In an article based largely on overseas research into teacher effectiveness (e.g., Ryans, 1960; Kleinfeld, 1972) and Australian discussions of the non-Aboriginal teacher’s role in educating Aboriginal students (e.g., Hart, 1974), Fanshawe (1976) argues that the personal characteristics of effective teachers of adolescent Aborigines are likely to include:

• being warm and supportive;

• making realistic demands of students;

• acting in a responsible, businesslike and systematic manner;

• and being stimulating, imaginative and original.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the progress of a study undertaken in North West New South Wales which investigated the views held by parents, students and teachers towards the learning of mathematics in Years 5 and 6. The study involved Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people being interviewed within their community. This paper presents a background to the study, some comment on how the study was implemented and an initial analysis of the views held by one Murri student.

Many teachers and teaching assistants report that they lack an understanding of Standard Australian English grammar and that this hinders their work with Indigenous students who are learning English as a second language. This paper reports on the success of an accredited professional development strategy in Far North Queensland. This strategy is not based on out-of-context grammar lessons but promotes the idea that grammar is best learnt in communicative and collaborative classrooms which value fun and visual performance. The grammar activities are also embedded in current strategies for the teaching of literacy. This kind of professional development can reinvigorate teachers’ practices in order to increase literacy outcomes in Indigenous schools.

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.

Although there have been repeated calls for empirical evaluations focused on if and how the activities of Indigenous Education Units contribute to Indigenous student success at university, data demonstrating the outcomes of these activities remain scarce. As a first step in addressing this gap, a case study of the Kulbardi Aboriginal Centre is presented which documents the development and implementation of its student success strategy. Informed by research that identifies a range of different barriers and enablers of Indigenous student success, the strategy was built around a ‘whole-of-university’ approach which focuses on influencing across multiple levels of the university (governance and management, teaching and pedagogy and direct student support). The success of the strategy is described in relation to changes in Indigenous student retention and pass rates. The case study offers insight into the activities of an Indigenous Education Unit, which can inform future models of practice in this area and raise awareness of the need for more comprehensive and nuanced evaluation of Indigenous higher education initiatives.

This article draws upon historical evidence and theoretical insights to critique the New Zealand government's negative response to a popular petition developed by students of Otorohanga College. The petition called for the New Zealand Land Wars to become a ‘prescribed course of study’ (topic) in New Zealand schools. This article consequently reviews the status of Māori histories in New Zealand schools from 1877 to 2016. This review is followed by a critique of the New Zealand government's response to the petition. This will be of interest to an Australian audience grappling with issues relating to the teaching of Indigenous peoples’ histories in schools.

Every conception of humanity arises from a specific place and from the people of that place. How such places shape and sustain the people of a place is the focus of education that enables each student to understand themselves and makes them feel at home in the world. The notion of Indigenous humanities being developed at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon represents an example of such ecological teachings and practices of what constitutes humanity. Ecology is the animating force that teaches us how to be human in ways that theological, moral and political ideologies are unable to. Ecology privileges no particular people or way of life. It does, however, promote Indigenous humanity as affirmed in Article 1 of the 1966 UNESCO Declaration of the Principles of International Cultural Co-operation: “Each culture has a dignity and value which must be respected and preserved” (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1966). In the Eurocentric versions of humanity, this concept is sometimes referred to as cultural diversity; yet Indigenous peoples prefer the concept of Indigenous humanities.

This article draws upon a Māori metaphor to describe the theoretical framework underpinning the methodology and findings of a research project completed by researchers from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2010. It explains how and why the project required the research team to synthesise key information from four New Zealand Ministry of Education Best Evidence Synthesis (BES) reports as well as kaupapa Māori research associated with the Ministry's Ka Hikitia Māori Education Strategy. The key messages outlined in this article were designed by the research team to serve as a new tool to assist whānau (family) and iwi (tribe) to actively engage in the New Zealand schooling system and assert their rights in accordance with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840). Given the large number of Māori children attending Australian schools, the findings of this research may be of interest to Australian educationalists.

In this article, I take a creative and autoethnographic approach to reflect upon processes of decolonisation in Indigenous Australian studies classrooms. Positioning myself as a non-Indigenous educator, I take the reader on a journey through my search for pedagogy which makes space for the colonial, difficult and messy politics of race, whiteness and knowledge to be actively challenged, deconstructed and reimagined in this context as PEARL.

The aim of this article is to critically review and analyse the public representations of mature-age university students in developed and some developing nations and how they compare to the public representations of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students in Australia (‘students’ also refers to graduates unless the context requires specificity). Relevant texts were identified by reviewing education-related academic and policy literature, media opinion and reportage pieces, conference proceedings, and private sector and higher education reviews, reports and submissions. What this review reveals is striking: very few commentators are publicly and unambiguously encouraging, supporting and celebrating mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students. This strongly contrasts with the discussions around mature-age university students in general, where continuous or lifelong learning is acclaimed and endorsed, particularly as our populations grow older and remain healthier and there are relatively lower numbers of working-age people. While scholars, social commentators, bureaucrats and politicians enthusiastically highlight the intrinsic and extrinsic value of the mature-age student's social and economic contributions, the overarching narrative of the mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student is one of ‘the horse has bolted’, meaning that it is too late for this cohort and therefore society to benefit from their university education. In this article we examine these conflicting positions, investigate why this dichotomy exists, present an alternative view for consideration, and make recommendations for further research into this area.

This paper interrogates the emphasis on devising regimes for protection of Indigenous knowledge, based on narrowly defined concepts of property, especially intellectual property in legislative and policy discussions and debates and programs of work on Indigenous knowledge. Commenting on the classificatory and typological tendencies of legislative protection regimes, the paper argues for a shift from this emphasis on protection, toward the creation of a space for engagement between Indigenous, and other knowledge traditions, wherein concepts of dialogue, negotiation and agreement-making can occur. The paper supports its argument by reviewing selected legal instruments such as the 2003 UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage, and drawing on some of the author's experience working with Aboriginal people in the Kimberley.

