Conceptualising a social marketing approach to widening participation in Australian higher education

Education is transformative. Education delivers benefits to individuals, their families and communities; and it is this far-reaching impact that compels further rsearch into understanding why under-participation by peopel from low socio-economic status (LSES) backgrounds occurs and finding new ways to attenpt to assuage the situation. This paper is novel in many ways, most notably as it synthesises two similar yet different domains, being social marketing and wideing participation. Drawing on a transdisciplinary body of knowledge and practices, we present a different lens through which to view the seemingly perennial issue of under-participation in higher education by people from LSES backgrounds. We present a conceptual model that reframes LSES participation in the social marketing Model of Goal-directed Behaviour. Our conceptual model provides fresh insights for use by researchers and practitioners alike