Search

Background: Despite disproportionate rates of mental ill-health compared with non-Indigenous populations, few programs have been tailored to the unique health, social, and cultural needs and preferences of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males. This paper describes the process of culturally adapting the US-based Young Black Men, Masculinities, and Mental Health (YBMen) Project to suit the needs, preferences, culture, and circumstances of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males aged 16–25 years in the Northern Territory, Australia. YBMen is an evidence-based social media-based education and support program designed to promote mental health, expand understandings of gender and cultural identities, and enhance social support in college-aged Black men. Methods: Our adaptation followed an Extended Stages of Cultural Adaptation model. First, we established a rationale for adaptation that included assessing the appropriateness of YBMen's core components for the target population. We then investigated important and appropriate models to underpin the adapted program and conducted a non-linear, iterative process of gathering information from key sources, including young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males, to inform program curriculum and delivery. Results: To maintain program fidelity, we retained the core curriculum components of mental health, healthy masculinities, and social connection and kept the small cohort, private social media group delivery but developed two models: 'online only' (the original online delivery format) and 'hybrid in-person/online' (combining online delivery with weekly in-person group sessions). Adaptations made included using an overarching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional wellbeing framework and socio-cultural strengths-based approach; inclusion of modules on health and wellbeing, positive Indigenous masculinities, and respectful relationships; use of Indigenous designs and colours; and prominent placement of images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander male sportspeople, musicians, activists, and local role models. Conclusions: This process resulted in a culturally responsive mental health, masculinities, and social support health promotion program for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males. Next steps will involve pilot testing to investigate the adapted program's acceptability and feasibility and inform further refinement. Keywords: Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Indigenous, Australia, male, cultural adaptation, social media, mental health, masculinities, social support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the significance of providing books in a child's first language for young children in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities. Topics include the positive impact on literacy and language development, the role of culturally relevant materials in strengthening identity and connection to community, and the efforts by the Indigenous Literacy Foundation to publish and translate books in First Nations languages.

Background: In July 2018, participants at a Waiben (Thursday Island) conference declared that it was time for a locally driven research agenda for the Torres Strait and Queensland Northern Peninsula Area. For decades, they felt exploited by outside researchers. They identified a lack of respect and consultation, with few benefits for their people. Methods: In response, the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine (Waiben Campus‐Ngulaigau Mudh) invited a consultative group of elders and senior health providers to develop a research program based on local cultural and health needs. The aim was to promote research skills through a learn-by-doing approach. Four workshops were conducted over 2019. Key financial and in-kind support was provided by the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, Hot North, and Queensland Health's Torres and Cape Hospital and Health Service. Results: The first workshop attracted 24 people; none had previous research experience. The workshop format evolved over 2019, mainly guided by the participants. Overall, feedback was positive, and participant research proposals remain in various stages of development. Conclusions: Although suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, this is a long-term investment in community-driven research that seeks to translate health benefits to the people. This model may apply to other communities, especially in rural and remote Australia. Warning: This article contains the names and/or images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Research had a bad name in the Torres Strait. People felt exploited by outside researchers over decades with few benefits for the people. A consultative group of elders and senior health providers developed a research agenda focused on local cultural and health needs, based on a learn-by-doing approach. Participants created their research proposals during four workshops. The program was interrupted by COVID-19 restrictions but should resume in 2022. The model may apply to other Australian rural and remote communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Australian curricula require teachers to promote reconciliation through the teaching of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and languages. Engaging with First Nations knowledges and histories in education comes with a very complex and historically layered legacy. This paper examines the role of education in the ongoing process of colonisation by critically analysing historical and contemporary documents prescribing what Victorian students should learn about First Nations peoples, histories and cultures. These documents are discussed in the context of relevant events and policies, from the Terra Nullius ideologies that dominated curricula until the 1960s, through the growing agenda of self-determination in the 1970–1980s, and into the current swinging pendulum of political agendas. It is argued that contemporary curricula and