Competence-based training reform in Australia: lessons for Russia
The article provides an evaluation of the implementation of educational reform on competence-based training (CBT) in Australia's vocational education. The study is based on official documents, national reports, analytical articles, and empirical studies. The article characterizes the main features of the CBT, describes a brief history of the reform, summarizes the rationale for the implementation of the reform. The influence of CBT on teachers, business and industry is analyzed. Main problems of the CBT introduction are highlighted. The goals and results of the CBT reform are compared, and recommendations are made for the transformation of professional education in Russia. Many authors define CBT as a workplace learning technology focusing on the assessment of industry-specific standardized and observable skill outcomes. Competency is understood as work-related skill in specific fields of knowledge so it can be assessed and compared across time and individuals. CBT was adopted, in general, to “make educational goals more explicit, instructional methods more effective, and educational institutions more accountable” (Jackson, 1995, p. 164). Since the early 90s, CBT has been viewed by many authors as the most significant and influential characteristic of Australian training system appeared after the long-lasting education reforms. The main reasons for these reforms were: 1) economic crisis in Australia in the 1980s; 2) the desire to provide higher social chances for Australians; 3) the transformation of the professions; 4) the desire to reduce social inequality, especially in relation to women, migrants, Australia's indigenous people. Analysis of the implementation of CBT showed that the reform deprived teachers of a large share of autonomy and power, reduced the ability to build personal relationships with students, demanded the development of new skills. At the same time, the essence of the reform and its key concepts were not completely clear to the teachers, which was one of the factors of their anxiety and uncertainty. Business and industry as key stakeholders of CBT also did not fully understand it and their obligations. The curricula and the content of education became more pragmatic and less critical, which was rejected by some teachers. Decisions on the educational program were transferred to employers. Teaching itself has become more horizontal, relying on student selforganization, but new approaches to teaching were found not appropriate for all the possible educational environments and not for the entire student population. The evaluation of the reform was not properly implemented, which prevented the assessment of its real contribution to Australia's economic growth. A comparison of the goals and results of the CBT introduction shows that, despite the generally successful reform implementation, several unforeseen difficulties have arisen. Because Russia is currently also developing a large-scale reform of vocational education, based, in general, on the same background as other developed countries, it is proposed to consider the conclusions drawn from the analysis of the Australian experience.