The gendering of skill and vocationalism in twentieth‐century Australian education

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Abstract
While the notion of skill has many common‐sense assumptions, this paper considers the ways in which the concept of skill, as a central element of a discourse of vocationalism which has surfaced in periods of social and economic dislocation during 20th‐century education, has taken on different meanings in particular historical circumstances. Skill is a social construct. It is critical to the process of the gendering of work. It has become the central issue in recent policy seeking to make education serve more effectively the needs of industry, policy which has largely been informed by human capital theory. This paper suggests that not only does the human capital model provide a narrow and ahistorical view of the education‐work nexus, but the claim that skill is technically defined and neutral masks the ideological and political work that such concepts do, when uncritically accepted, in exacerbating the gendered division of labour. The paper traces historically how the dominant concept of skill has shifted in 20th‐century Australia from being job‐ and content‐specific to a more generic view of skill which includes not only cognitive, technical and operational skills but also social and affective skills in ways which differentially affect youth according to gender and class. Educational policy and school practice has in general responded to the ‘skilling thesis’ in relatively uncritical ways. In so doing, the effect has been in some instances to produce conservative outcomes when the intention has been to empower individuals and particular social groups, e.g., through the acquisition of ‘vocational’ skills.