To what extent do you consider education has figured prominently in your family background?
Education has had an interesting role in my family background. A few of my uncles undertook tertiary education after completing secondary school at comprehensive schools as the profession they wanted to go into required a degree of that sort whereas other family members such as my mother went to government-funded colleges, or straight into the workplace. My grandparents on my mother’s side, however, did encourage them to pursue higher level education as their own education journey was unstable due to the socioeconomic and rural effects – my nana’s father experienced tuberculosis twice after returning from the Burmese jungle and struggled to recover, whereas my grandad had to help his family on the farm every morning.
Who and what have been the most significant influences in shaping your educational journey to bring you here to university?
The most significant influences in shaping my education journey have been specific members of my family as well as my aspirations for the future.
Ever since I was a child, my parents encouraged me to do my uttermost best at school as it could be beneficial for the future in preparing me for the real world with the skills I needed. My mother went to a catering college in England when she was a teenager, but she never attended university, nor did my father, so they always made sure that whether my siblings and I wanted to attend university or not, we were able to have a good start in education. This was achieved by sending us to a local private school once we outgrew our public primary school in Perth. This high school was expensive, especially as a twin, but this fuelled us to work hard to show them that the outcomes were worth their money. This helped us form connections with our teachers and friends, and the support we received made us believe we could get the results we needed to get into university to work towards our future career aspirations – as both of us wanted to go into the professions of law and education, the university looked essential.
My older brother has also been one of the biggest factors in influencing my journey to university as I have always admired his work ethic through his education journey. From his last year of middle school to his final year of high school, my brother was the school’s Dux – the highest-performing student of his year level for four years consecutively. He treated his education seriously throughout those years so that he would have something to feel proud of and made sure he treated all of his educators and teachers with the uttermost respect. Although this set the bar in my family high as he was considered to be the ‘genius’ of the family, it did benefit my sister and me as we could see from a young age, as my brother is five years older than we are, that it is important to make the most of learning and that even if we do not follow his lead by becoming the Dux, hard work and the passion for knowledge could give us many great opportunities for the future in return.
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How might your lifelong learning journey in a global knowledge society be similar and/or different from that of preceding generations of your family?
My lifelong learning journey in a global knowledge society will be both similar and different to the preceding generations of my family. It will differ from my older family members as I am fortunate enough to have access to educational resources they weren’t granted and develop skills required for a twenty-first century in a global knowledge society. With this comes the skills of being able to research what they did not have easy access to and critically analyze it for relevance and reliability that will benefit our lives in a quickly adapting, digital future. On the other hand, my lifelong learning journey will be similar to theirs as my family members describe themselves and identify as lifelong learners. My grandparents are gradually learning how to use technology in order to communicate with me from all the way in England which proves that even without experience in tertiary education, they have to ability to adapt and develop.
To what extent do you think family educational and occupational experiences relate to social class; gender; rural/urban location; cultural background; and national or inter-national context?
Students located in rural areas face issues of a lack of resources and access to tertiary studies as these government-funded institutions are located in metropolitan and urbanized areas. This can provide them with limited goals for occupations and feel as though they are needed to follow their family’s pathway.
There is also the issue of teachers only working in these areas temporarily in order to receive experience as they experience isolation and loneliness, preventing them from residing there for longer and losing connection with the vulnerable community in need of permanent staffing. Although there are implementations of programs that strive to provide these urbanized teachers with experience, they are ‘sometimes very brief’ and ‘report withdrawal rates by participants of up to one-third’ (Welch, 2018). This is often due to these teachers struggling to believe that they have a ‘commitment to making a difference in these regions’ (Welch, 2018) as they do not spend a long time there.
The social class of a family also affects their educational and occupational journey, as the definition changes over time. In the past, it would have shaped the hierarchy where families were positioned socio-economically. This would influence the occupations they went into as often individuals would follow what their families did. What initially referred to differential resources, power and statuses of society has now become relationships formed and cultural tastes, which can create clear connections and disadvantages. With this ever-changing definition of social class, there is a less rigid but more complex approach.
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