Sarah McDonald

Dr Sarah McDonald

Lecturer

School of Education

College of Education, Behavioural and Social Science

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD (as Co-Supervisor) - email supervisor to discuss availability.

Available For Media Comment.

Sarah is a lecturer in Education Futures at the University of South Australia and a member of the Centre for Research in Education & Social Inclusion. Sarah’s research interests are gendered subjectivities, girlhood, social mobility, social barriers, and educational inequalities. She also conducts research in the area of literacies, focusing on gender, literacies and reading. Sarah’s first co-authored book, 'Gendering the First-in-Family Experience: Transitions, Liminality, Performativity' was published by Routledge in 2022. 
Sarah's work has been published in The Conversation and news outlets such as The Advertiser, The Courier-Mail and radio. In the UniSA 2021 Media Highlights report, Sarah was named one of the top spokespersons per the academic unit list for Education Futures. Sarah was awarded first prize in the Research Excellence Category, HDR Candidate, at the UniSA 2021 Research Awards and a Centre for Research in Education and Social Inclusion Emerging Researcher Excellence Award in 2020. She served as both HDR and ECR representative on the Education Futures Research Leadership Group. Sarah is currently the president of the South Australian English Teachers Association, where she previously served as vice president and council member and a State Delegate to the Australian Association for the Teaching of English. 

