Understanding temporality and future orientation for young women in the senior year

ABSTRACT

This article considers how time is imagined, lived, and desired in young women’s lives as they undertake their final year of secondary school studies in Melbourne, Australia. It argues that economic and competitive imperatives have intensified for many young people in recent times, manifesting in an educational apparatus that increasingly defines the parameters of success and achievement in terms of self-regulation and personal responsibility, and that this is particularly pronounced for young people as they prepare for, and aspire towards tertiary pathways. This article draws upon interviews and a-synchronous ‘blog’ posts from two young women who participated in a year-long study of young people enrolled in their final year of secondary school studies. It suggests that the intensification, compression, and control of time in educational discourse around the senior year plays a powerful role in self-making for young women in particular.

KEYWORDS:

• Temporality
• gender
• neo-liberalism
• aspirations
• future making

Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to the ongoing support of Julie McLeod and Dianne Mulcahy in framing this study, and acknowledge with thanks the helpful feedback of the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The Australian Tertiary Admissions Ranking (ATAR) is the primary mechanism through which tertiary places are allocated to students who complete the mainstream senior certificate in most states and territories in Australia. Students are allocated an equivalent ranking between 99.95 and ‘less than 30’ which places them in relation to their eligible cohort. The 2012 average ATAR was 68.75 (VCAA 2012). The ATAR is a ranking rather than a score: thus a student receiving an ATAR of 85 has performed higher than 85% of her peers, and lower than 14.95%. The ATAR has come under significant scrutiny since its inception, most recent of which in early 2016 when it was revealed that many top universities in Australia had lost confidence in the ranking as a ‘fair and equitable measure’ of young people’s readiness for tertiary study at University.

2 The Victorian Certificate of Education VCE is the dominant post-compulsory pathway for young people in Victoria (around 72%). It is a two-year programme (Years 11 and 12 – typically 16–18 year olds) that involves students choosing from almost 100 subject offerings, depending on their availability at their school site. It is similar in status to the GCE Advanced Level in Britain, or Abitur in Germany and Finland. Assessment for the VCE consists of school-based research, inquiry, oral communication, and examination tasks, along with external examinations accounting for around 50% of a student’s final score for each subject. These scores are scaled in the calculation of the student’s final ATAR.