Jennifer Skattebol

Jennifer Skattebol, Dip Ed (EC), B.Ed., PhD, explores issues of economic inequality and how they are experienced by children and their families. She is primarily a qualitative and mixed method researcher grounded in the disciplines of education, sociology and social policy. Her methodological expertise is designing research with children, young people and their families in contexts of disadvantage. She has worked extensively with government and non-government bodies on issues related to early years education, child and youth poverty and how service systems might better meet the needs of these young Australians and their families. She is interested in how constructions of family are lived and experienced and how the nexus of the family is a site where inequalities and power focus, operate, are resisted and transformed. This work includes consideration of how young people manage tensions between family and school (and other services) and how services might be more responsive to the needs of disadvantaged citizen. Current research projects include equitable access to early childhood education and care, of child wellbeing in the middle years and an investigation of the lifecourses of young poeple using multiple service systems. inequality, children and young people, families, early childhood education and care (ecec), Social Policy, Sociology of Education, Social and Cultural Geography, Early Childhood Education (excl. Maori), Sociological Methodology and Research Methods