Gendering the First-in-Family Experience

Transitions, Liminality, Performativity

Garth Stahl, Sarah McDonald

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367677916
• eBook ISBN: 9781000539288
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Despite efforts to widen participation, first-in-family students, as an equity group, remain severely under-represented in higher education internationally. This book explores and analyses the gendered and classed subjectivities of 48 Australian students in the First-in-Family Project serving as a fresh perspective to the study of youth in transition. Drawing on liminality to provide theoretical insight, the authors focus on how they engage in multiple overlapping and mutually informing transitions into and from higher education, the family, service work, and so forth. While studies of class disadvantage and widening participation in HE remains robust, there is considerably less work addressing the gendered experiences of first-in-family students.

Part I The Australian higher education context

1 Educational inequities and widening participation in Australia

DOI: 10.4324/9781003132844-3

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development identifies social class as a key factor in determining participation, performance, and retention in higher education (see Maras, 2007). From a human capital and knowledge economy perspective, there are significant implications for increasing access and retention for those from low socio-economic backgrounds. As a result, widening participation in higher education has “become an ongoing policy desire across the globe” (Lumb, Burke, & Bennett, 2020, p. 2; see also Burke, 2017). Often cast in terms of skill acquisition and knowledge, higher education is widely considered to have an important role to play in nation building. However, in Australia, and internationally, higher education remains both a stratified and conflicted picture. Success for Australian students at every stage of education varies by language background, regionality, and gender and is decidedly marked by socio-economic status (SES), “About 40 per cent of young people from the lowest SES backgrounds do not complete Year 12 or its equivalent by age 19” (Lamb, Jackson, Walstab, & Huo, 2015, p. vi). Yet, at the same time, more students from non-traditional backgrounds are attending university than ever before.

In terms of higher education and its role in the national agenda, it is believed that a university qualification will lead to a more employable workforce in terms of both skills and knowledge. There is also the notion among the majority of students in Australia that a degree qualification will equate to increased opportunities to secure a more stable career. Surveying stratification in education internationally, Marginson (2016) notes that while participation in higher education has increased, this has not led to a reduction in social stratification in most countries. In terms of the entrenchment of inequality, Marginson (2016) writes:

But the opportunities that education is meant to bring are not universal, not in capitalist societies that, regardless of whether they are low-, middle- or high-income, are stratified by unequal earnings and hierarchical power, in which at any given time, by definition, there is an absolute limit to the number of socially advantaged positions on offer.

(p. 415)

Citing the deficiencies of economic opportunity to keep pace with graduation rates, Brown (2013, p. 683) calls attention to “social congestion” and a pervasive “opportunity trap.” Within this trap, upper-class and upper-middle-class families enact similar strategies to ensure a positional advantage over others and, “As everyone adopts the same strategies to get ahead subsequently schools, universities and employers all raise entry requirements within intensified positional competition” (see Brown, 2013, for a more detailed analysis). Such a phenomenon arguably only works to limit the opportunities for working-class young people.

Echoing studies of widening participation, Arum, Roksa, Cruz, and Silver (2018) state that student motivations and experiences “need to be understood in the context of broader historical and institutional factors that have structured these organizational settings” (p. 386). While there exists a global policy remit to “increase access” and “widen participation,” most universities remain beholden to the middle and upper classes. Yet, as access to university has widened, this has clearly led to a devaluing of qualifications; furthermore, a more diverse student intake has required universities to become more adept in how to ensure the best for its student population. In reflecting on the increasing diversity in higher education, David (2021) writes:

A key transformation is the involvement of groups other than traditional upper and middle-class men in universities and other higher education: groups such as women, disadvantaged, poor and working-class men, racialized, Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups, those with physical or invisible disabilities and diverse sexualities, as students, faculty or academics, and staff.

(xv)

A dimension of educational inequities concerns the classed and gendered nature of the curriculum. Teese’s research (2000/2013) showed that in the Australian state of Victoria there were clear hierarchies of subjects in the curriculum, and that access to the hierarchy was strongly influenced by one’s socio-economic status. The replication of curriculum areas and social status documented by Teese varies by location but, for all intents and purposes, produces the same social outcomes.

