Selected research publications

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Workplace learning research
Youth pathways research
Alternative education research

Workplace-based learning and assessment

  • Knowing Practice: Vocational Thresholds for Carpenters, GPs and Engineering Technicians

    Karen Vaughan, Linda Bonne & Jan Eyre
    What kinds of experiences propel learners across a 'vocational threshold' to new level of capability?

  • Mate, You Should Know This! Re-negotiating Practice After a Critical Incident in Assessment

    Karen Vaughan, Andrew Kear & Heath MacKenzie
    A perfect storm for a training advisor’s site visit leads to changes in a community of practice.

  • The role of apprenticeship in the cultivation of soft skills and dispositions

    Karen Vaughan
    Apprenticeship is uniquely positioned to foster soft skills and give employers a valuable education role.

  • A Transformational System for On-Job Assessment in Building and Construction

    Karen Vaughan, Ben Gardiner & Jan Eyre
    A system that ensures assessors and trainers can focus on what really matters in apprentices' learning.

  • Taking Charge of Your Apprenticeship

    Andrew Kear, Karen Vaughan & Ben Gardiner
    A team approach to apprenticeship, with apprentice, trainer, assessor and moderator.

  • A Guide to Good Practice in ITO Systems to Assess On-Job Learning

    Karen Vaughan & Marie Cameron
    Four principles and examples for designing a  system that aligns what to learn with how to assess it on-the-job. 

  • How Learning Happens at Work

    Karen Vaughan, Paul O'Neil & Marie Cameron
    A framework mapping the right conditions, strategies and activities for workplace-based learning.

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Youth pathways and career education

  • Engineering e2e (Education to Employment)

    Karen Vaughan
    How systems across economy, workforce development and career education could be integrated.

  • Subject Choice for the Future of Work

    Rose Hipkins & Karen Vaughan
    How do schools provide the right options, and how do students choose subjects, for the future of work?

  • Learning to Fly: Career Management Competencies

    Karen Vaughan & Lorraine Spiller
    Career management competencies has the potential to transform school career education.

  • Career Education Networks and Communities of Practice

    Karen Vaughan & Paul O'Neil
    School careers advisors need different relationships, information channels and skills.

  • Pathways, labour market experiences and learning at work: beyond age 26

    The Competent Learners study followed a cohort of young New Zealanders from early childhood, through school and into adulthood. 

  • Young People Producing Careers and Identities

    Karen Vaughan, Josie Roberts & Ben Gardiner
    Young people fall into four different groups for making sense of their post-school pathways.

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Alternative education

  • Daring to Be Different: The Rise and Fall of Auckland Metropolitan College

    Karen Vaughan
    "Metro", the only state-funded alternative high school in New Zealand, was closed after eight critical ERO reports, sparking questions about its role and schooling today.

  • Beyond the Age of Aquarius

    Karen Vaughan
    Alternative schools and initiatives from the 1960s, 1970s, and contemporary times have been reinvented as individual pathways.

  • Total Eclipse of the Heart: Doing Ethnographic Research

    Karen Vaughan
    This academic methodology paper explores disturbing aspects of research on the only state-funded alternative secondary school in New Zealand.

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