges their interests, culture, language, experience and desires. Based on what young people are saying, these kinds of engaging pedagogies are more likely to enhance success in education, careers and life beyond the school gate. Concluding remarks In this article, we have argued that the challenge of ‘getting a job’ is becoming increasingly harder for young people, especially those from contexts of ‘disadvantage’. Furthermore, we have argued that the fallout from the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the relentless pursuit of neoliberal ideology is having a profoundly damaging impact on the lives of young people. In response to the growing crisis of youth unemployment and disaffection with schooling we have witnessed a ‘policy convergence’ around the desirability of aligning schools more closely to the needs of the economy. In essence, this means placing a greater emphasis on competency-based VET in schools in order to prepare ‘job ready’ and compliant workers (Lauder, 2015, p. 491). Our argument is that vocationalisation, especially in poorer school communities, serves to residualise unacceptably large numbers of young people by reinforcing the myth that it is acceptable to have the bifurcation in which young people are forced to ‘work with their hands not their minds’ (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 139). We believe this leads to a diminished version of education divorced from the broader philosophical, ethical and political dimensions of teaching as well as the desires, dreams, passions and interests of students themselves (Freire, 1998). Furthermore, the rhetoric of the CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 15 knowledge economy to create more high-skilled, high-wage jobs is proving to be an illusion for growing numbers of young people. We have drawn on the experience of Lucas to illustrate how individual lives cannot be separated from these broader shifts in the global labour market and this understanding is pivotal to both comprehending what’s happening in young lives and identifying alternative possibilities. In pursuing this agenda, we have utilised some key theoretical ideas to generate a spirit of critique and hope. At the centre of this theorising we referred to Bauman’s understanding of ‘wasted lives’ and ‘collateral damage’ and Giroux’s notion of ‘disposability’. These are powerful explanatory ideas in comprehending the structural obstacles and barriers young people face in uncertain times. We have also argued that whilst these ‘new geography of livelihoods’ (Ross, 2009, p. 1) have presented some unique challenges for young people they also enable new scripts and possibilities. This is where Stovall’s notion of ‘the politics of interruption’ and Freire’s understanding of ‘critical hope’ offered a way of not only interrupting dominant neoliberal approaches to human capital formation but also creating socially just alternatives based on what young people are saying. To advance this broader democratic project, we have endeavoured to highlight the kinds of conditions that young people themselves require to pursue their imagined futures. Towards this end, we have used Lucas’s experience to better understand what’s happening to young people and from their point of view identify the kinds of educational practices required to create a more engaging, fairer and socially just approach to VET in schools. Acknowledgements This work was supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant entitled Getting a Job: Vocationalism, Identity Formation and Schooling in Communities at Disadvantage (ARC Linkage LP110100031) (2010–2014). We acknowledge the contribution of Industry Partners and the Western Australian Department of Education. The facts and views expressed in this paper are, however, those of the authors. We also wish to acknowledge the contribution of the reviewers and editor to the final article. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Funding This work was supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant entitled Getting a Job: Vocationalism, Identity Formation and Schooling in Communities at Disadvantage (ARC Linkage LP110100031) (2010–2014). Notes on contributors Barry Down is professor of Education at Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia. His research interests focus on critical pedagogy, social justice, student engagement, vocationalisation and teachers’ work. He has co-authored numerous books with long time collaborators John Smyth, Peter McInerney and Robert Hattam. He is currently working on a new book Rethinking school to work transitions: Young people have 16 B. DOWN ET AL. something to say (with Smyth and Robinson) (Springer) and editing The Sage International handbook of critical pedagogies (with Steinberg, Grande and Nix-stevenson) (Sage). John Smyth was appointed visiting professor of Education and Social Justice at the University of Huddersfield in 2015. He has previously held professorships and visiting professorships in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and is a former a Senior Fulbright Scholar. John is the author or co-author of 30 academic books, and over 130 papers in peerreviewed academic journals, and 80 book chapters. He is currently Series Editor Palgrave MacMillan Critical University Studies. Janean Robinson graduated as a secondary school teacher in the 1970s and taught at many public secondary schools throughout Western Australia. She completed her PhD thesis; ‘Troubling’ Behaviour Management: Listening to student voice (2011) and was appointed research associate to the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage grant informing this article. Janean’s research interests include critical ethnography, educational policy, teachers’ work and student voice. She continues to publish work in journals such as Ethnography and Education. References Anyon, J. (2005). 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