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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.