What is the state of play in Indigenous education today? What kind of thinking is driving the reform agenda in Indigenous education right now? What kinds of gains have we made and what work is there yet to do? In an era of unprecedented ‘gap’ talk, these are pressing questions, which the articles in this issue address and explore.

There is often a disparity in Indigenous Affairs between many documents, such as policies, reports and legislation, and outcomes. This article explores this difference through analysing the policy area of Indigenous education during the period of 1991 to 2000. I examine three key documents relating to Indigenous education. These are the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act (Cth) and the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. I then analyse the abysmal outcomes of Indigenous education over this period, including educational access, educational attainment, school attendance and reading benchmarks. I argue that the substantial educational disadvantage experienced by Indigenous people is in stark contrast to the goals, policies and objectives contained in the numerous documents on Indigenous education. I then explore the role of governments in contributing to this disparity between documents and outcomes in Indigenous education, including their failure to acknowledge the history of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations, their lack of commitment to address Indigenous educational disadvantage, their failure to recognise self-determination and the lack of cooperation between governments to address Indigenous educational disadvantage.

It is the aim of this article to provoke debate and encourage greater scrutiny regarding the use and meaning of the expression ‘Indigenous education’ within the discursive practices, research and policy in Australian education. Drawing on Hall's (2007) development of ideas from Foucault that give rise to ‘Indigenous education’ being viewed as a ‘regime of truth’, it is my contention that the widespread and largely uncritical use of this expression is contributing to sustaining deficit assumptions regarding the engagement and outcomes of Indigenous students within Australian schools. To explore this concern, I will first ‘archaeologically’ excavate (Scheurich, 1997) the emergence of this ‘regime’ within the Australian setting. Following on from this, I will discuss and reflect upon recent debates associated with initiatives designed to ‘close the gap’ when comparing Indigenous and non-Indigenous student achievements in education. Given the changes inaugurated by the Labor-led ‘Education Revolution’ since 2007, this is a particularly pertinent line of inquiry to take up, with the focus of this article largely concerned with its impact in the Queensland setting.

This article examines a controversial initiative in Indigenous education: the establishment of the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy (CYAAA). The article provides a brief description of the Academy's three campuses and their communities and considers: the circumstances of its creation, including the role of Noel Pearson and Cape York Partnerships; the rationale and philosophy underpinning the case for establishing the Academy; implementation; and some key issues relevant to assessing this reform. These include its impact on a range of performance measures, the veracity and power of the social and educational rationales on which the reform is based, the use of ‘Direct Instruction’ (DI), and the practicability of extending and broadening the reform. The time period considered is from late 2009 through 2011. The article draws on publications, and on visits to campuses of the school and meetings/communications/discussions with personnel from the Queensland Department of Education and Training (DET, now Department of Education, Training and Employment), Cape York Partnerships, the CYAAA and others undertaken in the author's role as a teacher union officer.

This article explores student and teacher engagement with Australian Indigenous Studies. In this article I identify key themes in the film September (2007) that demonstrate how the film can be used as a catalyst for student learning and discussion. Critical whiteness theory provides a framework to explore three themes, the invisibility of whiteness, the reachability of whiteness and the cultural interface. Critical whiteness theory identifies the way in which non-Indigenous people centralise and normalise whiteness within colonised societies, and particularly considers how white privilege is maintained. Interpreting the film September through the lens of critical whiteness theory contributes to translating curriculum and social justice aims of education into action.

State and Federal education departments have increasingly recognised the importance of community consultation in the development of school curricula, and the requirement for teachers to consult with Indigenous communities is explicit in many curriculum documents. This article reports the findings of research into how teachers of senior Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies are engaging with consultation as part of their work. As Australia moves towards full implementation of a national curriculum that requires the embedding of Indigenous perspectives across all subjects, an understanding of how teachers are currently experiencing community consultation is particularly important.

This article focuses on the funds of knowledge that are mathematical in nature and how they might be used to support parents and children with their learning of mathematics that is taught and learned in the early years of school. Funds of knowledges are those that have been historically and culturally accumulated into a body of knowledge and skills essential for people's functioning and wellbeing. Drawing on community research design, where the process of learning is owned and framed by the community and its people, a consultative meeting was held to discuss the pilot project.

