How competency-based training locks the working class out of powerful knowledge: a modified Bernsteinian analysis

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Wheelahan, Leesa
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Len Barton

Date
2007
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Abstract

This paper argues that competency-based training in vocational education and training in Australia is one mechanism through which the working class is denied access to powerful knowledge represented by the academic disciplines. The paper presents a modified Bernsteinian analysis to argue that vocational education and training students need access to disciplinary knowledge using Bernstein's argument that abstract, conceptual knowledge is the means societies use to think 'the unthinkable' and 'the not-yet-thought'. I supplement Bernstein's social argument for democratic access to the disciplines with an epistemic argument that draws on the philosophy of critical realism.

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British Journal of Sociology of Education

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28

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5

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© 2007 Taylor & Francis. This is the author-manuscript version of the paper. Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.

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Specialist Studies in Education

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Sociology

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