1 Imagination for empowerment: Research with marginalised students

a process that aims to empower the participants by investigating with them reasons for low tertiary aspiration and implementing action to address their concerns. In SARUA, the high school students are the principal researchers of the issues under investigation. The project supports a participative approach to researching with disadvantaged high school students and, by examining the social processes that create exclusion and disadvantage, it is possible for the participants to connect their lifeworlds in more meaningful ways with the education systems. The SARUA project’s action research approach brings many opportunities for critical thinking among students who may be in the best place to contribute imaginative, fresh insights to school reform. The principles and practice of action research are underpinned by critical theory which, while being grounded in a modernist philosophy, is able, when combined with empathic imagination, to extend towards postmodernist concepts of difference and, to increase its relevance to the contemporary realities of the participants in the SARUA project. 2 In this paper, I will consider both the theory and the practice of working with students as researchers by, firstly, outlining the operations of the SARUA project and, secondly, discussing a typology of imaginations to demonstrate that critical social theory can be enhanced through the sanctioning of imagination. Finally, I will summarise the benefits for participants and schools that have accrued from the SARUA project’s experiences. My PhD research brings me into regular contact with ethnically diverse groups of senior high school students in schools that serve socio-economically disadvantaged communities around Brisbane, Australia. The core site of my research is the Studen