This project has been developed on Darug country, Sydney to examine how pre-service and beginning teachers can work with Aboriginal people in their local urban community. These teachers often want to know how to approach an Aboriginal ‘community’, how they can ask Aboriginal people for information in order to include it in their teaching, and how to adopt respectful ways of talking when they contact a community member. While these questions are commonly addressed in the Working with Community documents published by the various state Departments of Education, we found that the actual practice of working with a community is daunting for many. This article therefore attempts to document two examples of this practice, and in so doing it applies the protocols identified by Martin (2008) to the reflective work of both a pre-service teacher and a university educator. It also draws on the extensive literature of reflective practice developed for classrooms, and applies this to pedagogical practice outside schools.

This article describes an intervention strategy, initiated under the New Zealand Government's tribal partnership scheme, which promotes a culture-based/place-based approach to education in mainstream schools and early childhood centres in one tribal region. Through place-based education children are immersed in local heritage, including language and culture, landscapes, opportunities and experiences. The strategy is a tribal response to the overwhelming evidence of Māori underachievement in education in the tribal catchment. A case study is presented of a place-based/culture-based initiative called the Ngāti Kahungunu Cultural Standards Project (NKCSP). It is argued that the development of cultural standards offers an opportunity by which teachers and others within the education sector can develop and incorporate practice that reflects, promotes and values the student's culture. The core assumption underpinning the project is that cultural knowledge contributes to Māori student success in education.

In 2008, almost 40% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students enrolled in the Graduate Diploma in Indigenous Health Promotion at The University of Sydney failed to complete the course. Although this was not considered unusual when compared to previous years, the decision was made to investigate why so many students struggled to meet the expectations of a course that was pedagogically progressive, culturally affirming, taught by highly regarded academics and strongly supported by the university and its stakeholders. A qualitative study using in-depth semi-structured interviews was conducted, and many complex and interrelated issues were explored. One issue that was raised both unexpectedly and emphatically by almost half the study participants who completed the course was the unintentional stifling of individual student effort and achievement through the development of co-dependent relationships between academic staff and students. This article presents the data relevant to this particular issue, reflects on the findings, and outlines some of the strategies implemented since this study commenced that have contributed to a healthy completion rate of 98% over the past 3 years.

This research aims to create and evaluate a model for a culturally appropriate, interactive, multimedia and informative health program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers that aims to improve the capacity to independently control their learning within an attractive learning environment. The research also aims to provide recommendations for policy development and further research. This study involved four phases: program needs assessment, identification of the key factors that should be considered in developing the CD-ROM, model development, and formative evaluation for the model. A general needs assessment as a first step in program development highlighted the presence of continuing education gaps and indicated the need for a new means to deliver a sustainable, efficient and culturally acceptable program. This article explores the second objective in this study, which is the identification of the key factors considered for developing the program. The identification began with a systematic review of the literature which served as background information, followed by qualitative semistructured interviews with diverse key stakeholders to explore their expectations and recommendations. The findings indicated that the most important key factors could be categorised under four main categories: cultural factors, information technology availability and literacy, learning aspects, and interactive multimedia factors. Cultural factors included cultural inclusivity, oral cultural, pre-existing knowledge, and Aboriginal preferred learning styles. Information technology factors concerned technology availability and literacy. Learning aspects highlighted the impact of the learning theory in model design. Interactive multimedia development factors explored included the requirements for the process, fitting and design of the program. Recommendations for program design were also provided.

This article documents the establishment of the Indigenous Specializations program in the School of Social Work at the University of Victoria. In the absence of funding for Indigenous programs, First Nations professors Robina Thomas and Jacquie Green developed the Indigenous Specializations program ‘off the side of their desk’. This article describes the process of creating a culturally specific program for Indigenous students in a mainstream university. Many of the challenges depicted in the article are ongoing, alongside various successes and victories for Indigenous graduates.

Since 2001 there has been an increase in migration patterns by Indigenous families from remote communities to urban and semi-rural locations. Indigenous student emigration from remote Indigenous schools to urban and semi-rural schools is an emerging crisis as there are routinely inadequate service providers for Indigenous émigrés. Migration away from a particular location from which a person's ancestors, kin and Dreamings come (henceforward named as Country) to semi-rural and urban locations raises many complex issues. This article outlines Aboriginal Community Education Officers’ (ACEOs) role as support workers for Indigenous students who utilise an Indigenous ethics of care framework as a support mechanism to aid the transition of Indigenous students into new schools. The article draws on research undertaken between 2000–2008 (MacGill, 2008) in conjunction with current literature in the field (Pearce, 2012) to highlight ACEOs’ border work and ethics of care practices necessary for successful Indigenous student transitions as émigrés.