policies promote reconciliation without embracing the necessary social justice and decolonising ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Australian Nursing and Midwifery Accreditation Council prescribes midwifery accreditation standards that support students' development in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and cultural safety to be deemed practice ready. However, the impact of training programmes are not widely explored. Aim: This study aimed to assess the impact of a mandatory 8-week online subject focussed on the development of culturally safe practices among midwifery students. Methods: The Ganngaleh nga Yagaleh cultural safety assessment tool was used to collect online quantitative data from post graduate midwifery students at the commencement and completion of an online subject. Results: Through a purposive sample (n = 10) participant perceptions of culturally safe practices remained relatively unchanged, except for three items of the Ganngaleh nga Yagaleh cultural safety assessment tool. Discussion: Findings demonstrate that when post graduate midwifery students are exposed to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives of Australia's colonial history it impacts their sense of optimism, personal values and beliefs about the healthcare they will provide to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. However, midwifery students who self-identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people, reported a decline in optimism when imagining a healthcare system free of racism. Conclusion: The subject did not impact on cultural safety scores. This may be due to prior learning of student midwives. Educators should consider building on prior knowledge in post graduate midwifery to ensure the content is contextualised to midwifery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2020 looms large for Indigenous education in Australia, with the 'Refreshed' Close the Gap strategy hanging over the collective heads of schools, Indigenous students and their families. After a decade of promises, there is now an acknowledgement within the government that programmes to improve student outcomes in literacy, numeracy and school engagement, as currently implemented, have little possibility in affecting the changes required to sustainably shift Indigenous student's schooling success. This paper draws together the findings from eleven concurrent systematic reviews of Australian Indigenous education (AER, 2019, 29(1)) and an in-depth analysis of four key underpinning elements of a culturally nourishing education for Australian Indigenous students. It is argued that the four tenets of this model centres on the curriculum construct of Learning from Country, the authentic inclusion of cultural practices and Indigenous languages in both curriculum and school practice, establishing epistemic and pedagogic mentoring for teachers and the development of a robust professional development model to support a transformative shift in teachers' pedagogic practices. The authors argue that a whole-school approach explicitly negotiated with and supported by Indigenous families, and that centres these key principles are required if the promise of educational success is ever to be met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students' experiences in Australian higher education continue to be influenced by the sociopolitical narratives of alterity which locate the students as more likely than their nonIndigenous peers to struggle academically and need support. These western-centric perceptions of indigeneities not only affect Indigenous students' everyday university experiences but can even influence their decision whether to persist with their studies or not. Drawing on data collected in a large, metropolitan Australian university, this article presents a case study of Indigenous students' ways of perceiving and resisting their positioning by the dominant university systems as 'problematic', at risk of failure and needing support. Specifically, the article explores educational pathways of three Indigenous students, their narratives exemplifying primary strategies of enacting and articulating resistances to the dominant education structures in order to fuel academic success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review analyses studies that identify pedagogies to support, engage and improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student outcomes. Some studies focus on pedagogies to support and engage, while others describe pedagogies that are designed to improve engagement, attendance and academic skills. The role of context emerges as a key theme, particularly in remote areas. In larger studies, Aboriginal students are often a subset of a larger student group, included because of socio-economic status and achievement levels. Key findings indicate a disconnect between practice and outcomes where links to improved outcomes are by implication rather than evidence. Further, definitions and detail about pedagogies are mostly absent, relying on 'common understandings' of what pedagogy means. This review highlights that most of the research identifies effective pedagogies to engage and support Aboriginal students rather than to improve their educational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present results of a systematic review of empirical research on racism and the schooling experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, focussing on research published from 1989 to 2016. Our review is part of a series of systematic literature reviews on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education in Australia. It attends to diverse manifestations of racism, from institutional and systemic discrimination to everyday microaggressions, and varying levels of analysis, from individual experiences to cohort approaches. This work adopts a critical perspective on disciplinary boundaries and the outcomes discourse within the broad field of education research. Additionally, we discuss the challenges inherent in systematic review inclusion/exclusion criteria related to