Session Information
23 SES 09 B, Education Policy Formation and Contestation
Paper Session
Contribution
The paper aims to analyse a contemporary Australian policy concept, ‘aspirations’, developing a critique of its usage in prominent higher educational policies as part of an effort to massify tertiary education, and extending the theoretical possibilities of the term. ‘Aspirations’ is now being used as the most recent rallying ground for equity debates in higher education, similar to many international efforts to ensure higher education is made more accessible to all groups across the society (ref, ref.).
Australia, late in joining other OECD countries concerned to expand higher education (OECD 1996), is now setting targets for participation in higher education for low socio-economic groups in particular. Since these populations have not been strong in school completions, nor in success in international measures such as PISA or TIMMS tests (McGaw 2007), the policy focus for these groups has been expressed in terms of ’raising aspirations’ (Bradley Review 2008).
However, the deficit perspective implicit in such discourse – that these groups are culturally lacking in aspirations – raises crucial questions. Might there rather be a mismatch between the senses of present need and desirable future – i.e. aspirations – cultured among these groups, and those in more empowered social positions, with the latter too readily universalised as what all ‘individuals’ should aspire to in life? Might such groups be better served by an asset perspective: the view that there are rich resources for aspiring – ‘funds of aspiration’ – emergent in the cultural lifeworlds of structurally less powerful groups, which educative processes can elicit and mobilise in developing capacities to articulate present needs, and to imagine and pursue hopeful futures? Do university-to-school outreach programs – so far the main initiatives to stimulate aspirations to complete school and seek HE access (Gale et al 2010) – suffice; or does schooling also need to provide curricular and pedagogic means for groups to capacitate their funds of aspiration?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Appadurai, A. 2004. The capacity to aspire: culture and the terms of recognition. In V. Rao & M. Walton (eds). Culture and Public Action. Stanford: Stanford University Press,59-84. Ball, S. 1994. Education Reform: A Critical and Poststructuralist Approach. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1986. The forms of capital. In J.E. Richardson (ed) Handbook of Theorising and Research for the Sociology of Education. Westport: Greenwood. Bradley. D. (Chair), Noonan, P., Nugent, H. & Scales, H. 2008. Review of Australian Higher Education: Final Report. Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Crafter, G., Reid, A. & Cook, A. 2005. Success for All: Review of the South Australia Certificate of Education. Adelaide: Office of the Minister of Education. Gale, T. et al 2010. Early School Intervention and Student Participation in Higher Education, Particularly for Low SES Students. Canberra: National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education and Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Gonzales, N., Moll, L. & Amanti, C. (eds) 2005. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities and Classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. OECD 1996. The Knowledge Economy. Paris: OECD. Sen, A. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: OUP. Taylor, S., Rizvi, F. , Lingard, R., & Henry, M. 1997. Education Policy and the Politics of Change. London: Routledge.
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