Professor Margaret Vickers

• Qualifications 
• Selected Publications 
• Contact

• youth in transition
• early school leaving
• educational disadvantage.

She is well known for her large-scale quantitative analyses of variations in high school completion rates over time, as well as in relation to demographic factors, and curriculum and assessment regimes. She has analysed the effects of VET in school programs on high school completion rates and the effects of students’ participation in part-time employment on early leaving. She has extensive experience in the management of large and complex data sets, based on her use of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth data. Her most recent ARC-funded project, on Gender and Information Technology also involved the collection and analysis of large scale survey data. While at Harvard University, she undertook an extensive analysis of Australian high school completion rates using the ALS and AYS data sets. This was the first ever application of discrete-time survival analysis to the issue of high school completion or dropping out.

Her research mostly has an applied focus, as the major part of her career was spent working on policy issues for the Paris-based OECD, for the Commonwealth government, and in on a range of curriculum development and research projects in the USA.

Qualifications

BSc (Melbourne), MSc (Melbourne), MEd (Harvard), EdD (Harvard)

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Selected Publications
Books

Connell, R., Campbell, C., Vickers, M., Welch, A., Foley, D., Bagnall, N., (2006) Education, Change and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Chapters

Vickers, M. H. & Ha, T. (2007) The imagined curriculum: Who studies computing and information technology subjects at the senior secondary level? in J. Lynch (ed), Gender and IT: Challenges for Computing and Information Technology education in Australian secondary schools, Sydney: Australian Curriculum Studies Association and Common Ground Publishers.

Vickers, M. H. (2007) Reversing the lens: Transforming teacher education through service learning, in S. Billig and S. Gelmon (eds), From Passion to Objectivity: International and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Service Learning Research, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing.

Vickers, M. H. (1995) New developments in the assessment of high school achievement: Cross-national perspectives, in B. Resnick and J. Wirt (eds), Linking school and work: Roles for standards and assessment, San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Journal Articles

Vickers, M. H. (2005) School, work and social change: Revisiting the gender equity debate, Pacific Asian Education, 17 (2), 46-58.

Vickers, M. H. (2005) In the common good: The need for a new approach to funding Australia’s schools, Australian Journal of Education, 49 (3), 264-277.

Vickers, M. H. (2004) Markets and Mobilities: Dilemmas facing the comprehensive neighbourhood school, Melbourne Studies in Education, 45 (2), 1-22.

Vickers, M. H., Harris, C. & McCarthy (2003) University-Community Engagement: Exploring Service Learning Options within the Practicum, Australia- Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 32 (2), 129-141.

Vickers, M. H. & Lamb, S. (2002) Why state policies matter: the influence of Curriculum policy on participation in post-compulsory education and training, Australian Journal of Education, 46 (2), 172-188.

Reports

Lamb, S. & Vickers, M. H. (2006) Variations in VET provision across Australian schools and their effects on student outcomes, LSAY Research Report No 48, Melbourne: ACER.

Vickers, M. H., Lamb, S, & Hinkley, J. (2003) Student Workers in High School and Beyond: the Effects of Part-Time Employment on Participation in Education, Training and Work, LSAY Research Report No 30, Melbourne: ACER.

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Contact

>>Contact Professor Margaret Vickers