High turnover of teachers in remote Indigenous community schools in the Northern Territory has long been considered a significant contributing factor to low academic outcomes for students in those communities. The average length of stay for a non-Indigenous teacher in a remote school can more easily be measured in months than years. This instability in staffing is largely responsible for the instability experienced by many students in these schools. This ‘Come and Go’ syndrome holds true for non-Indigenous staff; however, the opposite can often be said of Indigenous staff. Indigenous staff in these schools tend to be the ‘Stay and Stay and Stay’ teachers. They have often worked in their local community school for decades and have seen literally hundreds of non-Indigenous teachers ‘Come and Go’. They have been the ones to provide a semblance of stability and some level of program sustainability in education for the children of their own communities. While there is some qualitative data on the things that improve retention of non-Indigenous teachers in rural and remote schools, it mostly looks at the training and skills development that can be applied to the situation. No one has really ever asked Indigenous teachers for their observations or opinions about what makes teachers stay and what makes them go. This article will draw on conversations from two focus groups of Indigenous teachers from remote schools in Central Australia who were invited to discuss just this question.

The current study considers grade repetition rates in the early years of school, Preparatory (Prep) to Year 3, in Queensland state schools, of which there is a significant gap in the Australian research literature. Data accessed from the Queensland Government's Department of Education and Training (DET), shows that particular groups of students are more at risk of being repeated in the preschool/Prep year. These groups include boys and until recently, non-Indigenous students. However, the most recent data collected in 2009 shows that Indigenous students are more at risk of being repeated in all early years of schooling. As grade repetition has been shown to have limited value, it remains a concern that this intervention practice continues to be offered to students, and in particular Indigenous students, who may already be educationally disadvantaged. While grade repetition rates are low in Queensland state schools, the possible negative academic, social and emotional consequences for students who are repeated warrants serious re-evaluation of this long-term, early intervention practice in Australian schools.

This article explores second year pre-service teachers’ ability to work with Indigenous students and their families during a small-scale project conducted in an Indigenous community. Supported field placements offered the pre-service teachers valuable opportunities to engage with the teaching of reading to Indigenous students ‘on their turf’. Given the high likelihood that pre-service teachers will be employed in schools with Indigenous populations, it is important that they develop an understanding of the reading process, the factors that impact on learning how to read, as well as cross-cultural aspects that affect the learning process. Pre-service teachers need to develop understanding of the factors that impact on the literacy development of students and how to engage them in culturally responsive pedagogical practices that focus on the positive aspects of the learner. Following the field placement, analysis of the data demonstrated that pre-service teachers were able to engage with the reading process through the use of running records, and develop field knowledge through understanding the impact of relationships on the learning environment. This information can be used by others to support field placements in Indigenous communities.

The San are Southern Africa's first indigenous peoples. They can be found in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. The San peoples in Botswana still face discrimination, especially in the education sector, as their indigenous literacy and way of life are largely ignored. Their languages are not part of the school curriculum in Botswana and it is English (the official language) and Setswana (the national language) that are taught in schools. In theory, this should not be the case. This highly disadvantages San children as they underperform and drop out of school. Hence, very few have made it to the University of Botswana and the Colleges of Education. In order for Botswana to reach its aim of an educated and informed nation by 2016, San peoples need to be catered for in the education system of Botswana. This article is an integrative review about the San of Botswana and (1) explains what has been studied about the San with regard to their indigenous ways of knowing and reading the world; (2) gives a clear picture of their formal schooling experiences; and, (3) provides an overview of their English and Setswana language acquisition.

Vocational Education and Training (VET) in high schools has had positive effects on the retention of Indigenous students, providing important pathways into further education and the workforce. However, low-level literacy (and numeracy) skills can make successful completion difficult, especially for students who speak Standard Australian English as an additional language or dialect. This article describes research undertaken to inform the development of a second language and literacy needs analysis model designed for high school VET teachers to address the needs of Indigenous students. The study draws on second language acquisition research, which demonstrates the value of using tasks as the basis for language teaching syllabus design, with needs analysis as a fundamental aspect of this. The project centred on Aboriginal high school VET students from remote and rural communities in Western Australia, who speak English as an additional language/dialect. Data collected included: individual and focus group interviews, training materials, and observation field notes on the language and literacy practices in classrooms and workplaces. The major findings focus on the development of oral language (for both job-oriented and social interactions in the workplace) and literacy skills, as well as the need to overcome ‘shame’ and develop confidence for speaking to non-Aboriginal people.