Contextualizing Outcomes of Public Schooling: Disparate Post-secondary Aspirations among Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Secondary Students

To understand how Aboriginal youths’ access to post-secondary schooling opportunities is created and constrained, structures of inclusion and exclusion are examined. In particular, the legitimization of unequal treatment and disparate outcomes is problematized; making the case that public schooling...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hudson, Natasha
Other Authors: Restoule, Jean-Paul, Bascia, Nina, Adult Education and Counselling Psychology
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published:
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1807/18119
Description
Summary:To understand how Aboriginal youths’ access to post-secondary schooling opportunities is created and constrained, structures of inclusion and exclusion are examined. In particular, the legitimization of unequal treatment and disparate outcomes is problematized; making the case that public schooling systems limit the opportunities of youth. In this study, youths’ post-secondary aspirations are contextualized on the basis of racial identity, gender, programs of enrolment, graduate destinations, parent’s level of schooling, parental income, and community size; binary analyses evaluate the relationships among these variables. The variables were accessed from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Findings of this research counter other studies that demonstrate Aboriginal youth with lower post-secondary opportunities relative to their peers. This study substantiates that barriers to aspiration achievement and post-secondary opportunities are not from a lack of ambition or academic preparedness among Aboriginal youth attending Canadian public schools. MAST