Critical social pedagogy: Colliding with neo-liberal education management

This paper reports research conducted by the Research Centre for Learning and Social Transformation. Our work on workbased learning (WBL) reframes the dualism of higher education and vocational education and training within a critical social pedagogy framework. In implementing WBL we are aware of the epistemological and historical backgrounds of workbased learning and the tensions between competing interests embedded in it. Some of these backgrounds will be explored briefly to position our view on WBL within broader educational debates. The paper argues that two main forces, economic responsiveness and critical social pedagogy form an integral, historic part of WBL. The specific expression of these debates in our application will be described as principles of ethical practice and quality education developed in the Graduate Diploma of Social Sciences (Community Services). Introduction From schools to universities, the inclusion of work in institutionalised learning processes is seen as a major advance towards a more economically viable output (ie. employable school leavers and graduates). Consequently, ‘workbased learning’ and its more limited sibling ‘workplace learning ’are emerging as the latest innovations throughout the education system. In higher education, WBL can be seen as a strategy to break down barriers between vocational and academic education and as an opportunity to improve access to higher education. Hand in hand with ‘seamless’ education and recognition of prior learning, WBL is making inroads in traditional education institutions. The debate about vocational outcomes of schools and universities is longer philosophical and technical. Apart from implementation issues, schools and universities are struggling to embrace WBL, which is often seen as purely instrumental and as selling the role of education short. Schoolteachers have resisted the production of ‘factory fodder’ since the beginning of mass education and universities pride themselves on the unfettered pursuit of knowledge. In our experience, these two positions form an integral part of a WBL dialectic, they need not be mutually exclusive and a quasistationary balance between economic responsiveness and critical social pedagogy can be attempted. Historical and epistemological backgrounds of WBLa brief overview Although spoken of as educational innovation, WBL has a long history of experimentation and the educational concepts and practices described as workplace learning and WBL have a rich epistemological tradition in debates about