The sea in which I swim… TAFE SA and the vocational education and training (VET) sector

1. The sea in which I swim…TAFE SA and the vocational education and training (VET) sector

2. Our offerings…Graduate certificate management (learning)Graduate certificate career development practiceGraduate Diploma management (learning)Articulation with Masters of Professional Practice (University of Southern Queensland)Managers – police, public sector, education, university, VET sector managementCareerdevelopment advisersHuman resourcesTraining and developmentKnowledge managementCareers teachers

3. Volatile Uncertain ComplexAmbiguousVUCA – duh…

4. So this is what I have learned…Questions – Ed Schein Ownership I – Leadership skillOwnership II – Use of questionsJohn Holt – Learning by doingPeter Senge – The Learning Organisation

5. Learning by doing –(John Holt, ‘Never Too Late’) Another common and mistaken idea hidden in the word ‘learning’ is that learning and doing are different kinds of acts. Thus, not many years ago I began playing the cello. I love the instrument, spend many hours a day playing it, work hard at it, and mean someday to play it well. Most people would say that what I am doing is ‘learning to play’ the cello. Our language gives us no other words to say it. But these words carry into our minds the strange idea that there exist two very different processes: 1/ Learning to play the cello; and 2/ playing the cello. They imply that I will do the first until I have completed it, at which point I will stop the first process and begin the second; in short, that I will go on ‘learning to play’ until I have ‘learned to play’ and that then I will begin ‘to play’. Of course, this is nonsense. There are not two processes, but one. We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way

6. “We never have enough time. Every organisation we visit always talks about time as if it is the victorious enemy. We need to create the space to learn, examine our own assumptions, and to grow. Reflection does not have to be a huge time commitment, but it can have a tremendous payback.” • (The Learning Organisation) • ‘Coming together to talk together and think together, because only then can we act together’ • (Peter Senge interview)

7. Did I miss anything?