Adam Lloyd

When higher education is possible but not desirable: Widening participation and the aspirations of Australian Indigenous school students

Indigenous students remain vastly under-represented within higher education in Australia. While aspirations have been a key focus of the widening participation agenda, the aspirations of Indigenous students have largely been overlooked. Drawing on survey data collected as part of a mixed methods longitudinal study conducted with students in Years 3 to 12 (n = 6492) from New South Wales government schools, this study investigated the occupational and educational aspirations of 432 Indigenous school students. While we found that Indigenous and non-Indigenous students held similar occupational aspirations, Indigenous students were much less likely to aspire to attend university. Most starkly, high-achieving Indigenous students were significantly less likely to aspire to university than their high-achieving non-Indigenous peers. Given this evidence, we argue that both the possibility and desirability of higher education must be addressed if the widening participation agenda is to meet equity targets for Indigenous students.

Physical Education and Numeracy

In the primary school setting, evidence-based physical education (PE) programs can make substantial and distinctive contributions to a child’s development in the physical, affective, social and cognitive domains (IOM (Institute of Medicine) in Educating the student body: Taking physical activity and physical education to school. The National Academics Press, Washington, DC, 2013; Jenkinson and Benson in Aust J Teacher Edu 35(8):1–17, 2010; Morgan and Hansen in J Edu Res 101(2), 99–112, 2007). When PE is well planned, adequately resourced and delivered with confidence there are real opportunities to have students engaged in the learning experience. Of note, links can be made to Mathematics, and ultimately real-world applications of numeracy content and concepts can be experienced. Later in this chapter, a brief rational and potential for integrating mathematics into PE will be discussed. Some of the other key benefits of having students participate in PE programs are detailed below.

Short- and medium-term impacts of the Just Like You disability awareness program: A quasi-experimental comparison of alternative forms of program delivery in New South Wales’ primary schools:

Given the demands for inclusive and more equitable education, this evaluation compared two versions of the Just Like You disability awareness program delivered in primary schools in New South Wales, Australia, by Cerebral Palsy Alliance. Participants included 297 students from three schools in the Hunter region in the established program and 327 students from four schools in the Sydney region in the newer version of the program. Compared with the established program, the new format comprised a single presenter with a disability, two shorter sessions (rather than one long session) delivered at least one week apart, revised content mapped to the Australian rather than the NSW curriculum and a non-compulsory ‘homework’ activity offered at the discretion of the presenter. Longitudinal data included three successive administrations (i.e. pre-test, post-test and delayed follow-up) of the Chedoke-McMaster Attitudes towards Children with Handicaps scale. Quasi-experimental comparisons produced intake-adjusted effect sizes favouring the newer program over the established program both in terms of post-test (d = 0.47) and delayed follow-up (d = 0.42) Chedoke-McMaster Attitudes towards Children with Handicaps scores. The program evaluation demonstrated the efficacy and sustainability of effects in this short-term focussed disability awareness intervention, with the newer version producing greater improvements in student attitudinal change towards people with a disability than the established version.