Health professionals must understand Indigenous perspectives to deliver effective health services. This study set out to determine the amount, type and effectiveness of current Indigenous content in an occupational therapy curriculum at an Australian regional university and the progress in meeting the National Aboriginal Health Strategy (NAHS) minimum standards for Indigenous content for Australian Universities. Twenty-one academic staff teaching at an Australian University were surveyed with five follow-up interviews. Findings suggest that while educators saw the importance of Indigenous cultural content, they lacked confidence in delivering this content. The need for a strategic and planned approach to embedding Indigenous content throughout the curriculum was identified. Future research evaluating the effectiveness of cultural competency initiatives is suggested.

Many teachers involved in school education of Aboriginal children have, for a variety of complex reasons, found it difficult to design programs that begin with the things children know and move to those things that children have to learn. All too frequently school education offered to Aboriginal children has been conceived in Western terms and delivered in our language. Programs designed for children from mainstream Australia have simply been transposed with minimal adaptation into Aboriginal schools. In many curriculum areas the results have not been exciting. In the area of mathematics they have been dismal if not disastrous (see Williams, 1979). The introduction of bilingual education into many of the remote traditionally oriented communities of the Northern Territory has made it possible for educators to re-examine the assumptions on which many of our mathematics offerings have been based. This paper outlines some of the initiatives that have been taken in the Northern Territory to enable children to formally organise and classify local Aboriginal mathematical knowledge as well as begin to acquire some ideas related to the Western view of the world and so provide more meaningful introductory mathematics programs for Aboriginal children.

Shame is a ‘slippery’ concept in educational contexts but by listening to Aboriginal philosophy and Country, we can rethink its slipperiness. This article contemplates how multiple understandings of shame are derived from and coexist within colonised educational contexts. We focus on one positive example of Indigenous education to consider how these understandings can be challenged and transformed for the benefit of Indigenous learners. We discuss a mentoring program run by and for Indigenous young people that is successfully impacting school retention and completion rates: The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME). AIME has a rule, ‘No Shame at AIME’, with the view to minimising shame as a barrier to engaging with Western education. But is this as beneficial as might first appear? Might this erode important cultural understandings of shame necessary in Indigenous education? Instead, could shame be repositioned to better align with original cultural meanings and purposes? We philosophise about the AIME rule with Yuin Country and stories from Country along with our observational and interview data. We argue AIME does not so much ‘remove’ shame as reposition it to better align with Aboriginal cultural educational practice, which positively impacts mentees.

The shift to massified higher education has resulted in surges in the recruitment of staff and students from more diverse backgrounds, without ensuring the necessary concomitant changes in institutional and pedagogical cultures. Providing a genuinely inclusive and ‘safer’ higher education experience in this context requires a paradigm shift in our approaches to learning and teaching in higher education. Creating safer spaces in classrooms is a necessary building block in the transformation and decolonisation of higher education cultures and the development of cultural competency for all staff and graduates. This paper outlines an approach to crafting safer spaces within the classroom, focusing on a case study of strategies for teaching and learning about race, racism and intersectionality employed by the authors in an undergraduate Indigenous Studies unit at an urban Australian university.

This paper outlines PhD research which suggests mobile learning fits the cultural philosophies and roles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who are preservice teachers in the very remote Australian communities where the research was conducted. The problem which the research addresses is the low completion rates for two community-based Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs in South Australia (SA) and Queensland (Qld). Over the past decade, the national completion rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in teacher training was 36 per cent, and in these two community-based programs it was less than 15 per cent. This paper identifies the perceptions of the benefits of using mobile devices by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who are preservice teachers in very remote communities. They report ways in which mobile learning supports their complex roles and provides pragmatic positive outcomes for their tertiary study in remote locations. The paper describes the apparent alignment between mobile learning and cosmology, ontology, epistemology and axiology, which may underpin both the popularity of mobile devices and the affordances of mobile learning.

The English-based Creoles, which are spoken by a very large number of Aboriginal Australians, are so named because it is obvious that a large proportion of their lexicon is derived from English. This fact alone, however, does not indicate that they are merely regional varieties of English. They are distinct languages. Together with other world Creoles, they are at the frontier of linguistic research and the subject of considerable controversy. One critical forum of debate centres on the validity of Creoles as languages of education. It is the intention of the authors that this paper should achieve two things. Firstly, it is intended to contribute constructively to that debate. Secondly, it is intended to provide an overview of the present use of some creole languages in Australian schools.

