Project description:
This project worked with data collected from 15 NSW government secondary schools located in low socioeconomic areas to identify factors connected to schools and schooling that impact on students' aspirations to attend university. The students who participated in the study were primarily from low socioeconomic status backgrounds. The project set out to examine the data for:
- Patterns identifiable in the complex relationships between student background and their aspirations for university;
- Enabling and constraining conditions related to aspirations to participate in higher education that schools have some control over; and
- The extent to which and ways in which schools support students' aspirations for university.
The project objectives were to draw on the findings of the project to illuminate possibilities for improvements for the participation and success of low SES students, and other groups of student who are typically less likely to go on to study in higher education.
Conceptual and/or methodological framework:
This project employed a mixed methods research design to provide a detailed analysis of factors that impact upon low SES Year 11 students' decisions to attend university or not, with a particular emphasis on the impact of schools and schooling. Firstly, the research team drew on survey data collected from the Aspirations Longitudinal Study , which had already collected three years' of survey data with these participants. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 62 Year 11 students, 15 school principals, 18 parents, 31 Year 11 teachers and 13 high school careers advisers. In addition, students were conducted with 25 university students who had previously attended one of the 15 participating schools, and four detailed case studies of participating schools.
Key findings:
The key findings of the project are:
On choosing university
1. Just over 40%, of the participating students intended to go to university (more females than males; less low SES than high SES; more high prior achievers than low prior achievers), and 32% planned to go in the year immediately after school;
2. 21% of students were unsure of their educational intentions; the rest planned to complete Year 12 at either school or TAFE;
3. Students' decisions to go to university appear to be connected to the perception that travel could be a potential barrier. The students who aspired to go to university were more likely to identify such barriers and this could possibly indicate their stronger intention to transition into higher education;
4. Students who aspired to university were more likely to seek information about career and study options from a broad range of sources (such as family and friends, use of the internet, attending careers expos, and receiving information from educational institutions) than non-university aspirants; and
In all analyses, Aboriginality and school location (metropolitan/provincial) did not appear to impact on aspirations to higher education
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Choosing University: The Impact of Schools and Schooling: Final Report to the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education
Date: 2014
Author: Gore, J.; Holmes, K.; Smith, M.; Lyell, A.; Ellis, H.; Gray, L.
Location: Australia
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Chronicling engagement: students' experience of online learning over time
Date: 2019
Author: Muir, T.; Milthorpe, N.; Stone, C.; Dyment, J.; Freeman, E.; Hopwood, B.
Location: Australia
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Classification' and 'Judgement': Social Class and the 'Cognitive Structures' of Choice of Higher Education
Date: 2002
Author: Ball, S.; Davies, J.; David, M.; Reay, D.
Location: United Kingdom
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Closing Pathways: Refugee-Background Students and Tertiary Education
Date: 2011
Author: O'Rourke, D.
Location: New Zealand
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Closing the Policy-Practice Gap for Low-SES Students in Higher Education: The Pedagogical Challenge
Date: 2013
Author: Thomas, G.
Location: Australia
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Cohesion, coherence and connectedness: The 3C model of enabling-course design to support student transition to university.
Date: 2014
Author: Sharp, S.; O'Rourke, J.; Lane, J.; Hays, A-M.
Location: Australia
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Colonial time in tension: Decolonizing temporal imaginaries
Date: 2017
Author: Akbari-Dibavar, A.; Emiljanowicz, P.
Location: Canada
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Combining social media and career development learning: An intensive tertiary preparation programme for disadvantaged youth
Date: 2013
Author: Ryan, N.; Hopkins, S.
Location: Australia
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Committed to learn: student engagement and care in higher education
Date: 2017
Author: Barnacle, R.; Dall'Alba, G.
Location: Australia
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Comparing disabled students' entry to higher education with their non-disabled peers - barriers and enablers to success
Date: 2013
Author: Wray, P.
Location: United Kingdom
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Competing Motivations in Germany's Higher Education Response to the "Refugee Crisis".
Date: 2018
Author: Streitweiser, B.; Bruck, L.
Location: Germany
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Competing Narratives of Time in the Managerial University: The contradictions of fast time and slow time
Date: 2015
Author: Guzman-Valenzuela, C.; Di Napoli, R.
Location: Australia
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Competition, Innovation and Diversity in Higher Education: Dominant Discourses, Paradoxes and Resistance
Date: 2020
Author: Dakka, F.
Location: United Kingdom
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Completing university in a growing sector: Is equity an issue?
Date: 2015
Author: Edwards, S.; McMillan, J.
Location: Australia
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Conceptions of learning and quality of university life among deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing university students
Date: 2018
Author: Cheng, S.; Fung Sin, K.
Location: China
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Connecting with Students from New and Emerging Communities in Social Work Education.
Date: 2013
Author: Wache, D.; Zufferey, C.
Location: Australia
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Considering Diversity, Change and Intervention: How the Higher Education Curriculum Looked in on Itself
Date: 2012
Author: Hatton, K.
Location: United Kingdom
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