The need for additional support for Indigenous children at school is well documented. Occupational therapists are well positioned to form part of this support. However, many occupational therapists report that Indigenous families do not access their services and when they do, the occupational therapist feels uncertain about how best to meet their needs. This article documents a pilot project which delivered occupational therapy services within several schools and preschools in Brisbane which had significant numbers of Indigenous students. The project was evaluated using a qualitative methodology and included focus groups and interviews with teachers and parents. The results indicated that in general the service provided valuable support to students, teachers and parents. In particular, providing the service within the school context was seen as critical to its success. Suggestions for improvements in future support services are also provided.

This article presents a number of possibilities that digital technologies can offer to increase access for Indigenous people to higher education in Australia. Such technologies can assist Indigenous high school students acquire the knowledge and skills they require to be accepted into higher education courses. They can also assist Indigenous students to be more successful in their higher education studies. While this article is contextualised to the Australian higher education setting specifically, the principles derived within may be applied to other disadvantaged groups worldwide. It may be concluded that the despite the barriers to the uptake of digital technologies, the potential offered holds much promise for such groups. In Australia, Indigenous people are the most severely under-represented in higher education, with access rates that have been declining over the past 6 years. Therefore, this issue has been classified as a matter of the highest national priority (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent, & Scales, 2008, p. 16). Concurrently, evidence is mounting that digital learning environments are able to produce positive learning outcomes for Indigenous students, albeit with a number of barriers to their uptake. This literature review explores: current trends in digital technologies and tertiary instructional practices, barriers to the uptake of digital technologies for Indigenous learners in Australia, and the potential of digital technologies for accommodating Indigenous learning styles. A number of implications for practice are discussed, based on the review of the literature.

The history of remote school education in the Northern Territory can best be summarised as years of lost opportunities, pedagogies of discrimination, and diminished lives for those parents and children who trusted and responded to the government’s invitation to come to school. From late 2001 to 2005 historic educational change occurred in the remote Community Education Centre of Kalkaringi and Daguragu in the Northern Territory, the site for the delivery of the Northern Territory’s first Year 12 Indigenous graduates studying in their own community school. At the heart of the historic achievement was a radical change in thinking about education for Indigenous students. This paper discusses some of the policy parameters and educational circumstances that prevented significant change in the delivery model of education for the Community Education Centres in addition to a conceptualisation of how that school circumvented the policy parameters and instituted real change from the ground up. The paper examines, through a critical lens, the nature of the culture change that was crafted and built upon within Kalkaringi School and its communities, despite an initial and significant sense of powerlessness felt by families and to some extent the teachers and principal within the school. Through the development and embrace of a metaphor of possibility and hope - the challenge of climbing the educational mountain formed the foundation for a dedicated and committed enactment of an equitable educational entitlement for remote Indigenous students.

This paper reports on an Action Research project that investigated the integration of Aboriginal and Western knowledge into science learning in a Montessori classroom in regional Queensland, Australia. Drawing on the local knowledge of fauna of community members, the study explored the teaching of science to 12-year 8–9 students in an Aboriginal independent high school in Queensland. The overall study covered 83 lessons that included an initial Short-beaked echidna study. It applied thematic analysis to data to explore the effect of this integrated approach on students’ pride in heritage, cultural knowledge, learning and the Linnaean zoology taxonomy. Results revealed that the contextualisation of Aboriginal and Western science knowledge strengthened students’ Aboriginal personal identity as well as identities as science learners and status of local Aboriginal knowledge.

Culturally responsive approaches to schooling (CRS) aim to address pervasive inequities that exist in education. More specifically, CRS practices seek to improve the experiences and academic achievements of marginalised and minoritised learners, such as those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In this paper, we consider the possibilities for CRS in the context of Australia where Indigenous students (along with their parents, peers and teachers) are consistently reminded, courtesy of the deficit government policies and ‘close the gap’ rhetoric, that they have the worst educational outcomes of any settler society. This paper does not seek to offer fixed solutions in response to this. Rather, based on shared experience researching and teaching together that draw on CRS, the paper foregrounds a collaborative culturally responsive dialogue between the authors. Together we discuss, deliberate and despair about the state of the education system for Indigenous students, we also remain tentatively hopeful about how CRS might become embedded in teaching and learning, through teacher professional learning, in ways that are relevant to the Australian context.

This study argues that western societies have to learn from the cosmological vision of first peoples. In the Brazilian context, despite the genocide of these peoples, there still remains a rich variety of cultures, keeping their traditions and lifestyles based on the concept of buen vivir, in Spanish, or Tekó Porã as the Guarani people say. From a decolonial intercultural approach, we can learn a sustainable way of life from indigenous peoples, and create relevant policies and educational frameworks. Principles of buen vivir such as cooperation and reciprocity are incorporated by Paulo Freire in his dialogic pedagogy. Freire has incorporated these principles due to his engagement with social and communitarian movements. For this reason, his pedagogical proposal is not limited to school contexts only; it is rather linked to community and social praxis. This political transformation of educational praxis involves changes in the modern-colonial matrix of power and knowledge. Deconstructing racism and the myth of universality is necessary for recognizing epistemic rationalities developed by indigenous communities, in order for us to establish with them critical dialogue and mutually enriching interaction. In this sense, the newly introduced term neologism ‘conversity’ indicates intercultural dialogue resulting from the recognition of indigenous peoples and social movements as producers of legitimate knowledge and autonomous organisation.

This paper explores the transitional experiences and challenges faced by girls from the Torres Strait Islands when they leave individual communities to attend boarding school in regional Queensland. The paper presents original ethnographic research using a narrative enquiry approach, capturing stories as narrated by a broad cohort of girls from within these communities, both past and present students. The stories relayed in this article are integral to assisting parents and extended family, staff and administrators to better manage the transition process from one community to another. Identifying the cultural, social and academic challenges associated with the transition process will enable those involved in student support both within the community and the school system to do so with an enhanced awareness so that the students involved may be helped to negotiate this experience more easily. This paper will also inform, although not directly engaging with the topic, the ongoing debate about the advantages and disadvantages of girls leaving their communities to attend boarding school. It will also add weight to the call to improve current strategies to assist with the transition process.

The global standardization reform movement in education has seduced many Indigenous education policy makers in Australia, providing a powerful neoliberal discourse to further consolidate their focus on Indigenous educational deficit. A Share in the Future, the latest review of Indigenous education in the Northern Territory is an exemplar in this regard. This paper offers a brief exposition of this review, highlighting how an exclusive focus on comparative statistics and standardised testing of English literacy and numeracy works to maintain the coupling of ‘Indigenous’ and ‘deficit’, reifying colonial power relations and justifying technical and bureaucratic educational approaches, administered and monitored from afar. Such an approach is unable to adequately respond to the relational, cultural and linguistic complexities and nuances of local Indigenous education contexts. The educational assumptions and propositions of A Share in the Future will be juxtaposed with those of the Cross-Cultural Collaboration Project, undertaken in the Northern Territory in 2008, to consider alternative ways of successfully engaging these local educational complexities.

This article examines the nature of oral language and representations used by teachers as they instruct young Indigenous Australian students at the beginning of formal schooling during play-based activities in mathematics. In particular, the use of Standard Australian English (SAE), the mathematical register used, and the interplay with mathematical representations during classroom instruction are analysed based upon the teachers' selfreported practices. The data are drawn from structured telephone interviews with 40 teachers in 15 schools from rural and remote or multicultural settings in Queensland at the initial stage of a large, longitudinal study. The specific aim of the study was the identification of effective pedagogical practices that may assist young Australian students from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds to negotiate western mathematical understanding. The findings indicate that despite experience in these settings and focused professional learning sessions, the majority of these teachers report practices which reflect a strong emphasis on literacy acquisition rather than mathematical understanding. It is the contention of the researchers that the use of oral language with a rich selection of mathematical representations strongly supports mathematical understanding.

The collective aim of many of this Journal's readers is to provide Indigenous Australians with a sound education to allow us (Indigenous Australia) to take a more active role in Australian society. My personal research interest is in business studies, training Indigenous Australians in management and business principles. I continually face the question of am I training my kin in a Western science that is often at the opposite end of the spectrum to Indigenous thought and practice?

The Indigenous Sky Stories Program may have the potential to deliver significant and long-lasting changes to the way science is taught to Year 5 and 6 primary school students. The context for this article is informed by research that shows that educational outcomes can be strengthened when Indigenous knowledge is given the space to co-exist with the hegemony of current western science concepts. This research presents a case study of one primary school involved in the Indigenous Sky Stories Program. It showcases how teachers and students worked in conjunction with their local community to implement the program. The results suggest that introducing cultural sky stories into the science program, engaged and primed Year 5 and 6 students to seek out additional sky stories and to investigate the astronomical content mapped to the National Science Curriculum. The involvement of Aboriginal elders and community enriched the experience for all involved. The integrated science program appears to generate positive engagement for both Indigenous students and their non-Indigenous peers. Additionally, the program provided a valuable template for teachers to emulate and which can act as a model for the requirement to include Indigenous perspectives in the new National Science Curriculum.

Reading seasons and environments has been a long-held practice for Torres Strait Islanders through their close relationships with their islands and seas. This research project worked with elders on Erub (Darnley) Island, in the eastern group of islands in the Torres Strait, to document and synthesise their knowledge of seasonal patterns and indicators, and climate change. This knowledge varied from details on the migration and nesting patterns of the main totem birds, to the movement of the Tagai star constellation, to the onset of wind patterns indicating certain planting or fishing cycles. The importance of documenting and transferring such knowledge is that it continues the task of generating interest among the younger generation to ‘read’ their landscape, which is especially pertinent given the projected impacts of climate change. The ability of islanders to identify indicators and ‘read’ their country is an important tool in monitoring and adapting to environmental change, as well as maintaining culture, livelihoods and environment. This article outlines this knowledge, and documents the process of utilising this knowledge to develop a seasonal calendar, which was also transposed into a larger mural at the local primary school. The school children were involved in assembling the mural, and its contents will now form part of the teaching curriculum. It is hoped that by documenting and sharing such knowledge, younger generations can see its value, for instance in monitoring the impacts of environmental change, and in turn it will be valued by them.