racism in a field such as education in which racism and discrimination are frequently misrepresented or misreported, for example, as disciplinary and behaviour management issues, disadvantage or as regional and remote education challenges. The review discusses study types and locations, explores how racism is defined and understood and details the effects of racism on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School systems and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have long acknowledged the levels of social, cultural and epistemic conflict that has historically existed between teachers and schools, and Aboriginal students, families and their local communities. This relationship is both symptomatic and causal of the broader and highly complex field of issues and policies found to underpin the fraught histories existing between many Aboriginal communities and schools. This systematic review of the research literature reports on findings and insights into the everyday environments of these interactions and the possibilities of Aboriginal communities being able to affect the establishment of genuine and productive interactions with schools. The review looks to focus on those factors seen to either enable or act as barriers to this process, and comment on their impact on Aboriginal communities, their students and schools' capacity for purposeful engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the aims of a systematic literature review (SLR) is to test the weight of historical perception against the reality of research and practice. A second aim is to identify approaches to knowing in schools (defined as curriculum) that might help us to identify possibilities for improvement in Indigenous student engagement and achievement in Australian schools. Given that education is representational practice, this SLR explores various representations of the world and how these might be taught in schools in ways that support "successful learning" for Indigenous students. We focus on how the curriculum might allow for multiple stories to be told, and how it can support the multiplicity of social and cultural identities. The question for this segment of the SLR is, how does curriculum govern learning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in Australia? A comprehensive search of the research literature produced over the period 2006–2017 highlights how the Australian government's focus on numbers contrasts radically with the ways in which many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and their parents conceptualise the goals of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) health professionals working in the alcohol and other drugs field perform a complex role in tackling substance misuse and related harms. Professional training and development opportunities for these "frontline" Indigenous alcohol and other drugs staff is key to prevent burnout and to allow them to work to their full potential. However, there are many barriers for those seeking to improve their skills. A number of teaching approaches have been described as important, but we were unable to identify peer-reviewed publications that detail the optimal approach to tailor university learning to meet the needs of Indigenous alcohol and other drugs health professionals. This article reflects on the experience of providing one such programme: a graduate diploma in Indigenous health and substance use, designed and delivered specifically for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mature-aged students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The broad discipline of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) has become a global focus for education and employment. Currently, Indigenous students are less likely to engage in STEM programs and careers than in other disciplines such as education, health, social sciences and arts. In Australia, schools and tertiary institutions are investigating opportunities to increase Indigenous participation in STEM. In 2016, the XE Maths project documented a series of six case studies of diverse Australian tertiary programs focussed on increasing Indigenous participation in STEM [Paige et al. 2016. Strengthening Indigenous Participation and Practice in STEM: University Initiatives for Equity and Excellence. Magill: University of South Australia]. This paper documents Charles Darwin University's initiatives, including the Whole of Community Engagement program, which provides pathways and enabling supports to potential university students across six very remote communities in the Northern Territory. Capacity within communities, a long-term commitment and vision, and culturally responsive approaches such as both-ways STEM education are identified as central to increasing remote Indigenous community engagement with tertiary-level STEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boarding schools have been increasingly championed in strategies to move closer to educational equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. However, there is a significant lack of research and evidence on the implications of the boarding environment for Aboriginal students, families and communities. This paper presents a study of an Aboriginal residential program in South Australia. Semi-structured and narrative interviews with 55 participants (including residence staff, family, and past students) reveal the centrality of rules and relationships within this setting. Consideration of these themes from a Critical Race Theory perspective provides a sociocultural basis to analyse the implications of race, racism and power. In doing so, the underlying implications of the boarding model that should be acknowledged, explored and applied in this setting are identified. