The ‘placetimemattering’ of aspiration in the Blacktown Learning Community

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore aspiration in contemporary urban locations in the context of almost universal policy initiatives to raise aspirations of young people to participate in higher education. The article is based on a study of how children’s career and further education aspirations are shaped over time in five schools in western Sydney, Australia. Creative methods were used to produce children’s artifacts in early and late primary school and early and late high school and parent and teacher focus groups were conducted in each school. This article focuses on data from a low Socio-Economic Status (SES) and a mid-high SES primary school. A quantitative analysis of the children’s artifacts identified that a marked differentiation occurs between low SES and high SES primary school children from kindergarten to Year 5. Storylines of Cartographic time, Money matters, and Vulnerable childhoods emerged from a qualitative analysis of the parent focus group from the low SES primary school. These storylines chart a different navigational route for their own, and their children’s, aspirations that acknowledges the significance of materiality in the way aspirations are shaped in the ‘placetimemattering’ of everyday life.