Imagining university education: the perspectives of young people impacted by low socio-economic status and disengagement from school. Significant effort is being made in Australia to increase the participation of students from low socio-economic status backgrounds in university education. This project will contribute to this effort by delivering knowledge on the perceptions of university education held by low socio-economic status young people aged 12-15 disengaged from school.
Mentoring and Indigenous Higher Education: Understanding how university students mentor Indigenous school students. Mentoring Indigenous school students by university students is an expanding initiative to address the education gap experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This project will investigate what works in successful mentoring between university students and young Indigenous Australians and what are 'mentoring best practices' with Indigenous young people. The projec ....Mentoring and Indigenous Higher Education: Understanding how university students mentor Indigenous school students. Mentoring Indigenous school students by university students is an expanding initiative to address the education gap experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This project will investigate what works in successful mentoring between university students and young Indigenous Australians and what are 'mentoring best practices' with Indigenous young people. The project builds on our research with the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), a program engaging university students and Indigenous young people across Australia. Expected outcomes are new knowledge on university student mentoring of Indigenous school children and the design of 'remote' university student mentoring using communication technology.Read moreRead less
Getting an Early Start to aspirations: Understanding how to promote educational futures in early childhood. Children from low socio-economic status (LSES) backgrounds are three times less likely to attend university than their high socio-economic status peers. For families without experience of higher education it is difficult to know how to encourage young children's aspiration for educational futures. This project aims to improve aspirations for educational futures in LSES early childhood sett ....Getting an Early Start to aspirations: Understanding how to promote educational futures in early childhood. Children from low socio-economic status (LSES) backgrounds are three times less likely to attend university than their high socio-economic status peers. For families without experience of higher education it is difficult to know how to encourage young children's aspiration for educational futures. This project aims to improve aspirations for educational futures in LSES early childhood settings. A social marketing intervention targeting parents, children and early childhood educators will be developed and longitudinal interviews will be conducted to understand the development of aspirations by LSES families with young children. The project will produce a unique 'education promotion' strategy for early childhood.Read moreRead less
Genetic Identity Testing and the Family: the articulation between biotechnology and family relationships, politics and policy. Genetic identity testing cuts to the very nature of the family itself. For the first time in human history, it is possible to identify paternity - and misattributed paternity - with reasonable certainty. Parentage testing has become a vehicle for the fathers? rights movement, and is influencing the management of child support policy. Governments are currently developing ....Genetic Identity Testing and the Family: the articulation between biotechnology and family relationships, politics and policy. Genetic identity testing cuts to the very nature of the family itself. For the first time in human history, it is possible to identify paternity - and misattributed paternity - with reasonable certainty. Parentage testing has become a vehicle for the fathers? rights movement, and is influencing the management of child support policy. Governments are currently developing broad policy frameworks on this issue. Yet there is almost no social research on parentage testing. This study will provide scope for Australian leadership in an area of study that will become progressively more important with the rapid development of DNA chip technology. Read moreRead less
Networks in Flux: Examining how sector relationships adapt to rapid change. This study aims to investigate why, when and how inter-organisational networks adapt or remain resistant to change. Responding to complex social problems and technological change requires inter-organisational networks to be adaptable. Through a combination of longitudinal network analysis, survey research and qualitative interviews, this project plans to study the Victorian HIV and hepatitis C sector as it responds to ma ....Networks in Flux: Examining how sector relationships adapt to rapid change. This study aims to investigate why, when and how inter-organisational networks adapt or remain resistant to change. Responding to complex social problems and technological change requires inter-organisational networks to be adaptable. Through a combination of longitudinal network analysis, survey research and qualitative interviews, this project plans to study the Victorian HIV and hepatitis C sector as it responds to major advances in prevention and treatment, requiring community, health, policy and research organisations to adapt their roles and relationships. This timely and novel study aims to improve our knowledge of how to enable inter-organisational networks to adapt and improve organisational responsiveness to complex issues.Read moreRead less
