Leesa Wheelahan
Biographic Data
| ID | 4413629 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leesa Wheelahan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leesa |
| FAMILY NAME | Wheelahan |
| SIGNATURE | WHEELAHAN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7981-9710 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 51 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Revisiting credentialism – why qualifications matter
The ontology of personhood and a realist critique of the policy discourse based on skills
Emerging Perspectives from Social Realism on Knowledge and Education
What do vocational colleges do and why do they matter? Thinking about the role of colleges as local actors
Colleges as anchors of their communities
The postsecondary qualifications of Canadian workers
This article reports on a study investigating the link between education and work. Instead of looking at the labour outcomes of graduates, the study examined the qualifications held by workers in technician- and professional-level jobs from three types of occupational fields: regulated, applied, and general. The approach shifts the focus away from the supply of qualifications to the way qualifications are used in the workplace. The findings show …
Gig qualifications for the gig economy
This paper argues that micro-credentials are gig credentials for the gig economy. Micro-credentials are short competency-based industry-aligned units of learning, while the gig economy comprises contingent work by individual ‘suppliers’. Both can be facilitated by (often the same) digital platforms, and both are underpinned by social relations of precariousness in the labour market and in society. They are mutually reinforcing and each has the po…
Challenging the skills fetish
This article describes the process through which human capital theory came to dominate policy in post-compulsory education, to result in the fetishisation of skills. It relates skills policies to the contemporaneous development of policies on lifelong learning. The fetishisation of skills is related to methodological and normative individualism displacing an understanding that capacity and skill arise from and are developed by interdependent acti…
Doctoral theses abstracts in vocational education
Analysing micro-credentials in higher education
This paper critiques the emergence of micro-credentials in higher education. It argues that micro-credentials build on the discourse of employability skills and 21st century skills within human capital theory, and that they increase the potential of human capital theory to ‘discipline’ the HE curriculum to align it more closely with putative labour market requirements. The paper is situated within the social realist school in the sociology of edu…
Doctoral theses in vocational education
The editors and editorial board of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training take great pleasure in publishing doctoral theses in vocational education in this issue of the journal. Thirty-on
Why Knowledge Matters in Curriculum
This book takes a unique approach by using the sociology of Basil Bernstein and the philosophy of critical realism as complementary modes of theorising to extend and develop social realist arguments about the role of knowledge in curriculum, and to elaborate social realism's critique of constructivism, technical-instrumentalism and neo-conservatism
Do educational pathways contribute to equity in tertiary education in Australia
A key assumption of equity policies in Australia, as in many countries, is that pathways from lower-status, vocationally oriented ‘second’ tiers of tertiary education to ‘first’ tier higher education are able to act as an equity mechanism. This is because students from low socio-economic backgrounds are over-represented in former and underrepresented in the latter. The assumption that pathways support equity is tested in this paper through an ana…
A social realist alternative for curriculum
The role that knowledge should play in curriculum is strangely absent from debates within the sociology of education and within education policy. This is a paradox because the purpose of education
How competency‐based training locks the working class out of powerful knowledge
This paper argues that competency‐based training in vocational education and training in Australia is one mechanism through which the working class is denied access to powerful knowledge represented by the academic disciplines. The paper presents a modified Bernsteinian analysis to argue that vocational education and training students need access to disciplinary knowledge using Bernstein’s argument that abstract, conceptual knowledge is the means…
Blending activity theory and critical realism to theorise the relationship between the individual and society and the implications for pedagogy
This paper draws on Margaret Archer's morphogenetic realist social theory, the philosophy of critical realism upon which it is based, and activity theory to analyse the relationship between the individual and society, and the implications this relationship has for the way we understand learning. It is important that we theorise this relationship, because our ontological assumptions shape our understandings of the nature of learning, and have impl…
How competency‐based training locks the working class out of powerful knowledge
This paper argues that competency‐based training in vocational education and training in Australia is one mechanism through which the working class is denied access to powerful knowledge represented by the academic disciplines. The paper presents a modified Bernsteinian analysis to argue that vocational education and training students need access to disciplinary knowledge using Bernstein’s argument that abstract, conceptual knowledge is the means…
Challenging the skills fetish
This article describes the process through which human capital theory came to dominate policy in post-compulsory education, to result in the fetishisation of skills. It relates skills policies to the contemporaneous development of policies on lifelong learning. The fetishisation of skills is related to methodological and normative individualism displacing an understanding that capacity and skill arise from and are developed by interdependent acti…
What do vocational colleges do and why do they matter? Thinking about the role of colleges as local actors
