| Abstract: | For marginalised secondary school students, mainstream education may no longer appear to be an inviting place. While proposed
solutions to problems of disengagement and marginalisation appear to concentrate on finding ways to coerce students back to
mainstream education through, for example, ‘learning or earning’ legislation, this article suggests that more effective solutions
may be found by engaging with the students in the margins that they occupy. Following discussion of key influences on student
disengagement and a theory of imaginations, a ‘students-as-researchers’ (SaR) model of working with young people is discussed
to demonstrate that, through the scaffolded application of active imagination, it is possible for such students to identify
and create their own connections to the mainstream. The SaR model is illustrated through reference to groups of disaffected
high school students who participated in an action research project to investigate apparent low aspiration for tertiary education
among their peers at schools serving low-income communities in Queensland, Australia. |