The curriculum is used to differentially construct gender, but at the same time as it is used to express and differentiate social class through the medium of academic position and performance. There is no separate channel or medium through which gender can be constructed independently of the fashioning of social class differences through the academic materials furnished by school. Consequently, any relative gender differences in access or achievement have to be seen in terms of the way the curriculum operates as a social system which creates gender identities only to the extent that it creates social inequalities.

(2007, p. 10)

In considering the dialectic between class and gender, Teese asserts that in high-status subjects, the gender performativities are less pronounced and the relations are more equitable, “ensuring that both boys and girls share in the benefits of an educated lifestyle and on a more equal footing than happens among young working-class people” (Teese, 2007, p. 10). Furthermore, schools serving high concentrations of low-income students in Australia often have fewer advanced curricular offerings as well as a narrowed curriculum than schools serving a more affluent student population (Conger, Long, & Iatarola, 2009; Roberts, Dean, & Lommatsch, 2019; Teese, 2007).

In considering girls accessing male-dominated subjects—like maths and sciences—Teese sees the girls as high achievers with their achievement allowing for “competitive advantages over all boys, including boys of their own class, as well as all other girls” (p. 11). More recent research by Roberts et al. (2019), drawing on all secondary students in the state of New South Wales who qualified for the Higher School Certificate at the end of the 2017 school year (n = 73,371), produced similar findings demonstrating how curriculum is hierarchised, restricting access to a wider breadth of knowledge. Furthermore, in terms of gender, girls were under-represented in physics, IT, engineering, and construction while subjects that had girls in the majority were textiles and design, dance, family studies, Aboriginal studies, and modern foreign languages.

Stratification across private, public, and independent schools

Australians have long held onto the notion that we are a meritocratic nation (Crawford, 2010), yet education across all sectors has an extensive history of inequalities. In addition to curriculum, another dimension of stratification in Australia’s education system concerns the mix of government, catholic, and independent schools, where Kenway (2013) articulates how “educational and social segregating undermine the educational performance of lower achievers and of socially disadvantaged students” (p. 289). More recent parliamentary attempts to address issues of inequalities in schools have been dominated by neoliberal approaches. Economic reforms in 1980s Australia have been described as an “aggressive” rise in neoliberalism within education in comparison to other Western countries (Campbell, Proctor, & Sherington, 2009; Rowe & Windle, 2012). Ensuing decades saw a rise in enrolments at Independent and Catholic schools, as the introduction of government funding models based on SES privileged these schools while the public education system was denigrated at the federal level (Rowe & Windle, 2012; Windle, 2011). School funding models have dominated neoliberal attempts to address inequality, which have “supported an exodus from the public sector, serious funding inequities between public and private schools and heavy burdens on the state sector which takes a disproportionate number of students needing extra resources and care” (Kenway, 2013, p. 287). Rather than address inequality, neoliberal policies of “school choice” has furthered inequality and stratified opportunity. As the quality of schooling available is deeply inequitable, the participants in our study experienced schooling in accordance with high segregation along social, ethnic, and racial lines (Gale & Parker, 2013; Lamb et al., 2015).

Contributing to how stratification plays out in Australia, decisions based on economics now dominate most policies including education and this is reflected in the “user-pays approach” to policy decisions, which has seen a rapid growth in the private schooling sector often at the expense of the public sector (Keddie et al., 2020; McInerney, 2007). Additionally, we also see changes in the public sector with increases in standardised testing, publicity of school performance and My School.¹ In terms of stratification, there has been a movement of Australia’s middle-class families into the private and religious school sector. The neoconservative discourse around school choice has been particularly taken up by middle-class families, “signifying a shift away from reliance on government services and towards an increasing acceptance of education as a consumer product” (Rowe & Windle, 2012, p. 138). For example, Butler (2015) highlights how middle-class parents engage in boundary work through purposeful school choices to create moral distance between their children and those they view as “low-status...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement Page
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• Part I The Australian higher education context
• Part II Gendered subjectivities in schooling and family life
• Part III Liminality, gender, and the transition to higher education
• Part IV Implications for higher education policy
• Appendix A Methodology
• Index