Do educational pathways contribute to equity in tertiary education in Australia
A key assumption of equity policies in Australia, as in many countries, is that pathways from lower-status, vocationally oriented ‘second’ tiers of tertiary education to ‘first’ tier higher education are able to act as an equity mechanism. This is because students from low socio-economic backgrounds are over-represented in former and underrepresented in the latter. The assumption that pathways support equity is tested in this paper through an ana…
Colleges as anchors of their communities
Revisiting credentialism – why qualifications matter
The ontology of personhood and a realist critique of the policy discourse based on skills
Blending activity theory and critical realism to theorise the relationship between the individual and society and the implications for pedagogy
This paper draws on Margaret Archer's morphogenetic realist social theory, the philosophy of critical realism upon which it is based, and activity theory to analyse the relationship between the individual and society, and the implications this relationship has for the way we understand learning. It is important that we theorise this relationship, because our ontological assumptions shape our understandings of the nature of learning, and have impl…
How competency‐based training locks the working class out of powerful knowledge
This paper argues that competency‐based training in vocational education and training in Australia is one mechanism through which the working class is denied access to powerful knowledge represented by the academic disciplines. The paper presents a modified Bernsteinian analysis to argue that vocational education and training students need access to disciplinary knowledge using Bernstein’s argument that abstract, conceptual knowledge is the means…
Blending activity theory and critical realism to theorise the relationship between the individual and society and the implications for pedagogy
This paper draws on Margaret Archer's morphogenetic realist social theory, the philosophy of critical realism upon which it is based, and activity theory to analyse the relationship between the individual and society, and the implications this relationship has for the way we understand learning. It is important that we theorise this relationship, because our ontological assumptions shape our understandings of the nature of learning, and have impl…
A social realist alternative for curriculum
The role that knowledge should play in curriculum is strangely absent from debates within the sociology of education and within education policy. This is a paradox because the purpose of education
Do educational pathways contribute to equity in tertiary education in Australia
A key assumption of equity policies in Australia, as in many countries, is that pathways from lower-status, vocationally oriented ‘second’ tiers of tertiary education to ‘first’ tier higher education are able to act as an equity mechanism. This is because students from low socio-economic backgrounds are over-represented in former and underrepresented in the latter. The assumption that pathways support equity is tested in this paper through an ana…
Why Knowledge Matters in Curriculum
This book takes a unique approach by using the sociology of Basil Bernstein and the philosophy of critical realism as complementary modes of theorising to extend and develop social realist arguments about the role of knowledge in curriculum, and to elaborate social realism's critique of constructivism, technical-instrumentalism and neo-conservatism
Doctoral theses in vocational education
The editors and editorial board of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training take great pleasure in publishing doctoral theses in vocational education in this issue of the journal. Thirty-on
Doctoral theses abstracts in vocational education
Analysing micro-credentials in higher education
This paper critiques the emergence of micro-credentials in higher education. It argues that micro-credentials build on the discourse of employability skills and 21st century skills within human capital theory, and that they increase the potential of human capital theory to ‘discipline’ the HE curriculum to align it more closely with putative labour market requirements. The paper is situated within the social realist school in the sociology of edu…
The postsecondary qualifications of Canadian workers
This article reports on a study investigating the link between education and work. Instead of looking at the labour outcomes of graduates, the study examined the qualifications held by workers in technician- and professional-level jobs from three types of occupational fields: regulated, applied, and general. The approach shifts the focus away from the supply of qualifications to the way qualifications are used in the workplace. The findings show …
Gig qualifications for the gig economy
This paper argues that micro-credentials are gig credentials for the gig economy. Micro-credentials are short competency-based industry-aligned units of learning, while the gig economy comprises contingent work by individual ‘suppliers’. Both can be facilitated by (often the same) digital platforms, and both are underpinned by social relations of precariousness in the labour market and in society. They are mutually reinforcing and each has the po…
Challenging the skills fetish
This article describes the process through which human capital theory came to dominate policy in post-compulsory education, to result in the fetishisation of skills. It relates skills policies to the contemporaneous development of policies on lifelong learning. The fetishisation of skills is related to methodological and normative individualism displacing an understanding that capacity and skill arise from and are developed by interdependent acti…
Emerging Perspectives from Social Realism on Knowledge and Education
What do vocational colleges do and why do they matter? Thinking about the role of colleges as local actors
Colleges as anchors of their communities
Revisiting credentialism – why qualifications matter
The ontology of personhood and a realist critique of the policy discourse based on skills
Sociology (14 works) · Pedagogy (12 works) · Political science (10 works) · Social science (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Vocational education (6 works) · Economic growth (5 works) · Economics (5 works)