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 education system, as it relates to very remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia, faces challenges. While considerable resources have been applied to very remote schools, results in terms of enrolments, attendance and learning outcomes have changed little, despite the effort applied. The Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP) in its Remote Education Systems (RES) project is trying to understand why this might be the case, and also attempting to identify local solutions to the ‘problem’ of very remote education. The RES project is in the process of building its research program across five remote sites in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia. As the project begins, the researchers involved have begun to consider what are the assumptions behind the ‘system’ in its current form(s). The article begins with an outline of the context of remote education in Australia within a rapidly changing global environment. However, the purpose of the article is to outline many of the assumptions built into remote education and to ask what the alternatives to these assumptions might be. The authors go on to ask questions about how a remote education system would approach some of the assumptions presented. The assumptions presented are based on a reading of the philosophical bases of education. The questions are designed to prompt a deeper discussion about how the values and worldviews of those living in very remote communities might be taken into consideration and acted upon.

With the push towards ‘Indigenisation’ in Australian tertiary institutes, the discipline of English at the University of Newcastle undertook a pilot project to investigate what this could look like and what it meant for staff and students. This paper reflects our efforts to engage with notions of ‘Indigenisation’, based on national and international exemplars and presents one of our efforts to indigenise our discipline of English. We argue that our shifting and changing understanding of integrating Aboriginal ways of knowing into mainstream English courses is both difficult and essential.

This paper explores teaching strategies for communicating complex issues and ideas to a diverse group of students, with different educational and vocational interests, that encourage them to develop critical thinking, and explores pedagogies appropriate to the multidisciplinary field of Aboriginal studies. These issues will be investigated through discussion of a successful simulation case study, including the setting up, resourcing, conducting and debriefing. The simulated case study was an assessed component of the new elective subject, Reconciliation Studies, offered at the University of Technology Sydney. In 2003 students participated in a role-play based on events in relation to the development of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge. Students were assigned roles as stakeholders where they researched and then role-played, through their assigned characters, the multilayered and complex dimensions of this recent dispute. Students were required to reflect critically on the cultural, economic, legal and political issues that were pertinent to their stakeholder and explore the underlying racial, ethical and moral grounds for their particular standpoint. I argue that teaching strategies such as these can contribute to locating Indigenous Australian perspectives and experiences as critical within the professional profiles and practice skills of Australian university graduates.

This paper investigates reasons Indigenous Australian medical students gave for leaving their courses prior to graduation. Indigenous students who had withdrawn or deferred from their medical courses were asked about the barriers and disincentives that had dissuaded them from graduating. Although the response rate to the questionnaire was very low, it opened up a way of looking at the particular experiences of Indigenous students. Of the 12 responses, the most prominent reason given for withdrawing was financial. Most were satisfied with enrolment processes but a number were disappointed with their courses and with teaching methods. More support from the university was the only encouragement that would have persuaded most respondents to continue. This paper explores the reasons for the high rate of withdrawal of Indigenous medical students and concludes by suggesting ways in which secondary schools, universities and their medical schools could respond to the recruitment and retention of Indigenous medical students.

In 1994 I was employed as a consultant in the Office of HRM working on a DEET (Department of Employment Education and Training) funded project in the compilation of an Indigenous employment strategy which resulted in the development of the university ‘Recruitment and Career Development Strategy for Indigenous Australians’.

In this paper we present a brief history of education at the community of Milingimbi in northeast Arnhem Land, Northern Territory from the mission times to today. In focusing on the emergence and implementation of bicultural curriculum initiatives we explore some of the difficulties and ever present challenges encountered by Yolngu educators, leaders and elders in developing a local vision of education which, in order to meet community needs and aspirations, needs to be grounded in Yolngu stages of learning, cultural values of identity, responsibility and structures of authority.

In general, education in Australia is dominated by an out-of-date worldview that encourages fragmentation and actively excludes the philosophical views of its Aboriginal Australian students. Despite growing support for the principles and practice of equal opportunity and multi-culturalism, for Aboriginal Australians to benefit from education they are left with little choice but to participate in teaching programs that devalue or ignore their cultural identity. To meet the needs of students, education must undergo a philosophical transformation that makes the structure and content of academic programs more culturally sensitive and flexible. All students need to develop cross-cultural skills, including ways of thinking in terms of interconnectedness and cultural relativity within the dominant culture. Students need to be prepared to work within differing cultural paradigms and to have an understanding of the philosophical diversity of Australia's cultural context.