Imagining university education: the perspectives of young people impacted by low socio-economic status and disengagement from school. Significant effort is being made in Australia to increase the participation of students from low socio-economic status backgrounds in university education. This project will contribute to this effort by delivering knowledge on the perceptions of university education held by low socio-economic status young people aged 12-15 disengaged from school.
Mentoring and Indigenous Higher Education: Understanding how university students mentor Indigenous school students. Mentoring Indigenous school students by university students is an expanding initiative to address the education gap experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This project will investigate what works in successful mentoring between university students and young Indigenous Australians and what are 'mentoring best practices' with Indigenous young people. The projec ....Mentoring and Indigenous Higher Education: Understanding how university students mentor Indigenous school students. Mentoring Indigenous school students by university students is an expanding initiative to address the education gap experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This project will investigate what works in successful mentoring between university students and young Indigenous Australians and what are 'mentoring best practices' with Indigenous young people. The project builds on our research with the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), a program engaging university students and Indigenous young people across Australia. Expected outcomes are new knowledge on university student mentoring of Indigenous school children and the design of 'remote' university student mentoring using communication technology.Read moreRead less
Growing unequal: diverging childhood outcomes in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. How and why do the outcomes of children from rich and poor families differ in the early and middle school years? This study will compare Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States and help to explain why mobility between generations is greater in some countries than others.
Optimisation of base station beamforming for wireless broadband internet services in rural areas. The NBN aims to deliver 100 Mbps to Australians in major cities but much lower speeds to rural areas. A key outcome of the project is a sound foundation for the design of antenna arrays and beamformers to enable cost effective and efficient wireless internet services for rural areas and meet a challenge of national importance.
Making Australia internationally competitive: driving educational attainment by academic motivation, self-concept, engagement and aspirations. This project will extend and test predictions from motivation theory about educational choice and attainment, using multiple large national/international databases and new statistical models. This will result in better strategies to meet government targets of increasing tertiary enrolments, particularly for disadvantaged students.
Human identification, ancient DNA and genomics. This project aims to develop and apply a novel targeted sequence capture and high throughput DNA sequencing approach to simultaneously type thousands of informative identity, ancestry and phenotype markers in a single assay to facilitate identification of unknown suspects and missing persons. DNA based human identification is both critical and central to criminal and coronial investigations, disaster-victim and missing persons identification, repat ....Human identification, ancient DNA and genomics. This project aims to develop and apply a novel targeted sequence capture and high throughput DNA sequencing approach to simultaneously type thousands of informative identity, ancestry and phenotype markers in a single assay to facilitate identification of unknown suspects and missing persons. DNA based human identification is both critical and central to criminal and coronial investigations, disaster-victim and missing persons identification, repatriation of war dead and counter-terrorism operations. Persistent technological and conceptual issues associated with the application of standard procedures to trace degraded DNA, or when profiles have no match in DNA databases, limit their application to real-world human identification problems.Read moreRead less
Where are Indigenous women in the sentencing of Indigenous offenders? The project aims to explore the experience of Indigenous women in Australian courts. Legal sentencing principles for Indigenous defendants have been formulated almost exclusively with Indigenous men in mind. Insufficient research has been undertaken on whether these principles are applicable for Indigenous women. This project undertakes a qualitative analysis of local court sentencing remarks, case files and interviews with In ....Where are Indigenous women in the sentencing of Indigenous offenders? The project aims to explore the experience of Indigenous women in Australian courts. Legal sentencing principles for Indigenous defendants have been formulated almost exclusively with Indigenous men in mind. Insufficient research has been undertaken on whether these principles are applicable for Indigenous women. This project undertakes a qualitative analysis of local court sentencing remarks, case files and interviews with Indigenous women prisoners, court actors and pre-sentence reporters. It seeks to ascertain how local courts represent Indigenous women's experiences such as family violence and family responsibilities and the quality of information before sentencing courts. The project's aim is to ensure appropriate engagement with Indigenous women in courts and sentencing outcomes for Indigenous women offenders.Read moreRead less
Winners and losers: Examining tax justice in tax disputes in Australia. Little is known about the important process of tax dispute resolution in Australia. The project seeks to determine whether tax dispute resolution in Australian is effective, whether or not taxpayers with greater resources come out ahead in tax litigation, and whether or not alternative dispute resolution is a cost effective way for resolving tax disputes. The project also examines the costs and benefits of independent tax di ....Winners and losers: Examining tax justice in tax disputes in Australia. Little is known about the important process of tax dispute resolution in Australia. The project seeks to determine whether tax dispute resolution in Australian is effective, whether or not taxpayers with greater resources come out ahead in tax litigation, and whether or not alternative dispute resolution is a cost effective way for resolving tax disputes. The project also examines the costs and benefits of independent tax dispute resolution, and the legal and justice implications of accessibility to such dispute resolution. Through its analysis, the project aims to arrive at concrete policy recommendations to improve the functioning of the present system in terms of accessibility, operating costs and perceived procedural justice.Read moreRead less
Capacitating student aspirations in classrooms and communities in a high poverty region. This project studies the aspirations of students in a disadvantaged area, as cultural resources for completing school, accessing higher education and realising desirable futures. It will produce new concepts and research methods for increasing social equity by working closely with students and families, and making links between schools and communities.
Early childhood educators as agents of intergenerational educational change. The project aims to shed light on how early childhood (EC) educators can address intergenerational educational disadvantage by raising aspirations for their own learning and for the children with whom they work. The project arises from a tension in the current reform agenda for the Australian EC sector. The goal is for all EC educators to be skilled, reflective professionals able to support children's learning, but many ....Early childhood educators as agents of intergenerational educational change. The project aims to shed light on how early childhood (EC) educators can address intergenerational educational disadvantage by raising aspirations for their own learning and for the children with whom they work. The project arises from a tension in the current reform agenda for the Australian EC sector. The goal is for all EC educators to be skilled, reflective professionals able to support children's learning, but many educators are from backgrounds of low educational aspirations and attainment. The project will use a mixed methods approach to investigate this tension. Australian and international career and workforce data will be used to examine characteristics of educators, supplemented by 40 case studies of educators at low qualification levels.Read moreRead less