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Improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Australian students is a key strategy to helping Indigenous people reach their full potential. This has resulted in well-intentioned efforts by Australian educators and governments to ensure Indigenous children have positive school experiences. However, Indigenous students still lag behind their non-Indigenous counterparts in educational outcomes. This is particularly so for Indigenous students living in rural and remote parts of Australia where educational opportunities are limited, especially in high school. One solution to this problem has been to enrol these students in boarding schools in urban and metropolitan centres. While research on the success of boarding schools for Indigenous students is scarce, what little that does exist is not encouraging. The focus of this research was to examine the effects of boarding for Indigenous (n = 11) and non-Indigenous students’ (n = 158) wellbeing (N = 1423) in two large private boys’ schools. Participating students aged 12–18 years old completed a survey measuring wellbeing constructs on two occasions, 12 months apart. Non-Indigenous boys were generally higher in wellbeing compared with Indigenous boys. There was also evidence of improved social wellbeing beyond that of non-Indigenous boarders over time. Overall, while evidence of merit was weak, boarding schools may benefit their Indigenous students’ development in social wellbeing.

We investigated how satisfaction of the basic psychological needs at work was associated with the psychological and physical wellbeing of Indigenous and non-Indigenous employees both within and outside of the workplace. Participants included 1,146 Indigenous ( n = 559) and non-Indigenous Australians (60.9% female), aged 18 to 81 years ( Mage = 43.54) who were recruited through their employer or online advertisements. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data, and Indigenous status and occupation type were investigated as moderators. Results revealed that independent of income, autonomy satisfaction was related to better physical and psychological health, satisfaction of the need for relatedness was associated with increased family and community thriving, and competence satisfaction was linked to decreased psychological distress. Results also showed that autonomy, competence, and relatedness need satisfaction was lower among Indigenous employees compared to non-Indigenous employees. Moderation analyses suggested that relatedness at work was especially important for non-Indigenous employees’ connection with their community, as were high levels of competence satisfaction for Indigenous employees. These findings are discussed in the context of self-determination theory and the implications for organizations wanting to improve the wellbeing of their Indigenous and non-Indigenous workforce.

Self-determination theory (SDT) posits universality without cross-cultural uniformity of the three basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) which have been associated with desirable job outcomes. Yet these promising directions in theory and research have not been extended to Indigenous samples and different occupational types. This is unfortunate as Indigenous peoples globally remain the most disadvantaged on all socio-economic indicators, including employment. This study adopted a strengths-based approach to investigating associations between SDT’s need satisfaction and job outcomes in Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous professionals and non-professionals. Participants included 1,146 Indigenous (48.8%) and non-Indigenous Australians (39.1% men), aged 18 to 81 years ( Mage = 43.54). Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that autonomy and competence need satisfaction were associated with multiple positive work outcomes and less job ambiguity, whereas satisfaction of the need for relatedness was associated with increased job satisfaction and greater resilience in the workplace. Moderation by Indigenous status and occupation type revealed few differences in the direction and strength of the associations between need satisfaction and job outcomes. However, non-professionals reported significantly lower satisfaction of all three needs, and Indigenous participants reported significantly lower levels of autonomy need satisfaction. As need satisfaction was shown to be equally beneficial for all workers regardless of culture or occupation type, these findings highlight the need for employers to invest more in cultivating the need satisfaction of their Indigenous and non-professional staff. Overall, the results extend upon previous research by demonstrating that SDT is generalizable to an Australian Indigenous population and that workplace need satisfaction is important for Indigenous and non-professional employee outcomes.

This investigation reports on the cross-cultural equivalence testing of the Self-Description Questionnaire II (short version; SDQII-S) for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian secondary student samples. A variety of statistical analysis techniques were employed to assess the psychometric properties of the SDQII-S for both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. In addition, an analysis was conducted to determine whether the latent means of the self-concepts differed significantly between Indigenous and non-Indigenous male and female students. The results demonstrated that the SDQII-S held strong psychometric properties across the Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian students. Furthermore, the analyses indicated that there were significant differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students for 7 of the 13 self-concept facets. Although some question could be raised as to the practical nature of these differences, the measurement equivalence of the SDQII-S for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students may allow researchers to more confidently understand the nature of varying dimensions of self-confidence for minority students from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds.