Cathy Stone’s research while affiliated with University of Newcastle Australia and other places

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Publications (53)


Conclusion: final thoughts and take-home messages
  • Chapter

September 2024

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1 Read

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Cathy Stone


Supporting a Strong Teaching Presence
Galvanising Transition and Success for Underrepresented Students: Five Conditions for Enhancing Online Student Engagement
  • Article
  • Full-text available

July 2024

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19 Reads

Student Success

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Cathy Stone

The Australian Universities Accord’s (Department of Education, 2024) focus on expanding underrepresented groups’ access to higher education underscores an on-campus-online paradigm shift, or post-pandemic digital transformation, to address students’ flexibility and accessibility needs. The shift identifies that online student engagement, and students’ learning outcomes, need to be effective and fit for purpose if students are to succeed. Conducted as one phase of a longitudinal project (2017-present), this research investigated the approaches and strategies that could be incorporated to facilitate students’ online engagement. Findings suggest that these strategies could be encapsulated under five key conditions: fashioning a strong teacher presence; crafting an inclusive and safe online learning environment; creating well-structured and interesting content; forging explicit expectation management; and ensuring students have time to engage. This article argues that if educators are purposeful in applying these conditions, employing targeted, specific strategies in their curriculum design and teaching, students’ online engagement, and their learning outcomes, will be enhanced.

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First-in-Family Students, University Experience and Family Life: Motivations, Transitions and Participation. Second edition

January 2024

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880 Reads

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45 Citations

This open access book, now in its second edition, offers a comprehensive overview of the experiences of First in Family (FiF) or first-generation students in higher education. It draws upon narratives of students and their family members and spans the entire university student life cycle (pre-entry, commencement, progression and graduation) with a focus on specific cohorts including mature-aged students, parents or carers, as well as the differentiated experiences of male and female learners. With research drawn from three major research projects and including over 650 FiF students from across all Australian states and territories, as well as Europe, this wealth of perspectives provides unique insights into the lived reality of attending university in contemporary higher education settings. The book is written for a broad audience and will appeal to those working in universities, as well as family members and students who may be contemplating participating in higher education. Download here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-34451-0


Trailblazing: Motivations and Relationship Impacts for First-in-Family Enabling Students

September 2023

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16 Reads

This chapter investigates the experiences of first-in-family enabling students as they reflect on their participation in university. Due to university outreach and participation agendas, this cohort is increasing annually in Australia although they are little researched. The data has been harvested from interviews and surveys and analysed using biographical method to explore these enabling students’ motivations and relationship impacts. The chapter shows how their motivations are deeply embedded and complexly formulated within temporal and relational contexts as well as within their broader social, cultural and economic locations. Their trailblazing engagement in higher education is shown to be a social as much as an individual action, having impacts far beyond the transformations that the enabling learner personally experiences.


Motivated Men: First-in-Family Male Students

September 2023

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55 Reads

While first-in-family women’s experience of attending university has been examined in a growing body of literature, there has been little attention paid to the experiences of first-in-family males. This chapter presents an account of the motivations, transitions and participations of first-in-family male students using a narrative gender framework. The analysis especially privileges the idea of situated and relational masculinities (Hopkins & Noble, Masculinities in place: Situated identities, relations and intersectionality. Social and Cultural Geography, 10 (8), 811–819, 2009). Age was found to be the chief organising category of their experiences structuring their embodied life course. Three main age and relational masculine performances emerged from these men’s stories, namely those of the Fathers, the Self-Starters and the Sons. Working to achieve or enact the breadwinner model of masculinity was found to be the dominant motivator behind their gender performances.


‘So How Was Big School Today?’ Family Perceptions of HE Participation

September 2023

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34 Reads

O’Shea, May, Stone and Delahunty have indicated how attending university for first-in-family students can lead to significant personal transformation but highlight how the embodied nature of this experience can remain hidden or overlooked in the literature. Equally, the effects that university participation has on those around the student remain unclear, particularly understandings about how their attendance impacts upon the perceptions and ambitions of significant others. This chapter seeks to explore the reactions of family members to this higher education odyssey, particularly how this decision reverberated within the household. Findings indicate that university participation does not only impact on students in an emotional and potentially transformative sense but also on those closest to them, leading to new conversations in the home place and in some cases, broader educational futures.