This research begins with the premise that non-Aboriginal students are challenged by much Aboriginal writing and also challenge its representations as they struggle to re-position themselves in relation to possible meanings within Aboriginal writing. Many non-Aboriginal students come to read an Aboriginal narrative against their understanding of what it means to be an Aboriginal Australian, accumulated via their prior reading of Australian history, literature and more contemporary social analysis and popular commentary. Aboriginal writing is confronting when it disturbs the more familiar representations of Aboriginal experience and characterisation previously encountered. The aim of this paper is to provide a more informed basis from which to consider higher education pedagogy for this area of literary studies. A further aim is to contribute to the literary studies discourse on Aboriginal representation in Australian literature.

The focus of this paper is adult literacy, and the impact this has on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individual and community health. It directs attention to those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and adults who have not benefited from the formal school education system, and who, as a consequence, have very low levels of basic English language literacy. Analysing data from a range of sources, I suggest that these people comprise as much as 35% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adult population nationally, and a much bigger proportion in some communities and regions. Moreover, they are key to improving overall health outcomes in the population as a whole, because they are among the people most at risk. Drawing on research in countries of the global South over recent decades, the paper then suggests that one of the most effective ways to improve health outcomes and foster health development is through a popular mass adult literacy campaign. Popular education is not formal education, of the kind provided by schools, TAFEs and universities. It is “non-formal” education, provided on a mass scale, to people in marginalised and disadvantaged communities, as part of wider social and political movements for equality. The paper concludes that this is the most appropriate form of education to deal with the massive social and economic inequality at the heart of the social determinants of Indigenous health.

The concept of cultural competence is a multifaceted construct that requires careful consideration as it raises questions as to whose ‘truth’ is being advocated. This paper draws on findings from a qualitative study which used an indigenous methodology of yarning to investigate early childhood educators’ understandings and perspectives of cultural competence. Adopting a poststructuralist approach to grounded theory, data were analysed to identify themes that reflected educators’ understandings and perspectives. This paper presents a snapshot of these themes along with a framework of positioning self in relationship to ways of knowing, being and doing cultural competence. I conclude by suggesting that this framework can provide opportunity for educators to disrupt normalised discourses and re-conceptualise cultural competence.

This article reports on the findings of an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded research project, ‘Building the future for Indigenous students’, an investigation of the hopes and dreams for the future of over 1,000 secondary students, 733 of whom were Indigenous, living in very remote, remote, and urban locations in the Northern Territory. Using both quantitative and qualitative research tools, researchers sought to understand what motivated the students at school and how they studied — critical elements in successful school achievement. In this article, the analysis of Indigenous student responses to a series of questions in the qualitative component of the study is presented. The analysis concludes that urban and remote Indigenous school children provide similar responses to questions that probe: (1) the value of education/school/self, (2) learner future goals, (3) learner motivation, and (4) learning preferences. The study also finds that very remote Indigenous school children, while similar in some question responses to both groups, also show some important differences that raise questions for more research.

This article details reflections of an interdisciplinary team of educators working with groups of health sciences students in preparing them for working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The first-year common core unit discussed here is one attempt to equip future health practitioners with skills and knowledges to work adequately in this complex area. Processes of engagement, central to critical reflection and learning that is iterative and cyclical, are emphasised here using the authors’/educators’ experiences of teaching in the unit. Within this first-year unit, the content delivered — its underlying processes and principles, and assessment design using reflective journalling — coalesces into what is a valued unit of study in preparing students for practising in this field. While the content of the unit is political, provocative and powerful, which presents challenges for students and teaching staff alike, we maintain here that processes of critical reflection and action learning are central to its success and significantly contribute to enhancing students’ learning and to changing students’ perspectives.

This article describes the objectives and methodology of a doctoral research project (Manning, 2008). It then draws upon the key findings of that project to briefly describe how an envisioned critical pedagogy of place partnership model, involving nominated members of the Te Ātiawa iwi (tribe) and local history teachers, might enhance the quality of history teaching in the Port Nicholson Block area. This area is located in the Wellington district (south-western corner) of New Zealand's North Island. The discussion then explains, in more detail, why obstacles are likely to be encountered by any attempt by Te Ātiawa and/or the teacher participants to develop such a partnership model. Two related place-based metaphors help draw brief conclusions about how these obstacles relate to the New Zealand government's own (1989) principles for action on the Treaty of Waitangi and recount its obligations to uphold the Articles of the United Nations' (2007) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

We are Indigenous University lecturers involved in research with the Purga Elders and Descendants Aboriginal Corporation. Our research at Purga involves the instigation of Indigenous Knowledge as the basis of effective and valid research methodologies. This article will describe the work that the University of Queensland (UQ) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit is doing at Purga. It will then articulate the principles of Indigenous Knowledge Research that inform this work.