The concept of Aboriginal leadership often results in debate. The fundamental question raised is if Australian Aboriginal people are equal members of a pluralistic society that is based on co-operation and consensuses then how can you have a leader? Consequently who determines leadership or is a leader someone that in effect is more equal than others? Is leadership an attribute gained from within Aboriginal society or is leadership as we currently define it taught within the education structures of settler society? This paper briefly examines leadership from a postcolonial contemporary Aboriginal position, reviewing existing leadership education programs.

Remote Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools and communities are diverse and complex sites shaped by contrasting geographies, languages, histories and cultures, including historical and ongoing relationships with colonialism, and connected yet contextually unique epistemologies, ontologies and cosmologies.

This paper explores the history of Anangu (Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra and Ngaatjatjarra) populations, including the establishment of incorporated communities and schools across the tri-state remote region of central Australia. This study will show that Anangu have a relatively recent contact history with Europeans and Anangu experiences of engagement with colonisation and schooling are diverse and complex.

By describing historical patterns of population centralisation and decentralisation, I argue that schooling and broader education policies need to be contextually responsive to Anangu histories, values, ontologies and epistemologies in order to produce an education approach that resists colonialist social models and assumptions and instead, works more effectively towards a broader aim of social justice. Through assisting educators and policy makers to acquire a clearer understanding of Anangu histories, capacities and struggle, I hope to inform a more nuanced, contextually responsive and socially-just consideration of the provision of Western education in the tri-state region.

This article dissects instruction in the Norwegian Sámi School and its cultural sensitivity. The focus is on the classroom culture of Sámi education: how Sámi education is arranged in practice. The core of the research is intertwined with issues concerning the status, language, and culture of Indigenous people in education. The research was ethnographic and the research data consists of questionnaires (N = 108), teachers' (N = 15) interviews, and the researcher's field diaries. The research showed that the Sámi culture and school culture do not meet: the western school culture dominates teaching at the Sámi School and socialises the Sámi School into mainstream society. The Sámi people's conception of time, place, and information should be emphasised in the teaching arrangements.

A federal report released by the Department of Families and Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA, 2009), entitled Closing the Gap on Indigenous Disadvantage: The Challenge for Australia, highlighted the inequality that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students based on a restricted access to resources, issues of isolation, staff and student retention, and cultural differences and challenges. In New South Wales (NSW), the Department of Education and Training (DET) and the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) in 2003/2004 undertook their own review of Aboriginal education in NSW Government schools that revealed significant concerns about the outcomes being achieved by Aboriginal students in NSW DET schools, confirming the more recent FaHCSIA (2009) findings. In 2006 the NSW DET implemented the Enhanced Teacher Training Scholarship Program (ETTSP) to empower 20 final-year education students to successfully engage with Indigenous students in schools and their wider community during their internship period. Using themes, this article explores the experiences of 10 University of New England scholarship holders at the end of their final year of teacher training and immersion/internship experience in 2010. The article puts forward useful recommendations for both teacher universities and students intending to teach in schools with high Indigenous student populations.

This article discusses the concept of Vivir Bien (Living Well) (VB) and its role as a decolonising project in connection with the Political Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (2009) (BC) and subordinated legislation. This subordinated legislation was enacted to implement in a more specific manner the general legal principles contained within the BC. The paper uses these legal texts within the framework of decolonial thinking to prove that the adoption of the concept of VB represents a legal and an epistemological shift that radically contests the dominant Western paradigm of modernity/coloniality. This shift has many facets; however, this article concentrates on two of them in order to characterise its radicalism: (a) the constitutional acknowledgment of the colonial difference, which is understood here as the pervading and living legacy of European colonialism in social organisations and the production of knowledge, and (b) the constitutional and legislative requirement of engaging in an ongoing intercultural dialogue as a vehicle for the achievement of a society based on the concept of VB. This article concludes that the confluence of these two facets marks the epistemological shift and is important in the advancement of the intercultural and decolonising project represented by the concept of VB.

This article is essentially a review of an article by J.P. Fanshawe which appeared some 12 years ago in The Aboriginal Child at School [Vol.4 No.3, 1976]. The comments are still valid today and will probably be valid ten years hence.

In the article Fanshawe puts forward a particularly sound argument on what personal and professional characteristics are necessary for a teacher to become effective in teaching nontraditionally oriented adolescent Aborigines. I believe that many of the attributes Fanshawe advocates are equally applicable to teachers involved in teaching Aborigines in the Primary school and indeed, to teachers in general.

Last year I was approached by the Thursday Island High School in Torres Strait to analyse the major linguistic differences between Standard English and Torres Strait Creole – the language of the majority of the students – insofar as these affect the students' comprehension and production of written English texts. In this, the High School was responding to a request by its Management Committee and general concern about the students' acquisition of English literacy.

Much of the literature on Torres Strait Islander, as well of Aboriginal, education begins from the assumption that oral traditions and cultures have a profound effect on educational achievement. But how easy is it to plot Islanders on an oral/literate continuum (cf. Goody, 1978)? The purpose of this paper is a critical examination of a sociolinguistic model designed to describe Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal peoples in terms of oracy and literacy by Watson (1988). As part of her attempt to explain mathematics education as it relates to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, her continua attempt at an analysis via a theoretical framework built on socio-demographic and linguistic differences between orate and literate traditions. Watson (1988, p.257) suggest that, “...there exists the same type of continuum linking use of Torres Strait Islander languages and English.”