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis presented in this paper is an evaluation of the specific tagged 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander' content as described in course Content Descriptions and Elaborations in each of the first four ACARA curriculum documents. The analysis is in three forms: 1) a multilayered cultural analysis based on work by Grant and Yunkaporta; 2) an analysis based on Bloom's revised taxonomy of the cognitive expectations of student learning embedded; and 3) an analysis of the learning opportunities provided to students across a range of significant socio-political issues. The findings of this initial analysis raises serious questions about ACARA's assertion that they intend to provide all students with the opportunities to develop a deep understanding of the histories and cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The paper argues that there appears to be a clear lack of or intention, on ACARA's part to engage fully with the potential of the Australian Curriculum to integrate high-quality learning around the histories and cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an action research study that investigated the integration of Aboriginal and Western science knowledges and languages into science learning for Aboriginal adolescent students in one regional independent secondary school in Queensland. To strengthen the students' learning, the study drew on community members' local knowledge and language of fauna and integrated this understanding with the teaching of science to 12 students in Years 8-9. As part of the study, 75 lessons were conducted and included an initial short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) study and a collection of local animal narratives. It applied thematic analysis to data to explore the effect of this integrated approach on students' language use, pride in heritage, cultural knowledge, learning and the Linnaean zoology taxonomy. Results showed that to enable the flow of the science lessons, the average number of words spoken (103) at introduction times needed to remain low to facilitate engagement and to avoid embarrassment and an overwhelming factor when the teaching site is cluttered with words. The sensitive planning in terms of two-way Linnaean and local languages gave rise to meaningful contextualisation of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that genuine engagement and consultation is required where Indigenous voice is prevalent within the policy development process for true progress to be achieved in the educational attainments of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. It is important to note that there has been little critical analysis of policy discourses. More specifically, analysis of how language is used to maintain societal constructs. By providing an Indigenous standpoint, it is anticipated that this paper makes explicit to policymakers the bias and taken for granted assumptions held by those who produced it. This paper is derived from a larger project, namely my Masters of Education (Research) thesis (Hogarth, 2015). The major findings that emerged from the data included (a) the homogenous grouping of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, (b) the maintenance of the prevalent dominant ideology of a deficit view within policy and finally (c) the expectation of government of increased engagement and connections with and by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in education without consideration of the detrimental effects of past policies and reforms. The potential implications of making explicit how language positions Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ educational attainment can inform future policymaking and contribute to the struggle for self-determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the challenges in researching the education of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australian schools. It discusses how expanding range of information and communication technologies (ICT) into schools over many years has not fundamentally changed the ways schools operate in the country.

It may be argued that the emerging discourses focusing on the social, emotional, educational, and economic disadvantages identified for Australia’s First Peoples (when compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts) are becoming increasingly dissociated with an understanding of the interplay between historical and current trends in racism. Additionally, and if not somewhat related to this critique, it can be suggested that the very construction of research from a Western perspective of Indigenous identity (as opposed to identities) and ways of being are deeply entwined within the undertones of epistemological racism still prevalent today. It is the purpose of this article to move beyond the overreliance of outside-based understanding Western epistemologies, and to explore not only the complex nature of both racism and identity from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, but to also explore the role of education and research in perpetuating varying levels of racism and resistance to Indigenous identity(ies) from a contemporary insider-based standpoint. It is hoped this article will shed some light on the pervasive nature of racism directed at Indigenous Australians, and highlight the need for the continual acceptance, respect, and promotion of Indigenous voices and identities within the educational environment and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Australian early years education, consultation and partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are central to embedding Indigenous perspectives. Building sustained and reciprocal partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people supports access to local knowledges and perspectives to inform curriculum planning, as well as protocols and community processes, and contemporary responses to colonisation. Drawing on data from a doctoral study about embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in early childhood education curricula, this paper examines interactional patterns in consultations between non-Indigenous early childhood educators and Indigenous people in real and supposed form. Data is read through whiteness studies literature and related critiques to identify how the educators positioned Indigenous people in interactional patterns