Towards a School-Community Based Approach to Addressing Student Absenteeism. This project aims to develop an integrated school-community approach to assist education systems to effectively address student absenteeism in marginalised communities. Excessive absenteeism is linked to low academic achievement and school dropout, which limits young people’s life opportunities and perpetuates social disadvantage. This project will use interdisciplinary methods to bring the experiences of schools and co ....Towards a School-Community Based Approach to Addressing Student Absenteeism. This project aims to develop an integrated school-community approach to assist education systems to effectively address student absenteeism in marginalised communities. Excessive absenteeism is linked to low academic achievement and school dropout, which limits young people’s life opportunities and perpetuates social disadvantage. This project will use interdisciplinary methods to bring the experiences of schools and communities, existing research evidence, and academics together to enable schools to work in new ways to improve attendance. Expected outcomes will be enhanced capacity of schools to address absenteeism with the benefit of assisting the government to alleviate the societal and economic costs of this enduring problem.Read moreRead less
Young people's narratives of socio-economic disadvantage and educational opportunities in contexts of place-based interventions. Society and individuals suffer when young people from disadvantaged areas become disengaged from school. This project will inform educational policy by generating knowledge from young people about the resources they use to make educational decisions.
Sparking Imagination Education: Transforming inequality in schools. This project will produce an Imagination Education Pedagogical Framework for use by teachers in schools. Imagination is recognised as beneficial for diverse groups of young people who experience educational inequality. This collaboration will support access to prominent industry insights on methods for using imagination practices to enhance educational equity. Using co-design with AIME and Social Ventures Australia, it will inve ....Sparking Imagination Education: Transforming inequality in schools. This project will produce an Imagination Education Pedagogical Framework for use by teachers in schools. Imagination is recognised as beneficial for diverse groups of young people who experience educational inequality. This collaboration will support access to prominent industry insights on methods for using imagination practices to enhance educational equity. Using co-design with AIME and Social Ventures Australia, it will investigate how these insights can be translated to school contexts to enrich Australian schooling in an environment under intensifying external pressures. The outcomes of this project will support national education agendas for embedding twenty-first century skills of imagination in Australian schooling.Read moreRead less
Fostering global digital citizenship: diaspora youth in a connected world. This project aims to identify the global digital citizenship dimensions of diaspora youth’s everyday digital media use. The project intends to use a new approach in order to investigate how these practices can be fostered through digital citizenship policy and programs to improve the inclusion and participation of culturally diverse youth and maximise their effectiveness. Expected outcomes include advances in understandin ....Fostering global digital citizenship: diaspora youth in a connected world. This project aims to identify the global digital citizenship dimensions of diaspora youth’s everyday digital media use. The project intends to use a new approach in order to investigate how these practices can be fostered through digital citizenship policy and programs to improve the inclusion and participation of culturally diverse youth and maximise their effectiveness. Expected outcomes include advances in understandings about the opportunity and capacity of diaspora youth experience. Findings will be used to strengthen digital citizenship initiatives in Australian secondary schools, connect them more closely to global citizenship education programs, and enhance the engagement of a diverse student body.Read moreRead less
The implications of welfare reform for single parent families in their transition to paid work. The study will clarify the policy and practice implications of welfare reform by focussing on its implementation and impacts. These findings will: provide single parents with insight into the experience of returning to work; enable social welfare agencies to design programs and services to meet the changing needs of single parents; provide data for welfare policy review and development; and contribute ....The implications of welfare reform for single parent families in their transition to paid work. The study will clarify the policy and practice implications of welfare reform by focussing on its implementation and impacts. These findings will: provide single parents with insight into the experience of returning to work; enable social welfare agencies to design programs and services to meet the changing needs of single parents; provide data for welfare policy review and development; and contribute to the theory and evidence base for ongoing debates such as the effect of combining multiple roles (for example work and parenting) on single parents and the implications of voluntary versus mandatory welfare to work programs.Read moreRead less