RESEARCH OVERVIEW

For families without experience of higher education it can be difficult to know how to encourage young children's aspiration for educational futures. This project seeks to improve knowledge about higher education in low socio economic status early childhood settings. It will use a social marketing intervention to assist parents, families and caregivers to become better informed about how to support their young children. The project will develop knowledge about how early childhood educators understand and interpret the educational aspirations of children and families.

In consultation with key stakeholders (parents, family, community and early childhood centres) a social marketing intervention will be developed that will target parents, children and early childhood educators to produce a unique 'education promotion' strategy for early childhood.

The overarching aim of the project is to understand how LSES children and their families imagine and aspire to educational futures and to develop and assess a social marketing intervention targeting promotion of educational futures in early childhood settingsChildren from low socio-economic status (LSES) backgrounds are, for a range of reasons, far less likely to attend university. Many of these children are ‘smart enough’ to attend university, but there are barriers to attending, including knowledge about education or believing it is possible. These young children need opportunities to build on their aspirations for education. The problem is not simply one of raising aspirations; children and families from LSES backgrounds have aspirations. The problem is that university can be an alien environment for those with no history of higher education and is simply not a part of their families’ worlds.

Developing a program when children are young could mean that they and their parents/ caregivers/families and early childhood educators start to assume educational futures are possible and that there are opportunities for them (and their families) for further education such as university.

The project will assess how social marketing – a strategy effectively used in health and in poverty reduction - can be adapted to promote educational futures. Social marketing is a process that works with the target audience to understand the problem and the barriers and that, in consultation, develops appropriate ways to encourage change. This technique is most often used in the health sector. Examples include social marketing campaigns to be sun-safe, stop smoking, or to wear seatbelts.

The project will investigate social marketing strategies for promoting educational futures. There are currently no specific materials designed to promote education futures to LSES children and families in the early childhood context and no available material for the professional development of childcare staff. This project will investigate the application of social marketing, so successfully used in other disciplinary fields (such as health) to promote education and educational futures in early childhood LSES settings.