and how the mobilisation of colonial discourses impacted the potential for reciprocity and sustained partnerships, despite the best of intentions. Colonial traces of positioning Indigenous people as informants, targeted resources or knowledge commissioners were shown to be most salient in interactional patterns. While these findings are contextualised within Australia, I suggest they have applicability in examining approaches to embedding Indigenous perspectives in education curricula in other colonising contexts such as Canada and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will discuss some of the findings from a qualitative research project that explored the connections between alternative education and Indigenous learners. This study investigated how flexi school leaders reported they were supporting Indigenous young people to remain engaged in education. The results of the survey provide demographic data focusing on Indigenous participation in this sample of flexi schools. The results revealed that a high number of Indigenous young people are participating in flexi schools within this sample. Furthermore, a high number of Indigenous staff members are working in multiple roles within these schools. The implications of these findings are twofold. First, the current Indigenous education policy environment is focused heavily on ‘Closing the Gap’, emphasising the urgent need for significant improvement of educational outcomes for Indigenous young people. The findings from this study propose that flexi schools are playing a significant role in supporting Indigenous young people to remain engaged in education, yet there remains a limited focus on this within the literature and education policy. Second, the high participation rates of Indigenous young people and staff suggest an urgent need to explore this context through research. Further research will assist in understanding the culture of the flexi school context. Research should also explore why a high number of Indigenous young people and staff members participate in this educational context and how this could influence the approach to engagement of Indigenous young people in conventional school settings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1973 the Aboriginal Task Force was formed in the South Australian Institute of Technology to provide Indigenous South Australian welfare workers with qualifications commensurate with the duties they were already performing in the workforce. It was so successful that the program quickly expanded into a national Aboriginal-focused tertiary education facility that was the forerunner of the University of South Australia's David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research (DUCIER) and the model for other Australian university Indigenous centres. To commemorate DUCIER's twenty-first anniversary and the fortieth anniversary of the Task Force, in 2013 a team of DUCIER academics began researching this history in order to showcase the outstanding achievements of the alumni and staff of the Task Force. Central to the research is the collection of oral histories from participants. These are being recorded through either (or both) audio and video media, with segments being used in an exhibition. Oral history is considered imperative to the project because a history taken solely from the scant archival records will not reflect the processes involved in the program's development, nor the impact of the Task Force on the lives of those who contributed to the program and benefited from it. These issues are discussed in relation to the first years of the Task Force program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together recent statistics relating to the participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education. A number of key statistical realities relating to their enrolment into, retention during, and completion of, their university courses are depicted. Foremost among these realities is that despite initiatives over recent years to redress their under-representation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students' participation in higher education remains significantly below the population parity rate. This paper also warns about the need to exercise care about definitions, sources, measurement, collection, interpretation and analysis of data in the higher education field relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It concludes that successful transitions to university involve not just success in enrolling more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, but in improving their retention and completion rates, and moreover, the qualities of their engagements and experiences in university life during their journey through higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Early Childhood is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The clinical placement environment can be challenging for many students, and for students enrolled in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Indigenous Health (SNMIH) subject NRS194, Indigenous Cultures, Health and Nursing, being placed in an Aboriginal facility can be daunting and increase anxiety within a cohort. A pilot project within the SNMIH for NRS194 sought to engage the local Aboriginal Health Service through Aboriginal staff and utilising the skills, knowledge and expertise of the Aboriginal Health workers as a conduit to the community. The cross cultural engagement within the SNMIH and the community has meant the cohorts of discipline-specific programs are being exposed to a breadth and depth of diversity within the Australian Health context, with a specific focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their communities. This Practice Report discusses the core elements of this first year placement initiative and the outcomes from the academic lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on topics related to aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, indigenous people in Australia, including the promotion of their health, their participation in education, and their employment.

