There is clear evidence that Indigenous education has changed considerably over time. Indigenous Australians' early experiences of ‘colonialised education’ included missionary schools, segregated and mixed public schooling, total exclusion and ‘modified curriculum’ specifically for Indigenous students which focused on teaching manual labour skills (as opposed to literacy and numeracy skills). The historical inequalities left a legacy of educational disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Following activist movements in the 1960s, the Commonwealth Government initiated a number of reviews and forged new policy directions with the aim of achieving parity of participation and outcomes in higher education between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Further reviews in the 1980s through to the new millennium produced recommendations specifically calling for Indigenous Australians to be given equality of access to higher education; for Indigenous Australians to be employed in higher education settings; and to be included in decisions regarding higher education. This paper aims to examine the evolution of Indigenous leaders in higher education from the period when we entered the space through to now. In doing so, it will examine the key documents to explore how the landscape has changed over time, eventually leading to a number of formal reviews, culminating in the Universities Australia 2017–2020 Indigenous Strategy (Universities Australia, 2017).

First Peoples' knowledge at university lies within a contested knowledge space. The incompatibilities and differences between Western and First Peoples' knowledge systems means attempts to superficially ‘add’ First Peoples' content to university courses are often ineffective and tokenistic. Considering these issues, this paper reflects on the design and implementation of weaving First Peoples' knowledge and perspectives throughout a service-learning course. The course is a nationally awarded work-integrated learning programme delivered to undergraduate and postgraduate students. Drawing on a theoretical framework of Woven Law, the design of the module was led and authored by First Peoples. Throughout the design process, the module was critically examined in terms of the content developed and methods of content inclusion, while also responding to institutional demands of student learning outcomes. Survey results show a positive student reception and early success in enabling students to achieve learning outcomes. While initial results are promising, data are limited due to this being the first assessment of the programme and the fact that students were asked to rate their own experience. Nonetheless, Woven Law and carefully weaving First Peoples' knowledge throughout the curriculum represents a promising methodology and area for future research.

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.

Despite the continued investment in Indigenous support networks and dedicated education units within universities, levels of key performance indicators for Indigenous students—access, participation, success and completion (attainment)—remain below that of the overall domestic student population in most institutions. It remains important to determine what works to achieve Indigenous student success in higher education. This paper proposes that such methods have an integral role to play in providing a holistic view of Indigenous participation and success at university, and are particularly useful in the development and evaluation of strategies and programs. This project found no quantitative correlation between financial investment and success rate for Indigenous students. A negative correlation between access rate and success rate suggests that factors other than those that encourage participation are important in supporting successful outcomes. Those universities that have high success rates have a suite of programs to support Indigenous students, but it is not immediately clear which of these strategies and programs may be most effective to facilitate Indigenous student success rates. In this discussion, we suggest that a multi-layered determinants model is a useful way to conceptualise the many factors that may impact on student success, and how they might intersect.

Increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in higher education can play a critical role in transforming lives and is the trajectory to closing the gap and reducing disadvantage. Despite recent progress, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples remain significantly under-represented in higher education. Poor retention and high attrition rates of these students come at significant financial cost for the individual, community, university and government. Wirltu Yarlu, the Indigenous Education Unit at the University of Adelaide has reviewed the role student support services play in improving retention and completion rates, with an aim to improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student retention and completion. The newly developed Student Success Strategy is an innovative approach to student support that aims to identify and respond to individual student needs in a more effective and efficient manner. The model encompasses a self-assessment tool designed to measure progress across several domains. Self-assessments are used to inform student specific support needs which in turn enable support staff to personalise future interventions for each student and respond accordingly in an attempt to reduce and prevent student attrition.

There remains significant under representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australian higher education systems. A number of strategies have been implemented by governments and universities to best support Indigenous students within higher education that have produced varying levels of success in increasing participation, retention and completions. One key strategy is the inclusion of Aboriginal Education Units within universities. The current study aimed to examine students experience and engagement with a range of support services across university, in particular with an Aboriginal Education Unit. Utilising a mixed-method approach, data were collected from 103 students who identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander at The University of Adelaide. Overall, students were most satisfied with support provided by family (70%) and the Aboriginal Education Unit (61%), followed by support provided by university faculties (49%), and the wider university (43%). The main reasons students were accessing the Unit was for academic and tutoring purposes, also rating tutoring as the most beneficial service provided by the Unit. This study highlights the importance of examining and evaluating enablers such as support mechanisms from the student perspective and has demonstrated the significant role Aboriginal Education Units play in the student experience, laying a crucial foundation for targeted support initiatives.

Over recent years, considerable effort has been put into increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nations) participation in higher education. While there are signs that enrolments are increasing, the sustained engagement and successful completion of higher education remains challenging, particularly in remote locations. With this in mind, a collaborative research project among researchers from three northern Australian tertiary education institutions was designed to understand student perspectives, particularly from remote contexts, about their engagement and success towards completion in higher education. Based on a qualitative research design situating Indigenist/interpretive research within a critical realism metatheory, we present findings from the study, based in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and unpack implications for higher education provision in remote contexts. The findings point to the unique challenges faced by students who live in the Kimberley—and perhaps in other remote locations around Australia. In order to meet these needs, we suggest that tertiary education providers must tailor provision to ensure that engagement with Aboriginal students is relational and culturally safe.