The Online Student Experience: New Challenges for Engagement and Support

September 2023

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77 Reads

Online learning has an increasingly important place in widening access and participation in higher education for diverse student cohorts. One cohort that has been taking up online study in increasing numbers over the past 10–15 years is that of mature-age, first-in-family students. This chapter looks at the experience of 87 first-in-family students, for whom the opportunity to enrol in online undergraduate studies through an open-entry pathway made it possible for them to embark on a university education. In-depth interviews and surveys were conducted with these students as part of a wider study into First-in-Family students described in Chap. 1 of this book (Study B). Findings include the important role that opportunity plays in providing the impetus for study, as well as the importance of support and encouragement from family, friends, colleagues and institutions in being able to continue the journey.


Disrupting the Deficit: Beyond Notions of Lack for First-in-Family Students

September 2023

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28 Reads

This chapter draws upon a strengths perspective that seeks to frame first in family students not as ‘lacking’ or as ‘deficit’ but rather as a cohort replete with cultural wealths. Building on Bourdieuian theories and referring explicitly to the work of Yosso and Sen, the capabilities and cultural strengths of this older FiF cohort are revealed. The chapter provides a relational understanding of this student experience that considers the wider dynamics of learners’ lived realities. In exploring these unique contexts, three richly descriptive vignettes are featured and these are discussed collectively. This discussion reflects both upon the constraints that are expressed by the older learners as well as the personal strengths each story reveals about the narrator.


Setting the Scene

September 2023

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67 Reads

Drawing on international literature on higher education access and participation, this chapter provides a summary overview of current research and writing in this field. The ‘widening participation’ agenda is critically reviewed in relation to neoliberal discourses of the independent learner and the ‘risky’ nature of university deconstructed. The chapter describes the epistemological and ontological foundations for the studies that inform this publication and details the methodologies and theoretical framings adopted by the researchers. This book is premised upon the recognition that all learners are complex entities, intersected by various demographic and social factors. In recognition of this, the chapter aims to provide insight into a range of historical, political and cultural factors that may have impacted upon the Australian students who participated in this research.


Citations (29)


... Student groups are often distinguished on their identification of belonging to a diverse group, which enable targeted approaches to support strategies (Harvey et al., 2017), however capability and capacity must be developed to address the intersectionality of needs relating to graduate employment. Parents and carers are prevalent across these equity groups but are unidentified and overlooked (Andrewartha et al., 2022;O'Shea et al., 2024). Andrewartha & Harvey (2021) report that carers typically have lower levels of qualifications but are highly motivated and bring skills to help them succeed and have 'improved the broader student experience' (p.6), and Andrewartha et al. (2022) identified the parenting population at 12.7%, and a third of part time students were parents. ...

Reference:

Student parents and carers need graduate employability support: Recommendations for employability practitioners
Parents Managing University and Family Life

... Self-regulation failures can affect students' academic adaptation through the procrastination mechanism, associated with low emotional balance, low confidence and self-esteem, and high self-handicapping behaviors (Diotaiuti et al., 2021). Maloney et al. (2023) define and conceptualize online engagement fatigue among university students and teaching staff, a phenomenon that appeared in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, characterized by general fatigue, cognitive/mental fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and burnout. ...

Defining and exploring online engagement fatigue in a university context
  • Citing Article
  • May 2023

Computers and Education Open

... In the review of gender, the most thought-provoking part is that caring is always connected with feminism. Some literature supports the theory that females are naturally more caring than males (Mooneyhan, 2019;Stone & O'Shea, 2021). In some parts of the perception about gender, caring is associated closely with certain genders when caring is more of a female's responsibility (Bryson, 2021). ...