Drawing on the largest Australian collection and analysis of empirical data on multiple facets of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education in state schools to date, this article critically analyses the systemic push for standardized testing and improved scores, and argues for a greater balance of assessment types by providing alternative, inclusive, participatory approaches to student assessment. The evidence for this article derives from a major evaluation of the Stronger Smarter Learning Communities. The first large-scale picture of what is occurring in classroom assessment and pedagogy for Indigenous students is reported in this evaluation yet the focus in this article remains on the issue of fairness in student assessment. The argument presented calls for 'a good balance between formative and summative assessment' (OECD, Synergies for Better Learning An International Perspective on Evaluation and Assessment, Pointers for Policy Development, ) at a time of unrelenting high-stakes, standardized testing in Australia with a dominance of secondary as opposed to primary uses of NAPLAN data by systems, schools and principals. A case for more 'intelligent accountability in education' (O'Neill, Oxford Review of Education 39(1):4-16, ) together with a framework for analyzing efforts toward social justice in education (Cazden, International Journal of Educational Psychology 1(3):178-198, ) and fairer assessment make the case for more alternative assessment practices in recognition of the need for teachers' pedagogic practice to cater for increased diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this new era in tertiary education in Australia, the opportunity exists not only to meet the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and thus redress low access and participation rates, but also to build a system that privileges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and ways of learning. To be able to do such a thing would require a shared vision and approach from within the institution and across the academy. In Australia, there is one tertiary education provider with the experience and expertise to be able to develop such an approach – Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE). BIITE has been engaged in the post-secondary education of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for over 40 years, evolving from a small vocational programme to become a dual sector provider with over 2700 students from across Australia (BIITE, 2011, p. 21). BIITE's philosophy of adult education is that of both-ways, which has been built from knowledge shared by Aboriginal peoples in the Northern Territory. The methodology presented in this paper extends the both-ways philosophy into a generative framework that has applicability in the many different contexts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tertiary education in Australia. It is our intention to generate a broader discussion about this opportunity in tertiary education and shift the discourse from inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to recognising the knowledges and ways of learning of the first peoples of this land as a strong foundation for the entire nation's learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The School of Education underwent a reaccreditation of the Bachelor of Teaching and Learning (Pre-service) in 2012, and the Head of School sought facilitation grant funds from the Charles Darwin University Office of Teaching and Learning to ensure the course was effectively incorporating Indigenous knowledge. This paper explores the embedding or increasing of Indigenous knowledge content in teacher education with particular focus on building anIncorporating Indigenous KnowledgeLibGuide with library staff, academics and indigenous students. The LibGuide design offers multimedia access to Indigenous knowledge, culture and languages for the needs of academic teaching staff, and pre-service education students in one convenient location. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2010, Libraries ACT created a number of community engagement specialisations to be implemented at the Librarian or Professional Officer Class 1 level. The specialisations spanned existing core library activities, target groups already the focus of library programming, lifelong learning, and specific groups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This paper describes the specialisations initiative from first implementation through a review to implementation of a modified approach. It focuses primarily on engagement with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities resulting from both implementations. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protocols for library archives and information services (‘the ATSILIRN Protocols’ or ‘the Protocols’) have become a key tool to planning that engagement, although ideas for engagement and participation are increasingly being generated by community members themselves. The use of the Protocols is discussed and the relevance of cultural competence in libraries is introduced. The specialisation initiative, and related engagement activities, may provide the basis of formal study, which could address the transferability of the tentative findings of this overview or explore the development of cultural competence through engagement activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For quite some time the achievements of students in remote Australian schools have been lamented. There is not necessarily anything new about the relative difference between the results of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote communities and their counterparts in urban, regional and rural schools across Australia. However, in the last decade a number of changes in the education system have led to the difference being highlighted — to such an extent that what had been an ‘othering’ of remote students (and their families) has turned into marginalisation that is described in terms of disadvantage, deficit and failure. One of the primary instruments used to reinforce this discourse has been the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) testing. This instrument has also been used as part of the justification for a policy response that sees governments attempting to close the educational gap, sometimes through punitive measures, and sometimes with incentives. At a strategic level, this is reflected in a focus on attendance, responding to the perceived disadvantage, and demanding higher standards of performance (of students, teachers and schools more generally). Accountability has resulted in lots of counting in education — counts of attendance, enrolments, dollars spent