Guest posting to voced-coord email list.
Item 2 of 6:

Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 09:31:08 +1100
To: voced-coord@owl.qut.edu.au
From: Ken Price (Ken.Price@central.tased.edu.au)
Subject: VocEd: GUEST: are "competition" and "sharing of ideas" mutual enemies?

Hello and thank you for inviting me into your community.

The reason I am here, I suppose, is to share with you some experiences and ideas which emerged out of my recent trip to the US and Canada where I investigated school-based training for students to enter the Information Technology industry. This was made possible by the Winston Churchill Memorial trust, who granted me a fellowship sponsored by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research. My employer (Dept of Education, Tasmania) were able to let me undertake this fellowship (I almost said they were glad to see me go, but that might be misconstrued!)

Initially I thought I might run through details of my trip, which looked at courses in Film and Multimedia, Internet Development, HelpDesk Operation, Robotics, Technical Support, and an extensive set of IT courses designed by Microsoft, Cisco Systems, 3Com, Novell and CompTIA. However, I will spare you that (it will be written up into a report for those who specifically require it) and consider some wider issues first.

One issue for Voc Ed which is emerging in the US is that of competition, and its side effects.

I was scheduled to visit a couple of North American school sites (that is, I had arranged things in advance with teachers) but found on arrival that a new force was at play. The teachers had developed innovative and popular courses, and the school had seen these as having market potential. Consequently, the principal had decide that no "visitors" were to see what they were doing nor view any materials, as this would remove the competitive advantage. After all, why would any business give its business secrets away to its competitors?

Now this attitude is quite unlike the collegial sharing of information which teachers are happy to do. It has arisen as a consequence of market forces acting on schools, and one source of those market forces is the Vocational Education area (where schools and industry meet).

One of the teachers asked rhetorically, "WiIl this Voc Ed stuff eventually destroy the traditional generosity of spirit between educators?" I am still unsure of the answer; it seems that Australia is relatively free of the problem so far, but once individual schools become well-known for their vocational courses, is the "business secret" issue likely to appear? Or if not, why not?

I shall hand over to the VECO community for comment.