Gateways to Occupational Success : Educational Mobility and Attainment for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Emerging Adults

Education is a gateway to occupational success for emerging adults. Differences in access and uptake in higher education are thus a primary explanation for social stratification. In this chapter, the authors consider what might explain the Indigenous gap in educational attainment. Using multiple cohorts of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Youth, they show that the typical processes of educational mobility are similar across Indigenous and non-Indigenous emerging adults and have remained fairly constant in recent decades. Rather, educational inequality appears to result from lower attainment in both Indigenous parents and their children. Pursuing this lower level of attainment, the authors show that standard Western models of educational attainment fail to fully explain Indigenous educational inequality. They suggest a need to consider the unique knowledges and experiences of Indigenous people. They also argue that research needs to pay greater attention to the intersection between Indigenous status and other minority or marginalized statuses.

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