Year Citation
2025 Schulz, S., McDonald, S., & Zembylas, M. (2025). ‘Tell this fuckin’ bitch to pull her head in’: affective infrastructures of gender injustice and manosphere classroom encounters. Gender and Education, online, 1-16.
DOI
2025 Stahl, G., & McDonald, S. (2025). Investigating the role of gender, social class and curriculum in the first-in-family higher education experience. Educational Review, 77(21), 38.
DOI Scopus4
2025 Stahl, G., McDonald, S., Nguyen, T., & Fairbairn, K. (2025). The necessity of trust: young men from low socio-economic backgrounds reflecting on what counts in career counselling at the secondary level. British Journal of Educational Studies, 73(1), 73-96.
DOI
2025 Soong, H., McDonald, S., Vieira, M., French, M., Maher, K., & Stephenson, H. (2025). Reasserting care in higher education: perspectives from female early and mid-career researchers. Discourse, 46(4), 566-581.
DOI Scopus1 WoS2
2025 Stahl, G., Fugurally, S., Hu, Y., Nguyen, T., & McDonald, S. (2025). 'I come from a poor family': deciphering how working‐class young men aspire to and experience their journeys in STEM higher education. The Australian Educational Researcher, 52(1), 449-470.
DOI Scopus3 WoS2
2025 Scholes, L., McDonald, S., & Scholes, N. (2025). Social media and the medicalization of boyhood: critical literacies to evaluate media messaging. Review Of Education Pedagogy And Cultural Studies, online, 1-15.
DOI
2025 O'Keeffe, L., McDonald, S., Clarke, C., & Comber, B. (2025). Love it or hate it: mothers' experience with mathematics homework. Mathematics Education Research Journal, online, 1-24.
DOI
2024 Scholes, L., McDonald, S., Stahl, G., & Comber, B. (2024). Many truths, many knowledges, many forms of reason: understanding middle-school student approaches to sources of information on the internet. British Educational Research Journal, 50(1), 1-20.
DOI Scopus10 WoS6
2024 McDonald, S., Stahl, G., Nguyen, T., & Fairbairn, K. (2024). Resourcing their own aspirations: first-in-family young people and DIY career counselling. British Journal of Educational Studies, 72(2), 235-252.
DOI Scopus3 WoS2
2024 Stahl, G., & McDonald, S. (2024). 'I'd rather not bring any attention to myself': shyness and belonging(s) during the first-year university experience. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 29(1), 45-63.
DOI Scopus1
2024 McDonald, S. (2024). 'I don't feel like I belong': First-in-family girls' constructions of belonging and space during the transition into university. Gender and Education, 36(2), 183-197.
DOI Scopus3
2024 McDonald, S., & Stahl, G. (2024). 'Girls do this, guys do that': how first-in-family students negotiate working-class gendered subjectivities during a time of social change. Australian Educational Researcher, 51(3), 973-993.
DOI Scopus3
2024 Maher, K., Rigney, L. I., King, M., Garrett, R., Windle, J., Memon, N., . . . Hattam, R. (2024). Curriculum, democracy and pedagogies for justice: a collective futures dialogue. Curriculum Perspectives, 44(2), 105-119.
DOI Scopus3
2024 Stahl, G., Scholes, L., McDonald, S., Mills, R., Brownlee, J. L., & Comber, B. (2024). Scoping review of conceptions of literacy in middle school science. Research Papers in Education, 39(1), 134-154.
DOI Scopus5 WoS3
2023 Stahl, G., McDonald, S., & Stokes, J. (2023). Indigenous university pathways, WIL and the strengthening of aspirations: Robbie's journey as a learner. Higher Education Research & Development, 42(7), 1624-1639.
DOI Scopus3 WoS3
2023 Stahl, G., Burnard, P., & McDonald, S. (2023). Exploring the experiences of women social entrepreneurs: advancing understandings of 'emotional capital' in women-only networks. Feminist Review, 134(1), 86-103.
DOI Scopus10
2023 O'Keeffe, L., Clarke, C., McDonald, S., & Comber, B. (2023). Mathematics homework and the potential compounding of educational disadvantage. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 44(7), 1144-1160.
DOI Scopus8 WoS5
2023 McDonald, S. (2023). Constructing the (il)literate boy: crisis talk, literacy promotion websites and the simplification of boyhood literacies. International Journal of Educational Research, 122(102255), 1-12.
DOI Scopus5
2023 Baak, M., McDonald, S., Johnson, B., & Sullivan, A. (2023). Why school context matters in refugee education. Educational Research for Policy and Practice, 22(2), 283-299.
DOI Scopus6 WoS6
2023 Stahl, G., Scholes, L., McDonald, S., & Comber, B. (2023). Boys, science and literacy: place-based masculinities, reading practices and the 'science literate boy'. Research Papers in Education, 38 8(3), 328-356.
DOI Scopus9 WoS9
2022 Scholes, L., & McDonald, S. (2022). Year 3 student career choices: exploring societal changes in constructions of masculinity and femininity in career choice justifications. British Educational Research Journal, 48(2), 292-310.
DOI Scopus19
2022 Stahl, G., & McDonald, S. (2022). Social capital and self-crafting: comparing two case studies of first-in-family males navigating elite Australian universities. International journal of inclusive education, 26(1), 93-108.
DOI Scopus18
2021 Stahl, G., McDonald, S., & Young, J. (2021). Possible selves in a transforming economy: upwardly mobile working-class masculinities, service work and negotiated aspirations in Australia. Work, Employment and Society, 35(1), 97-115.
DOI Scopus16
2021 Stahl, G., McDonald, S., & Loeser, C. (2021). Feminine subjectivities and aspirational learner identities: Asian-Australian young women navigating possible selves in the first year of university. Gender and Education, 33(7), 914-929.
DOI Scopus9 WoS8
2021 Lunn Brownlee, J., Ferguson, L., Scholes, L., McDonald, S., Stahl, G., Comber, B., & Mills, R. (2021). Middle school students' science epistemic beliefs - Implications for measurement. International Journal of Educational Research, 105(101719), 1-11.
DOI Scopus7 WoS5
2021 Scholes, L., Stahl, G., Comber, B., McDonald, S., & Brownlee, J. L. (2021). 'We don't read in science': student perceptions of literacy and learning science in middle school. Cambridge Journal of Education, 51(4), 451-466.
DOI Scopus7 WoS4
2021 Stahl, G., Scholes, L., McDonald, S., & Lunn, J. (2021). Middle years students' engagement with science in rural and urban communities in Australia: exploring science capital, place-based knowledges and familial relationships. Pedagogy, culture & society, 29(1), 43-60.
DOI Scopus18
2021 Mills, R., Scholes, L., Stahl, G., McDonald, S., Comber, B., & Brownlee, J. L. (2021). How do rural Australian students' ethnogeographies related to people and place influence their STEM career aspirations?. International Journal of Science Education, 43(14), 2333-2350.
DOI Scopus12 WoS7
2020 McDonald, S. (2020). Constructing the 'literate boy': analysing masculinities on websites created in response to the boys' literacy 'crisis'. English in Australia, 54(2), 32-42.
Scopus6
2020 Stahl, G., McDonald, S., & Stokes, J. (2020). 'I see myself as undeveloped': supporting Indigenous first-in-family males in the transition to higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 39(7), 1488-1501.
DOI Scopus25 WoS20
2016 McDonald, S. (2016). On not turning 'back to the car': a critical discourse analysis of the SACE English studies' list of prescribed texts. English in Australia, 51(1), 46-52.
Scopus1

