Gendering the First-in-Family Experience

Garth Stahl is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Queensland and Research Fellow for the Australian Research Council. His research interests lie on the nexus of neoliberalism and socio-cultural studies of education, identity, equity/inequality, and social change. Currently, his research projects and publications encompass theoretical and empirical studies of learner identities, gender and youth, sociology of schooling in a neoliberal age, gendered subjectivities, equity and difference, and educational reform. Sarah McDonald is an early career researcher in the Centre for Research in Education and Social Inclusion in Education Futures at the University of South Australia. Her current research focuses on how the intersection between gender and class interacts with higher education, and how this interaction impacts upon the construction of feminine identities for young women transitioning into university. She is interested in gendered subjectivities, girlhood, social mobility, social barriers, and inequalities in education.

Part I: The Australian higher education context 1: Educational inequities and widening participation in Australia 2: Gender, class, and aspirations in higher education 3: Liminality, gender subjectivities, and the transition to higher education Part II: Gender subjectivities in schooling and family life 4: Family life and gendered aspirations 5: Secondary school-based influencers Part III: Liminality, gender and the transition to higher education 6: Belonging, liminality, and changing subjectivities in the first year of higher education 7: Liminal experiences with service-sector labour 8: The gendering of mental health and wellbeing 9: Cultural and ethnic lifeworlds 10: Fulfillment in the first-in-family experience Part IV: Implications for higher education policy 11—Gender, the first-in-family experience and widening participation