| Abstrakt: |
Educational theorists, practitioners and policy experts are giving increasing attention to the significance of lifewide as well as life-long learning. Yet few if any studies have been conducted into the opportunities for encouraging lifewide learning arising from part-time study at the senior secondary level. Similarly very little is known about the causes and educational outcomes of this trend, nor its relationship with school engagement, retention and completion, on the one hand, and early school-leaving and attrition on the other. This paper will report on recent research which mapped the location (both socio-economic and geographic) and other demographic dimensions of part-time senior secondary students in every secondary school in the public system in the state of South Australia. In doing so it will ask questions about the implications of part-time senior secondary study for educational policy frameworks, educational design and delivery mechanisms, the structure and cultures of schooling, accreditation frameworks and the achievement of educational equity. This state-wide research will be elaborated by two specific case studies; one concerning a highly successful university access pilot for adult students returning to study from extremely disadvantaged circumstances, and the other which targeted early school-leaver teenage mothers who returned to schooling by means of an innovative program which formalised and accredited their learning from pregnancy, birth and young motherhood. Both are presented as models of good practice in part-time study, inviting further research in terms of permeable boundaries between life and schooling and between different levels of educational provision and accreditation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