Year Citation
2026 McDonald, S. (2026). Youth Femininities. In E. E. Deckman (Ed.), Source details - Title: The SAGE Encyclopaedia of Education and Gender (Vol. in press, in press ed.). US: Sage.
2025 McDonald, S., & Stahl, G. (2025). First-in-Family students in Australian higher education: Investigating socioeconomic status as an exclusionary pressure. In E. J. Done (Ed.), Source details - Title: Theorising Exclusionary Pressures in Education: Why Inclusion Becomes Exclusion (pp. 245-257). Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
DOI
2025 Scholes, L., Pink, E., & McDonald, S. (2025). Girls and boys as readers: challenging binary beliefs. In T. Cremin, & S. McGeown (Eds.), Source details - Title: Reading for pleasure: international perspectives (pp. 16-29). UK: Routledge.
DOI Scopus1
2024 McDonald, S. (2024). Bourdieu, reflexivity, and educational research: deciphering the self in researching working-class girlhood and social mobility. In G. Stahl (Ed.), Source details - Title: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Bourdieu and Educational Research (pp. 226-239). Bloomsbury Academic: UK.
DOI Scopus2
2023 Stahl, G., & McDonald, S. (2023). Marginalized masculinities in higher education: discursive spaces, gendered subjectivities, and young first-in-family men being and becoming in Australian universities. In A. CohenMiller (Ed.), Source details - Title: Leading Change in Gender and Diversity in Higher Education from Margins to Mainstream (pp. 29-46). US: Routledge.
DOI
2023 Stahl, G., & McDonald, S. (2023). The first-in-family experience: gendered and classed subjectivities in elite higher education. In R. J. Tierney, F. Rizvi, & K. Ercikan (Eds.), Source details - Title: International Encyclopedia of Education: Fourth Edition (pp. 392-397). US: Elsevier.
DOI Scopus5
2021 McDonald, S. (2021). 'She's like, "you're a uni student now"': the influence of mother-daughter relationships on the constructions of learner identities of first-in-family girls. In Source details - Title: Reimagining the Higher Education Student: Constructing and Contesting Identities (pp. 27-44). US: Routledge.
DOI Scopus9
2021 Stahl, G., & McDonald, S. (2021). Thinking with habitus in the study of learner identities. In C. E. Matias (Ed.), Source details - Title: The Handbook of Critical Theoretical Research Methods in Education (pp. 199-211). UK: Routledge.
DOI Scopus6

  • Exploring Homework Policy, Practices and How they Shape Family Life: A Research Study of Three Countries, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 30/01/2024 - 30/06/2025

  • Kain Foundation Northern Opportunities Evaluation Proposal, Kain Foundation, 01/05/2024 - 01/10/2024

Courses I teach

  • EDUC 1108 Adolescent Literature (2025)
  • EDUC 2058 English Curriculum: Reading (2025)
  • EDUC 5164 English for Secondary Teaching 2 (2025)
  • EDUC 1108 Adolescent Literature (2024)
  • EDUC 2058 English Curriculum: Reading (2024)
  • EDUC 3062 English Curriculum: Text Production (2024)
  • EDUC 5164 English for Secondary Teaching 2 (2024)

Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
2025 Co-Supervisor - Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Ben Archer
2023 Co-Supervisor - Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Ruoxin Wang
2023 Co-Supervisor - Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Fanghui Gao

Connect With Me

External Profiles

Other Links