Women with Caring Responsibilities: Is There a Genuine Place for Them at University?
  • Citing Chapter
  • October 2021

... Data about online students' participation and achievement are essential to the profession and broader stakeholder groups. Research by Downing et al. (2019) found that participant institutions had some awareness of the potential for increased accessibility through online study, although most expressed concerns about the engagement that could be engendered online. However, online learners were described overall in terms such as "committed, motivated, focused, engaged" (p. ...

Online Initial Teacher Education in Australia: Affordances for Pedagogy, Practice and Outcomes
  • Citing Article
  • May 2019

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

... The low emotional engagement of students in SOL was influenced by various factors, such as apathetic learning atmosphere, low personal pride, feelings of isolation (Apridayani & Waluyo, 2022), unfamiliarity with learning, and poor expectation management (Brown et al., 2023). Some empirical studies on SOL have endeavored to improve emotional engagement using diverse strategies. ...

Educators’ experiences of pivoting online: unearthing key learnings and insights for engaging students online
  • Citing Article
  • January 2023

... Although flexibility is assumed to be classified into only three groups based on learner decisions as how, when, and what to learn (Van Den Brande, 1993 as cited in P. B. Bergamin et al., 2012), it is also categorized into five groups as instructional approach and resources, delivery and logistics, entry requirements, content, and time (Collis et al., 1997as cited in P. B. Bergamin et al., 2012. In the distance education setting, online learning is usually associated with flexibility as most learners prefer to study online due to the flexibility it provides, expecting that they can combine their learning with various concerns in their lives (Stone et al., 2019). It is also associated with the preference for class size and learning materials, the location and timing of learning activities, and the pace at which learners proceed through the curriculum (Miralrio et al., 2024). ...

Equal or Equitable? The Role of Flexibility Within Online Education

Australian and International Journal of Rural Education

... The flexibility of asynchronous learning means that students can engage with course material at times that fit with their other responsibilities. For example, online learning may level the playing field for those who have traditionally experienced obstacles to education such as older working adults and those with parenting or other caring responsibilities (Stone 2022). Asynchronous online learning can F I G U R E 5 Examples of photos taken and submitted by students and staff for the online moth identification activity at the University of Auckland. ...

From the margins to the mainstream: The online learning rethink and its implications for enhancing student equity

Australasian Journal of Educational Technology

... Secondary schools play a vital role in preparing students for future opportunities , while higher education providers have recognised the need to address the underrepresentation of RRR students in universities (C. Stone et al., 2022). Various initiatives have been implemented, including 'rural hub' models for core subject areas and embedding university staff within secondary schools (Douglas et al., 2020). ...

Taking University to the Students: Forging Connections and Inclusion Through Regional University Centres (RUCs)

Student Success

... Against educational research and policy discourses that point out to an apparent lack of aspirations by rural and remote students, families and schools, evidence from the Journal suggests that aspirations of rural and remote students differ little from their urban counterparts (Ellis, 2006;Vernon et al., 2018). While much of the Journal's literature is focused on determining factors that promote aspiration Hemmings & Boylan, 1992;Smith et al., 2017;Stone et al., 2022) , there is also evidence to show that aspirations are grounded in or determined by place (Bangarr, 2022;Smith et al., 2017), and that those aspirations are no better or worse than aspirations of non-rural/remote students. ...

They just give us the shiny picture, but I want to know what it's really like: Insights from regional high schools on perceptions of university outreach in South Australia.

Australian and International Journal of Rural Education

... These are in addition to significant social and financial costs for individual school-leavers and their families [29,30]. While studying online can provide access to higher education for students who otherwise could not participate, it can also pose limitations relating to the quality and experience of online learning [31,32], internet connectivity [33] and reduce the sense of belonging and peer support crucial for completing high intensity study, especially for mature-aged students [34,35]. ...

Mature-aged students' experiences of learning online in regional and remote Australia: an ecological systems perspective
  • Citing Article
  • July 2022

Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning