This paper will discuss some personal philosophies and rationales in approaching and delivering Indigenous Australian studies – approaches that have been influenced and informed by experienced and knowledgeable educators both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. It doesn’t aim or pretend to be unique or innovative in its arguments or approach; instead, it is a reflection on the pathway taken by one Indigenous educator and the thinking behind this – at least at this point in time. As such, it adopts a philosophy that “it’s important to know where we’ve come from in order to make sense of where we are and where we might be heading”. It is hoped that through this reflection and by offering an example of how art (as performance/role-play) has been used in one of my teaching sessions that I might make more sense of my personal practice and contribute in some small way to the important and ongoing debates surrounding teaching Indigenous Australian studies.

(This is the first of two articles, based on a paper delivered at the 1982 conference of the Applied Linguistic Association of Australia, entitled: “Language maintenance among Torres Strait Islanders living on the Australian mainland.” It deals with the language backgrounds of most Torres Strait Islander children attending mainstream Queensland schools. The second part, which will appear in the next issue, discusses some of the language difficulties experienced in the classroom by many of these children).

The word culture is defined by Singer, 1988: 6) as:

It is obvious from this definition that each one of us belongs to one culture or another, each culture encapsulating a totality of a way of living, expectation and behaviour that is specifically unique to that group. Culture is constituted in our daily lives, in our negotiations and adjustments to experience day-to-day existence.

Throughout 1974 and 1975 I worked among Aboriginal people in Rural Town, S.W. Queensland. With one exception, all Aboriginal people in this country town have attained at least a primary education. Further, almost 30 per cent of men and women in the 16–30 age group have attended some secondary school; although only two completed grade 10 in 1974, a further three attended tenth arade in 1975.

These figures reflect the pattern of Queensland Aboriginal education as presented in Roper (1970:55). On the basis of these trends it should be possible to hypothesize that younger Aboriginals are attaining higher educational standards than their parents. But the figures lie – simply because more children are staying at school for longer periods this does not mean that they either learn more at school or are experiencing more satisfaction in the school situation.

Obviously the proportion of individuals who attend at least some secondary school is increasing; Aboriginal parents generally support the principle that education is essential if the child is to acquire reasonable employment. Such schemes as the Aboriginal Secondary Grant Scheme are recognised by the Aboriginal community as worthwhile endeavours, not only because they enable parents to support their children for longer periods at school, but because they make the whole educational issue topical. Discussions about the grant lead to discussions about children’s problems at school. Ambitions for “good jobs” are intrinsically linked with educational achievement. Education officers associated with the Aboriginal Secondary Grant are sought out, asked for help to “have the kids sent to boarding school”, as the Rural Town high school does not teach classes beyond Grade 10, and their expertise enlisted to find employment. This concern is not restricted to high school students either. Mothers generally recognise that:

The numbers of Indigenous students studying in health career courses at the tertiary level is low. This paper describes a forum conducted as part of a project of national significance which examines the solutions and barriers for Indigenous student entry to medical and other health science education. Small group discussions and observations were used to determine how a group of Indigenous students, school age and mature, became interested in a health career, what influenced them, their expectations and where they sourced information. The initial design of the forum, based on other successful non-Indigenous health career events, was deemed inappropriate. When an Indigenous educator intervened, and used a more culturally appropriate approach, the engagement of the Indigenous students increased. The importance of culturally relevant health career promotion is a vital part of a complex series of actions needed to increase the recruitment and retention of Indigenous students into health science careers.

There are at least three competing interpretations of Aboriginal classroom behaviour in tradition-oriented communities. These interpretations and the theories they support may well be familiar to experienced teachers. However, the aim here is not to expound theory but to draw out implications for classroom practice.

The first interpretation is that much of the behaviour of Aboriginal children in the classroom is explicable in terms of cultural deficits relative to the demands of school. It is a time-worn but by no means old-fashioned notion that tradition-oriented socialisation renders Aboriginal children ill-fitted to school. Certainly, Aboriginal students are often characterised as passive and given to non-participation, punctuated occasionally by one word responses at best.

My own research into classroom interaction between teachers and Aboriginal students confirms that there is little verbal interaction between them relative to that in white classrooms (Folds, 1984a). However, the ethnocentric assumptions of deficit theory that school is a given and that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children learn in exactly the same way are ill-founded and have alienated Aborigines from school rather than improved educational outcomes.

Many teachers see classroom behaviour in terms of differences rather than deficits. In particular, relative lack of verbal interaction is viewed as a cultural phenomenon modelled on Aboriginal learning style where the student makes little personal input. The Aboriginal teaching and learning style has been thoroughly documented elsewhere (Harris, 1980).

This paper explores the unique challenges, experiences and circumstances that enable and/or constrain non-Aboriginal teachers involved in teaching the Stage 6 Aboriginal Studies syllabus in the New South Wales (NSW) curriculum (2010). Drawing on the yarning inquiry methodology of Bessarab and Ng'andu, seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Aboriginal Studies teachers to open a powerful and insightful dialogue pertaining to the complexities and challenges for non-Aboriginal teachers teaching in the Aboriginal Studies space. Interview data identified key issues, strategies and themes relating to how non-Aboriginal teachers of Aboriginal Studies negotiate and operate in highly contested knowledge spaces, their roles and responsibilities as social justice educators and their capacity to enact substantive change within and beyond the Aboriginal Studies classroom. Nakata's cultural interface theory provides a useful tool for data analysis as Aboriginal Studies sits squarely at the centre of this interface. The findings provide valuable insights and practical recommendations for aspiring and current non-Aboriginal Aboriginal Studies teachers seeking to develop a clearer understanding of their, thus far under-researched, roles within the classroom, whilst opening an intriguing dialogue pertaining to the future of Aboriginal Studies in schools and its place within Australia's broader movement for conciliation.

This paper seeks to identify and explore the differences of Indigenous approaches to historical practice. Why is history so important to Indigenous Australia? History is of crucial importance across the full spectrum of Indigenous understanding and knowledge. History belongs to all cultures and they have differing means of recording and recalling it. In essence, the paper explores the undercurrents of Australian history and the absence for so long of an Aboriginal place in that history, and the process over the past 40 years in correcting that imbalance. During the 1960s and 1970s the Aboriginal place in Australian history for so long erased, overlooked or ignored was suddenly a topic worthy of wider attention and importance. But despite all that has been published since, we have not realistically even touched the surface of what is buried within both the archives and oral memory. And quite clearly what has been recovered remains largely embedded within a white viewpoint of the past.

Otitis media (middle ear infection) is one of the most common childhood diseases all over the world and is very prevalent in many indigenous populations including Australian Aborigines. When children have otitis media they often have a hearing loss that can range from slight to moderately severe. This hearing loss is often hard to identify and can come and go. The problem often starts in infancy and can continue for years; hearing returns to normal in some children but some have permanent hearing loss. Even a mild hearing loss in early childhood can seriously affect communication development and learning. This can make it very difficult for children to succeed in the classroom — even when they no longer have active otitis media or hearing loss.

A variety of statements made by Aboriginal people and groups about what they see as the aims of education is presented. There are diverse emphases but a common thread relates to the education of children in both cultures and a wish to see the children grow in competence in Western skills and knowledge but also retain their own culture and its associated knowledge, skills and values.

The following sets of statements, made by people from various locations throughout Australia, exhibit concern for the achievement of the basic skills, for education that will permit job access (including emphasis by some on education to tertiary level), for the development of skills to live in the modern industrialized world and/or to contribute to their own communities, and concerns expressed by many that children learn about their own culture, some seeing this as part of the school program and others believing it should be taught by the Aboriginal people themselves.

Just as computer delivered instruction in urban Australian schools remains an unknown quantity, its role in tribal Aboriginal schools and in urban schools which increasingly cater to tribal children is even more unclear. There are some exciting possibilities for Aboriginal education. Computer courseware can provide the highly visual, graphics oriented type of instruction which appeals to Aboriginal children and may tap their learning style. Also, the new technology should be able to overcome limitations of bilingual programs set by the cost of producing language materials for many different language groups. For example, with the Prologic Authoring Language (PAL), it is a simple matter to work through a developed program and change the text from one language to another.

