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Duggan, RMIT University  \nAbstract  \nThis paper follows recent scholarship in youth studies in suggesting that young people’s aspirations for the future are deeply enmeshed within a social, cultural, and economic articulation of what constitutes a “good” life that an individual ought to orient toward. It uses Ahmed’s (2014) notion of “wilfulness” to consider how young people anticipate, planfor, and orient toward the future as a real and imaginedspace that is embedded within their relationship to everyday social, cultural, and economic practices. To do this, I draw upon digital blog and interview narratives collected across a seventeen-month period from three young women in their final year of secondary school in Victoria, Australia. These narratives take up the notion of “willed”  \nspace(s) to consider the capacities, energies, and projects that these young women tell about the future over time. Throughout, this paper argues that a willful lens is particularly productive for its capacity to move beyond an understanding of educational participation as a fixed site for realising aspirations to one that highlights multiple processes of becoming within novel spaces of identification and belonging.  \nKeywords: gender; aspirations; senior secondary; narrative; affect  \nIntroduction  \nY’know me, itching for something more as always. I'm itching to be somewhere doing something deliciously exciting. Something I would never in a million years consider doing. Something terrifying. I want a permanent adrenalin rush. I'm tired and wild and wanting something more. But I'm not quite ready yet. -Laura, Park High, Blog Post: 8 July  \nThe most common word in Laura’s blog throughout the year is “more.” For Laura,“more” is articulated both in terms of processes, emotions, and very commonly, in relation to her body. In the opening narrative, she communicates a key quality of her final year of schooling—events unfold less by design than by chance, connected through their sense of“itching,” of being “itchy” for the future. As it is for many young women in their final year of secondary schooling in Australia, Laura’s narrative is a story of what Ahmed (2014) calls willing or willfulness.  \nThis paper draws out the interplay between the willing and the willed. It follows recent scholarship concerned with questions of aspiration and gender in the sociology of education and critical youth studies (McLeod, 2015; Woodman & Wyn, 2015) to suggest that young women’s aspirations for the future are deeply enmeshed within an articulation of what constitutes a “good”life that an individual ought to orient toward. Ahmed’s (2014)“willful subject” is deployed hereto extend the conversation around aspirations and gender in educational scholarship. It draws upon the digital blog and interview narratives collected across a seventeen-month period from three young women in their final year of secondary school in Victoria, Australia. These narratives take up the notion of “willed” space from three directions: from with-in, with-out, and against notions of gender, participation, and aspiration. Throughout, this paper argues that a willful lens is particularly productive for considering questions of how young people take up multiple processes of identification and belonging within the context of massively increased participation in senior secondary education.  \nI begin with a sketch of the rapid increase in senior secondary and higher education participation in Australia over the last two decades. I then elaborate Ahmed’s (2014) notion of willfulness and explore its potential in considering questions of aspirations and gender in the sociology of education. Data gathering techniques used to collect and analyse the narratives of the young people in this study are outlined. Here, I also provide a snapshot of each of the young women and their participation in the","cbCailSlfdyZWYSr","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCailSlfdyZWYSr","pdf",704430,"English","# Introduction\n## Aspirations in High Stakes Curriculum","[{\"question\":\"How does the paper define “wilfulness” in relation to young people’s aspirations?\",\"answer\":\"It uses Ahmed’s notion of “wilfulness” to understand how young people anticipate, plan for, and orient toward the future as both real and imagined space shaped by everyday social, cultural, and economic practices.\"},{\"question\":\"What research materials does the paper use to analyze aspirations?\",\"answer\":\"It draws on digital blog and interview narratives collected over seventeen months from three young women in their final year of secondary school in Victoria, Australia.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the paper argue about educational participation and aspirations?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that a willful lens is productive for moving beyond treating educational participation as a fixed site for realizing aspirations, instead highlighting multiple processes of becoming, identification, and belonging.\"}]","Willfulness and Aspirations for Young Women in Australian High Stakes Curriculum | PDF",48]