Contested position of LSES students in deficit terms

Places responsibility of expectations and aspirations on students, rather than scrutinising

skewed system

Importance of teacher-student relationship

-Teachers should be involved in bridging gaps between aspiration and attainment -In
playing participatory role, teachers more invested in student outcomes

HILDA data
SES/home location (markers of social class) - no difference (BUT sig for single-parent
households) Parental occupation and education level = significant More policy attention to
support parents with expectations of further study (particularly first in family) LSES
parents with high expectations - concern as to ability to support children.

Daniel (2015)
Parental involvement in family-school partnerships widely established as supporting and
improving students’ social, emotional and academic outcomes -Involvement offers
immediate support (e.g. child’s literacy and numeracy development) and longer-term
emotional, social and academic benefits Early involvement appears more important

Student ‘Choice’
Intersectional (classed, gendered, and racialised) factors that impact notion of choice in
student and

3-way intersectionality:  family SE background, urban/rural context,

physical distance from campus
Considerable variation between Aus universities - proportion of LSES students. Partly due
to geography and partly due to competitive selection based on school achievement
McInerney & Smyth (2014) - insufficient support offered to facilitate
student success –> lack of opportunity structures
Lacking support of post-school futures –> Poor resourcing and funding of public schools
Neoliberal focus on individual

Angus (2015)
Since 1980s, Aus education policy reflected neoliberal economic and political thinking -
privileges private sector over public and assumes market arrangements will always
produce better outcomes than government regulation –> education as a commodity

Developing richer understandings of how aspirations work in opening

or constraining higher education as an option
“demands attention to both the increasing prevalence of imagination in the production of
group identities and cultural practices and the inequitable distribution of capacities to
realise these new imaginaries”

Social Imaginaries (Taylor, 2007)

1. Relates to the way ‘ordinary people imagine their social surroundings’ - not theoretical
but in terms of imagined future reality –> Understood for the present as depicted in
images, dreams and stories
2. Shared by large groups of people
3. Set of common understandings tightly ‘interwoven with an idea of how [things] ought
to go’ (Taylor, 2007, 120) –> Confirm certain ideas and practices as legitimate Social
imaginary - socially constructed, widely shared, large pedagogical effect on
populations by normalising and legitimating particular social understandings
• Achieves hegamonic status as it influences how people think about the nature and
scope of gov and society and social institutions (e.g. education)

Fleming and Grace (2015)

“The ability to imagine oneself and one’s future in different ways plays a major role in the
attainment of these futures - especially for those who lack physical, familial or ‘lived’
experiences with those futures”