Over the past months quite a few people have asked me what the differences are between bilingual education and two-way schooling. I will try to contrast the two models in this paper, partly because it's worth doing anyway and partly because it might be one way to reveal some differences between genuine two-way schooling and pseudo two-way schooling. Of course this is just one white person's view, and involves extrapolations from the types of things that actually are happening in, say, a half dozen schools, to what may happen as a result of a wider shift to Aboriginal control of school philosophy and curriculum.

In our ongoing research on edible insects in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, we have found evidence of the unsustainable harvesting of edible insects and the food plants of certain insects. The decline in the edible insect industry, together with the need for food security provides a strong incentive to investigate possible causes of problems using different knowledge systems. Any solution to these problems needs to take Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) into account if it hopes to be successful and sustainable. We have found that different communities have different explanations for the same phenomena. Some of these explanations correspond with the explanations for the same phenomena in Western science. Where areas of overlap between IKS and Western science exist, these can be used in education in such a way that recommendations for sustainable harvesting can be developed with reference to African science. In this process, the area of overlap between the systems may grow as information from one system is incorporated in another. In this contribution the overlapping roles of IKS, African science and Western science are explored in the teaching of the sustainable harvesting of Indigenous resources for food security and conservation. This creates opportunities to teach relevant science in such a way that the concerned communities can benefit through better food security and the conservation of culturally important plants and animals.

Koorie High School is a Government school. It is not the school's real name but it is the name I will be using for this article.

Koorie High School is an innercity comprehensive high school from Years 7-12 in Sydney. It has a total population of 344 students, 186 at the Intensive English Unit on a different site and 158 in the mainstream high school campus. Fifty-five percent of the 158 students are Aboriginal. There are also 32 students in the Back-To-School Program, an annex of the main high school. All of these students are Aboriginal. I will mainly be referring to the main high school and no reference will be made to the Intensive English Unit as they are not part of this study.

Teachers of Aboriginal children in Australia often have the problem of adapting or modifying curriculum materials which have been developed to meet the needs of the average white Australian/European child. For science and mathematics teachers especially, we believe that appropriate adaptation is essential to ensure that Aboriginal children are better able to comprehend the concepts involved. Many of these concepts at the primary school level involve some aspect of conserving quantities. For example, take a simple experiment where a child is asked to find out whether or not aluminium foil sinks in water. Its flotation, of course, is dependent on shape. The child may roll the aluminium foil into a ball, or flatten it out, and place it in the water. What happens can be observed and discussed and reported. But what if the child thinks this aluminium foil has some unexplainable properties? Maybe it not only changes shape but also its weight! Certainly, on the surface this may appear to be a typical case of nonconservation of weight, but perhaps this is a direct consequence of working with unusual materials and is not a true indicator of mental development!

This paper argues that a component of increasing the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and youths completing their secondary education is having parents and teachers maintain heightened expectations of these children in achieving this goal. To understand this phenomenon, we investigate the importance of, and discrepancies between, primary caregiver and teacher outlooks regarding Indigenous youths completing year 12. For the purpose of this paper, we adopt the term ‘primary caregiver’ in place of parent. This is because the majority (87.7%) of P1s analysed are the biological mothers with the remainder being close female relatives. P2s analysed are all male, 93.3% are biological fathers; remainder are step-fathers or adoptive fathers. This paper uses quantitative data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children to measure expectations from parents and teachers of Indigenous children. Results suggest that parents maintain exceptionally high expectations of their children, while teacher's expectations significantly decline over the course of Indigenous children's primary and secondary schooling years. We suggest that relationships and communication between parents and teachers, regarding expectations of students, are important to establishing an equilibrium in expectations of children, and that teachers may benefit from further training to address any underlying biases towards Indigenous children.

Kids love computers. Computers are not seen as work but rather, games.

I believe this to be true for most children. The exception would be the young computer buffs who become hooked on computer technology, and even for these computer buffs, it is probably still a game.

Computer technology has become a fact of everyday life. We‘re all affected by computer technology. With this in mind, I believe it is essential that all children become familiar with computers, with regular ‘hands on’ experience. With the right selection of software, schools can incorporate computer-assisted learning across the curriculum. The experiences children have now with computers can lead to a variety of job opportunities in future years.