Mary McKenzie

The case of navigating a competency based curriculum: A pilot study of beauty therapy teachers

Maintaining rigour while complying with national training standards is an enduring problem in the vocational education and training (VET) sector. The problem is heightened for beauty teachers who enact the SHB Hairdressing and Beauty Training Package in the challenging nexus between students, salons and VET regulators. In practice, the enactment of the training package requires training and assessment activities to be conducted on the anatomy of the human body in a fully equipped simulated salon along with a substantial client network on which to practice one-on-one contact. At the centre of the SHB Training Package is teaching the transformation and re-formation of the anatomical, cellular and even genetic structures of the human body.

The importance of conducting research into a poorly understood area of VET is that beauty therapy accounts for almost 100,000 jobs for women in Australia and the beauty industry contributes $5 billion to Australia's revenue, yet the education of these women is largely unknown (Ibisworld, 2017). Additionally, industry is losing confidence in the VET education system (Smith, Hodge & Yasukawa, 2015). The SHB Training Package is geared to respond to the needs of industry, therefore the research was interested in how beauty teachers navigate the training package to meet industry's needs. This research has the broader aim of opening up to comment an under-researched area of education, yet one that is important to the employment of women and therefore, to the economy of Australia (McKenzie, Harreveld & Blayney, 2018).