This is the fifth and final day in our series of posts on AARE’s education priorities for the 2025 federal election. Today’s posts are about widening participation and nurturing aspirations.
Aspirations help students identify who they want to be and how they want to get there. For example, we know students who report stronger aspirations to finish secondary school are much more likely to go on to do so, which has invaluable benefits for their future and the future of the country.
Educators and school leaders build positive aspirations in young people by creating school cultures and environments in which students are able to envisage a future for themselves and, crucially, can access the supports and resources they need to make that future possible. School culture is multifaceted, comprising social, emotional, and motivational dimensions. My research has provided evidence for the crucial role of these different elements of school culture in fostering aspirations.
A sense of belonging
Positive social relationships among students, teachers, school staff, and parents foster a sense of belonging, care, and safety within a school. Students that report stronger relationships with their parents, teachers, and peers are more likely to report higher levels of motivation and engagement, including higher aspirations. Positive school culture also includes individual and shared positive affective experiences.
Enjoyment and enthusiasm are influential: teachers’ expressions of enthusiasm for their work and their subjects informs students’ enthusiasm for learning, both in the long and short-term. Schools that actively foster students’ intrapersonal motivational resources via effective practices are better positioned to support students’ long term aspirations. When schools foster positive motivation, students develop the skills and underlying self-belief necessary to maintain their drive for their long-term aspirations. Similarly, schools that have a culture of high expectations are better able to communicate to their students that they believe in their capacity to make those aspirations a reality.
Building a positive school culture is an intentional process and is a shared endeavour between school staff and students. Said another way, building this positive school culture takes time, effort, and resources.
A vicious cycle can emerge
Sadly, one of the main factors that differentiates schools with cultures that foster adaptive emotional coping, social relationships, and achievement and those with less positive cultures is socio-economic and cultural status. A vicious cycle can emerge. Lower socio-economic and cultural status schools tend to report lower levels of achievement and other issues with building positive school culture. However, it is precisely the students who struggle with achievement and academic success that tend to benefit the most from positive relationships, shared positive affective experiences, and practices that foster motivation – in short these are the students who gain most from positive school culture. Because of this, equitable school funding, both in terms of money and resources, is inexorably linked with how we can help to build positive aspirations in our young people.
Aspirations are not built alone. Students take in so many messages from their social relationships, their community, their school, and the broader culture to develop an imagined desirable future. Students work with teachers, parents, coaches, and other role models to identify where they want their life to go, including at school, at university, and beyond. All students deserve to have a ‘fair go’ at achieving that imagined future. It is our responsibility to advocate for practices and vote for policies that make this possible.
Emma Burns is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Senior Lecturer of educational psychology at the Macquarie School of Education. Emma’s research focuses on the socio-motivational factors and processes that impact adolescents’ adaptive engagement, achievement and development, especially in STEM. To examine these diverse mechanisms, she uses advanced quantitative research methodology, such as latent growth modelling and multi-level structural equation modelling.
