Student Trajectory Aspiration Research (STAR): A Study of Aspirations, Enablers and Barriers to Further Education in the Blacktown Learning Community

The Student Trajectory Aspiration Research (STAR) project was a partnership between the Blacktown Learning Community and the Centre for Educational Research, University of Western Sydney. It was funded by the Higher Education Participation Program, a scheme initiated in Australia by the Commonwealth Government in 2010 in response to the Bradley Review of Higher Education which found that particular groups of people – Indigenous people, people of low socio-economic status1 and people from regional and remote areas – continue to be under-represented in Australian tertiary education (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent & Scales, 2008). The project used a participatory action research approach with teachers from five schools within the Blacktown Learning Community (BLC). The aim was to investigate how children’s career and further study aspirations are shaped over time in low SES, culturally and linguistically diverse communities and to explore the enablers and barriers to progression to further education. The study used creative methods integrated within day to day classes to investigate career aspirations in four snapshots of different age groups in early and late primary school and early and late secondary school. A focus group was held in each school with teachers, and another with parents, to investigate the enablers and barriers to the participation of children from these schools in further education.