This account reports on a commissioned strategic evaluation undertaken
for the Australian National Training Authority on the qualitative impact
of the introduction of Training Packages on vocational education and
training clients. The research involved collecting the views of over 200 VET
practitioners, bureaucrats and administrators, industry personnel, and
students from all Australian States and Territories. The data collected
provides a snapshot of conflcting views about Training Packages. An
activity theory approach was used to analyse the data. This resulted in the
identifiation of key contextual issues which act against the adoption of
Training Packages and their innovative use by VET practitioners. These
issues are systemic in nature and provide an explanation for the polarity of
views which, inevitably, result from any discussion of Training Packages.
The focus of this paper is the nature of the substantial, system wide change
process that the introduction of Training Packages initiated, and the views
of research participants on some of the issues emanating from the livedthrough experience of this change.
Training Packages represent a different form of specifiation of vocational education
and training. Whereas for a decade previously, competency-based training (CBT)
had been defied through curriculum descriptors, Training Packages defie only the
outcome and the criteria against which the outcome is recognised and specifid. This
is based on an implicit assumption of a capacity for teachers and trainers to develop
the necessary curriculum through which these outcomes can be achieved for a specifi