Thrive: Finishing School Well is a research program that combines the power of statistical machine learning, lived experience and community co-design to understand what factors impact NSW school students finishing school well.
Thrive’s unique approach integrates the expertise of education specialists with the development of new causal machine learning methodologies, rich longitudinal datasets and qualitative research methods to engage communities, including children and young people, to identify specific challenges and how to address them for positive change.
The initiative is grounded in the Bayesian paradigm, which is instrumental in bridging the gap between quantitative and qualitative research. It allows for the synthesis of diverse sources of information, such as government datasets, individual case studies and community experience to understand and uncover the pathways that lead to overcoming social disadvantage.
The program is a collaboration between the Human Technology Institute at University of Technology Sydney, and Western Sydney University, with substantial funding support from the Paul Ramsay Foundation (PRF). It will support a diverse team of Master’s and PhD research students, postdocs and academics in statistics, computer science and social sciences, as well as experts in public policy and education.
The knowledge generated will inform policy decisions, enabling the design and implementation of more effective educational programs which support all students to finish school well, irrespective of the barriers they face.
Thrive is a living lab, ensuring that strategies are continuously updated and improved as new information comes to light. This unique collaboration creates a fertile environment for innovative solutions to emerge with a strong potential for beneficial impact across the entire community.
Through its emphasis on the creation and application of cutting-edge statistical machine learning techniques, along with the harnessing of qualitative and quantitative data, Thrive is pioneering a unique pathway in education research. Its work promises to position Australia at the forefront of employing innovative and evidence-based methodologies to tackle pressing social issues.
