ABSTRACT
Some would suggest that, when the pace of change quickens, the pressures on individuals to enact different identities for different times are increased. This appears to be the case for Technical and Further Education (TAFE) teachers in the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia. The impact of neoliberalism on this sector has produced the new vocational discourse that positions TAFE teachers as certain kinds of teachers enacting particular teaching and curriculum within an education market. This chapter explores how the new vocational discourse, and reactions to it, have created a binary between itself and TAFE teachers’ notions of themselves and their teaching.
In this chapter, the focus is on the personal. One TAFE teacher’s experience at this confluence is reported by way of a case study. The chapter explores the terrain where the discourses that shaper her personal subjectivities as a TAFE teacher have been pressured to merge with the discourse of new vocationalism.
