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In Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), children born between January and July have the choice to start school in the year they turn five, or delay entry until the year they turn six. We used linked administrative data for children who started school in NSW in 2009 or 2012 (N = 162,878) to identify child, family and area characteristics associated with delayed entry, and to explore the relationship between school starting age and five domains of child development, measured using the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) in the first year of school. Among both the 2009 and 2012 cohorts, 26% of children delayed starting school until the year they turned six. Area-level rates of delay ranged from 8% to 54% across 198 areas in NSW, with lower levels in disadvantaged urban areas. Factors associated with delayed entry included male sex, a birth date close to the enrolment cut-off date, socioeconomic advantage, and having a mother born in Australia. There was a strong, significant relationship between school starting age and early childhood development: each month of maturity corresponded to an increase of approximately 3% in the probability of scoring above the 25th percentile in all five AEDC domains. Independent of school starting age, children who were older in relation to their classroom peers had better development outcomes. The potential for initial age-related differences to impact later school outcomes warrants further longitudinal research.

Participatory design seeks to involve users as partners in the design process. However, for traditionally disenfranchised groups participation may not be enough. Over the past year, we've worked with Indigenous leaders and end-users to develop a process by which HCI practitioners can pass the reins to Indigenous people to lead their own technology projects with the support of designers as needed. We present a brief summary of our experience and reflections on this budding user leadership process so far. We describe key steps (ie. user-led recruitment, user-leader training, and user-led workshops) as well as some challenges and takeaways, in order to contribute to the advancement of processes for Indigenous-led co-design, and user-leadership for the empowerment of disenfranchised communities around the world.

The article describes the teaching and learning framework that underpins a Kinship Online Module aimed at delivering online cross-cultural training at the university level. It is based on an existing workshop designed and presented to non-Aboriginal staff and students by Lynette Riley, a Wiradjuri and Gamilaroi woman from Dubbo and Moree. In doing so, this article reflects on the pedagogical framework and adopted learning environment, and describes how the project adopts a ‘cultural praxis’ approach that combines a social constructivist, problem-based immersive learning approach with five complementary pedagogical approaches. These principles underpin the designing of a program that embeds diverse Aboriginal knowledge into this online teaching resource.

Since its inception, Problem-based learning (PBL) as a process for learning and teaching has been used to enhance many skills based courses, including education programs at Bachelor College and the Aboriginal Technical Health Worker training program at the Centre for Appropriate Technology in Alice Springs. While PBL is an approach to learning and teaching which has been designed to provide a more holistic educational process for all students, Foster and Meehane (2007) suggest that many aspects of the courses are ideally suited for Indigenous students. In particular, this approach is useful when introducing students to a subject matter which is new both in being derived from another culture and not being accessible to Indigenous parents in the past. PBL provides a flexible approach to enable motivation and involvement of the students and their community. This paper considers the benefits of PBL for learning Information Technology and presents some course templates developed to support teaching Indigenous students at school.

Purpose This chapter outlines an audit process that led to a group of non-Aboriginal academics, and professional staff embarking on a journey to explore insights into Aboriginal knowledge and culture. It presents a compelling account of the benefits of a project devised by a creative Aboriginal teacher and community arts practitioner, The Embedding Diversity: Towards a Culturally Inclusive Pedagogy. Findings The Embedding Diversity project allowed a reflective and process-based deep learning to occur which enabled practical and meaningful Reconciliation to transpire between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal staff at an Australian University. Within the Faculty of Education and Social Work, staff collaborated with, listened to, and were taught by Aboriginal people in a range of contexts. Through this partnership, training, engagement, and conversations were had that shifted perspectives and changed thinking. Practical implications The outcome of this project was a commitment to change and advocacy for cultural competence to embedding stronger and more informed Aboriginal education, Aboriginal Studies Units of Study (subjects), and perspectives in teacher education curriculum. We present this project as it is reflective of the meaningful Reconciliation and educational reform which may be possible in other learning communities.

Teaching Aboriginal culture relies on individual teachers providing their particular perspective, yet cultural education is about providing a community perspective. This paper describes the design process for creating such an online system to share multiple experiences of Aboriginal Culture in New South Wales (NSW), Australia in a coherent and social-constructivist framework. The focus of the material is Aboriginal Kinship systems used for thousands of years in this region. This topic was chosen as the history of conflict through government policy, social inclusion and technology take-up has continually returned to issues of Kinship and cultural knowledge maintenance within respective societies, areas in which Aboriginal and European societies are markedly different. There is a pressing need to improve knowledge of Aboriginal cultural heritage and technology provides a novel means of sharing this understanding. Narratives from Aboriginal communities are used to augment an interactive face-to-face Kinship presentation which has been videoed and will be available as part of the learning material. Using innovative authoring tools, teachers will be able to select Aboriginal people's narratives that are relevant to their course of study, and map these to a range of scenarios being developed. The scenarios enable students to select ways they relate to the online characters, listen to various narratives, and become aware of their own role in the wider community, in relation to working for or with Aboriginal people. © Common Ground, Cat Kutay, Janet Mooney, Lynette Riley, and Deirdre Howard-Wagner.