and test scores. These measures lead one to conclude that remote education is failing, that teachers need to improve their professional standards and that students need to perform better. But in the process, have we who are part of the system lost sight of the need to make education count? And if it is to count, what should it count for in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities? These are questions that the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation is attempting to find answers to as part of its Remote Education Systems project. This article questions the assumptions behind the policy responses using publicly available NAPLAN data from very remote schools. It argues that the assumptions about what works in schools generally do not work in very remote schools with high proportions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. It therefore questions whether we in the system are counting the right things (for example attendance, enrolments and measures of disadvantage). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent debates in Australia, largely led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island academics over the past 5 or so years, have focused on the need for non-Indigenous educators to understand how their practices not only demonstrate lack of understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, but even deny their presence. This debate has serious implications for the non-Indigenous remote educator who wishes to support remote students to achieve ‘success’ through their education. The debates on the one hand advocate the decolonising of knowledge, pedagogy and research methods in order to promote more just or equal approaches to research and education, while other voices continue to advocate the pursuit of mainstream dominant Western ‘outcomes’ as the preferred goal for Indigenous students across Australia. This dilemma frames the context for this study. The Remote Education Systems Project, in the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation, seeks to explore these and other questions as part of the broader research agenda being undertaken. This project is particularly focused on large-scale questions such as: ‘What is a remote education for and what would ‘success’ look like in the remote education context?’ We are approaching these research questions from community standpoints and perspectives as a critical starting point for these types of debates and discussions. In doing so, our findings indicate that remote Aboriginal community members have a strong sense of western education and its power to equip young people with critical skills, knowledge and understandings for the future, but also a strong sense of retaining of their ‘own’ knowledge, skills and understanding. This presents a complex challenge for educators who are new to this knowledge interface. Here, we offer the concept of ‘Red Dirt Thinking’ as a new way to position ourselves and engage in situated dialogue about what remote schooling might be if it took into account power issues around Indigenous knowledges in the current policy context. This article questions whether remote communities, schools and systems have, in fact, taken account of the knowledge/power debates that have taken place at an academic level and considers how remote education might consider the implications of stepping outside the ‘Western–Indigenous binary’. It seeks to propose new paradigms that non-Indigenous educators may need to engage in order to de-limit the repositioning of power-laden knowledge and pedagogies offered in remote classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When people talk about education of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, the language used is often replete with messages of failure and deficit, of disparity and problems. This language is reflected in statistics that on the surface seem unambiguous in their demonstration of poor outcomes for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. A range of data support this view, including the National Action Plan—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) achievement data, school attendance data, Australian Bureau of Statistics Census data and other compilations such as the Productivity Commission's biennial Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report. These data, briefly summarised in this article, paint a bleak picture of the state of education in remote Australia and are at least in part responsible for a number of government initiatives (state, territory and Commonwealth) designed to ‘close the gap’. For all the programs, policies and initiatives designed to address disadvantage, the results seem to suggest that the progress, as measured in the data, is too slow to make any significant difference to the apparent difference between remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools and those in the broader community. We are left with a discourse that is replete with illustrations of poor outcomes and failures and does little to acknowledge the richness, diversity and achievement of those living in remote Australia. The purpose of this article is to challenge the ideas of ‘disadvantage’ and ‘advantage’ as they are constructed in policy and consequently reported in data. It proposes alternative ways of thinking about remote educational disadvantage, based on a reading of relevant literature and the early observations of the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation's Remote Education Systems project. It is a formative work, designed to promote and frame a deeper discussion with remote education stakeholders. It asks how relative advantage might be defined if the ontologies, axiologies, epistemologies and cosmologies of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families were more fully taken into account in the education system's discourse within/of remote schooling. Based on what we have termed ‘red dirt thinking’ it goes on to ask if and what alternative measures of success could be applied in remote contexts where ways of knowing, being, doing, believing and valuing often differ considerably from what the educational system imposes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers strategies for including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island perspectives in the classroom. It begins by discussing why this is important and how it might be achieved. It concludes with identifying useful resources and some strategies to begin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of adopting the Literacy Learning Partnerships in an action learning project for classroom lessons to enhance the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education.