This article discusses the development, implementation and impact of a social development program developed by the Holyoake Institute in Western Australia for use in schools. The program DRUMBEAT uses hand drumming to engage young people in social learning that assists them in integrating more fully into mainstream school and community life. DRUMBEAT was developed in response to a range of issues that disadvantaged Indigenous youth experienced within the educational system and acted to reinforce entrenched social exclusion. Operational for five years, DRUMBEAT is currently being delivered in over 350 schools across Australia. Since its inception the program has undergone several evaluations. The most recent of these, and the subject of this report, was conducted by researchers at The University of Western Australia and relates to participants in the program during the 2008 school year. This study demonstrated that participants in the program improved their level of self-confidence, reduced their level of behavioural incidents and reduced their level of school absenteeism.

This paper explores Aboriginal perspectives of tertiary education “online” from rural and remote community locations in New South Wales. It does so within a frame of enquiry as to how neo-liberal educational policy reforms are impacting on equity issues in distance education “online”. Accounts from Aboriginal university students in health point to a range of tensions between changes brought about by the reform in relation to student subjectivity and university governance, and culturally preferred ways of learning for many Aboriginal people. The paper offers suggestions for how these forms of educational governance can be reconciled with educational support needs of remote Aboriginal learners.

Newly-graduated non-Indigenous teachers who go to remote Torres Strait and Cape York Peninsula (CYP) schools may experience a range of difficulties. This paper makes some observations about one of them: the difficulty of teaching students whose first language is not English and for whom English may well be only one of several languages spoken. Moreover, none of these other languages belongs to the same Indo-European language family as English. The ramifications extend far beyond the intellectual recognition that language, normative modes of thinking and reasoning and social values are interwoven, mutually reinforcing and almost impossible to disentangle.

In the remote schooling context, much recent media attention has been directed to issues of poor attendance, low attainment rates of minimal benchmarks in literacy and numeracy, poor retention and the virtual absence of transitions from school to work. The Australian government's recent ‘Gonski review’ (Review of Funding for Schooling – Final Report 2011) also strongly advocates the need to increase investment and effort into remote education across Australia in order to address the concerns of under-achievement, particularly of Indigenous students. Large-scale policies designed to improve access to services have caused a significant increase in services delivered from external sources, policy development at all levels of government, and tight accountability measures that affect remote communities and in turn, schools in various ways. Remote educators find themselves caught in the middle of this systemic discourse and the voices and values that exist in the remote communities where they live. Within this complex environment, the purpose of this article is to amplify Indigenous community voices and values in the discourse and by doing so, challenge ourselves as educators and educational leaders to examine the question: ‘While we're busy delivering education, is anybody learning anything?’ This article focuses on the Anangu (Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara) context of the North-West of South Australia, southern regions of the Northern Territory and into Western Australia. This region is referred to as the ‘tri-state’ region. Using a qualitative methodology, this article examines three Pitjantjatjara language oral narrative transcripts where Anangu reflect on their experiences of growing up and learning. By privileging these Anangu voices in the dialogue about learning in the remote Aboriginal community context, key themes are identified and analysed, highlighting important considerations for remote educators in understanding the values and cultural elements that inform Anangu students in their engagement with a formal education context.

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.

In meeting the social and emotional learning (SEL) needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, the capacities of school staff are critical. There is very limited evidence for relevant capacity development initiatives. This evaluation reports a multicomponent SEL training intervention delivered to staff of an Australian education service that operates independently of any particular school to assist with the transitions of students from remote communities to boarding schools. A participatory action research (PAR) approach was implemented over 13-months with 21 staff participants. Results from a pre-, mid- and six months post-training survey and staff interviews were analysed and fed back through reflective group discussions. The training was associated with improved staff attitudes to mental health and skills to support student wellbeing. Sixteen participants received a tertiary qualification. Despite ‘working in challenging environments’, staff were ‘dedicated to help’ students, and ‘acknowledged the need for change’ to better support student wellbeing. However, given the service's brokering role between families and schools, fewer staff members reported feeling empowered to influence issues in their workplace. The evaluation demonstrated the value of SEL training for education staff and potential utility for school teachers and boarding staff who have direct duty of care for Indigenous students. The multicomponent training described in this study would need to be condensed for school settings.

This article presents the developmental stages of a nationwide whole-school strengths-based behavioural intervention by Māori and centring on Māori interests; an initiative that has the potential to transform educational success and opportunities. The initial phase involved a cycle of data collection. This was conducted via a series of focus groups held with Māori specialists, practitioners, families and students, to support the development of a kaupapa Māori approach to school-wide positive behaviour. The evidence that was gathered indicated that a systems framework needed to emanate out of a Māori worldview, be inclusive of family and community, and support the notion that Māori children are able to learn as Māori — to enjoy positive cultural and identity development throughout their schooling. The findings in this article describe the core features that underscore how behaviour should be shaped and supported within schools, from a Māori perspective.