INTRODUCTION: Although the family day care workforce has changed over the past decade in response to evolving childcare regulations and accreditation requirements, there is little research on family day care educators in Australia. The aim of this study was to describe characteristics of Australian family day care educators, including their qualifications, professional training, characteristics of the children they care for, and connections to their family day care scheme and community organisations. METHODS: Secondary data analysis was conducted using cross-sectional data from WaveTwo of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) Birth Cohort. Data from family day care (FDC) educators were extracted from the mail-out Home-Based Carer (HBC) survey completed by 207 FDC educators (56% response rate). Descriptive statistics were used to profile demographics and qualifications of FDC educators, their scheme and community connections, and the characteristics of children in their care. RESULTS: More than half of the FDC educators did not have qualifications specific to early childhood; 28 per cent of educators were currently studying in the area; and a quarter were qualified. One-third of educators were caring for at least one child with a disability or developmental delay, 27 per cent were looking after children from non-English speaking backgrounds, and 16 per cent were looking after children from Aboriginal orTorres Strait Islander backgrounds. Most FDC educators reported a high level of connection with their coordinating scheme (89%) but that assistance from other organisations such as schools, preschools or childcare centres was rare. DISCUSSION: The results from this study reflect the movement in FDC towards gaining formal qualifications. Given that many educators were caring for children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and had special needs, tailored support is needed to build their knowledge, skills and confidence to ensure inclusive care provision. Isolation of FDC educators from the wider community and other child- centred organisations highlights potential to develop connections outside of FDC to facilitate professional development and support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on understanding of challenges of cultural diversity in classrooms in Australia. Topics discussed include Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report on language spoken by Australians other than English at home, Australian Curriculum that acknowledges Australia's broad cultural diversity and needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education addressed by the Australian Curriculum.

Focuses on the Positive Links between Universities and Schools Project for Indigenous Australians. Background information on the language and literacy education of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; Integration of information technology and indigeneity; Factors affecting Aboriginal and Islander education.

This paper describes an investigation of conceptions of learning held by 22 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from three universities in Queensland, Australia. Other areas investigated were students' experiences of informal learning, their reasons for studying and the strategies they used to learn. Research into conceptions of learning is gaining impetus and current beliefs include the premise that approaches to learning adopted by university students, and hence learning outcomes, are closely related to their conceptions of learning. There is substantial research focused on Aboriginal learning styles in early childhood and primary school which indicates that Aboriginal children prefer to learn in a practical way as well as through observation and imitation and trial and error. Very little research has focused specifically on Aboriginal university students' conceptions of learning. Results of this study found that these students view and approach formal university learning in much the same way as other university students and most hold quantitative conceptions of learning. The most interesting result was the difference between students' conceptions of formal learning and their experiences of informal learning. Many students' experiences of informal learning were grounded in practical activities or exhibited a cultural focus, however, most formal learning is not dependent upon practical or cultural knowledge. It is proposed that formal learning for Indigenous students recognise and include an Indigenous perspective such as integrating, where appropriate, practical strategies for learning. We also suggest that Indigenous students be helped to develop conceptions that will enable them to learn formal, theoretical material successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on issues relating to the Torres Strait Islander education. Questions concerning a Western curriculum, language learning and bilingualism; Role of Islander experiences in the development of educational models.