Culturally safe health practitioners are essential for effective service provision to culturally diverse populations, including Indigenous Australians. Therefore, cultural safety education during training as a health care professional is an essential component in helping improve the health of Indigenous Australians. This study examined whether the implementation of an Indigenous cultural safety education workshop increased self-rated cultural safety knowledge and attitudes of allied health students. The study employed a quantitative before-and-after design using pre- and post-surveys to determine the level of attitudinal change in students who attended a day long workshop. The study sample consisted of 1st year (n = 347) and 4th year (n = 149) allied health students at a regional Australian university over the years 2007–2011. Whilst the results of this current study are varied in terms of achieving positive change across all of the taught items of knowledge and attitude, they provide some evidence around the value of this type of curriculum intervention in helping develop culturally safe practitioners. An important finding was around the student's becoming self-aware about their own values and cultural identity, combined with acknowledging the importance of this cultural identity to interactions with clients. This form of ‘cultural humility’ appears to be an important step to becoming a culturally safe practitioner. These types of interventions would be enhanced through embedding and scaffolding throughout the curricula.

This article, written by Aboriginal Nyoongar Elders, Louise and Percy Hansen and Joanna Corbett in collaboration with two Wadjella (white) academics, details the design and delivery of The Reaching Across the Divide: Aboriginal Elders and Academics working together project (RAD) which aimed to develop student cultural capabilities. It is encouraging that many Australian universities aim at embedding Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing yet there remains little information on how to do this. RAD, guided by a Nyoongar framework for engagement, the Minditj Kaart-Moorditj Kaart Framework, provides one example. RAD developed student and staff capabilities, through building trusting, committed relationships, and promoting systems change. The results highlight how co-creating to embed Indigenous pedagogy through yarning and oral storying (Hansen & Corbett, 2017; Hansen, 2017) produces transformative learning outcomes which also meet key national, local and professional directives.

In the context of a stark discrepancy in the educational outcomes of Aboriginal Australians compared to non-Aboriginal Australians, this article aims to contribute the voices of rural Aboriginal high school students to the discourse. This article utilises an appreciative enquiry approach to analyse the opinions and aspirations of 12 Aboriginal high school students in a South Australian regional centre. Drawing on student perspectives from semi-structured interviews, this article contributes to and contextualises the growing body of literature regarding educational aspirations. It demonstrates how rurality influences a complex system of intrinsic attributes, relationship networks and contextual factors. It offers an important counterpoint to discourses surrounding academic disadvantage and highlights the lived experience of rural Aboriginal Australians.

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 article documents a teaching journey in a 6/7 class with 20 Torres Strait Islander students in the curriculum area of literacy, over the course of one academic year. Specifically, this action research study explores a classroom teacher's efforts to navigate and respond to the prominent teaching model of explicit instruction and culturally responsive teaching, both of which inform policy statements in Far North Queensland. Using a reflective journal, teacher observations, informal student dialogue sessions, yarning circles and student work samples, the first author (D'Aietti) endeavoured to adjust her teaching practice to determine how best to meet her learners' needs. Through on-going critical reflection, engagement with two critical friends and in consultation with a cultural mentorship group, her teaching underwent transformation. One of the key findings of this study was that students want to learn, and for this to occur, teachers must independently navigate the curriculum documents, and in doing so, the explicit instruction model must be re-aligned, re-adjusted and re-positioned to suit Torres Strait Islander student needs.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners (Practitioners) have a broad scope of practice and play a pivotal role in addressing health disparities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Practitioners are required to maintain knowledge and skill levels to provide ongoing quality care. However, continuing education (CE) opportunities for Practitioners in regional areas are limited and little is known about the types of CE best suited to Practitioners. This study aimed to identify the CE needs of Practitioners working in a South-East Queensland region in Australia. Participatory action research and appreciative inquiry were combined in this multi-staged study. A local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory group provided cultural guidance for the study design and implementation. Supervisors and Practitioners from two Aboriginal Medical Services consented to participate. In stage one of this study, the supervisors were interviewed and the Practitioners contributed to focus groups. The Practitioners prioritised their CE needs in the second study stage using a questionnaire. The participants identified Practitioner CE needs and group 2 listed their career aspirations and the best practitioners were described as ‘Deadly’. The Deadly practitioner had diverse practice knowledge, skills and attributes. The Practitioners had career aspirations beyond their role and a desire to learn. However, their career advancement was stifled by a lack of CE opportunities. CE in regional areas is limited. Practitioners are disadvantaged by exclusion. Enhancing CE opportunities for Practitioners will positively impact the health of regional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities by building social capital. Therefore, future research on Practitioner roles and CE is needed.

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.

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 project focused on 45 Indigenous students who attended most often (90–100%) at an Australian urban primary school to identify factors that facilitate high attendance. We analysed student records and to provide student voice, an Indigenous Worker in the school conducted a student questionnaire. Student responses showed friendships, relationships, family stability and resilience were important contributors for high attendance. Administrative data revealed poverty was the only almost universally shared trait. Common characteristics among students were identified at cohort-level. At student-level, no combination or single trait applied to every high-attending student. They showed great diversity. The study school's attendance strategies included increasing cultural inclusion and support for students living in poverty, which positively impacted many students' attendance, although not all. A personalised approach was also required. An Indigenous Worker identified individual student's attendance barriers and tailored solutions. If school-level strategies are ineffective for all students, strategies and policies designed for all of Australia's Indigenous students will also affect only some of the population. Without a personalised approach, Closing the Gap attendance strategies were limited in reach, and ultimately success. Refreshing the Closing the Gap strategy now provides opportunities for attendance strategies to include personalised approaches.

The benefits of school and community partnerships are well documented in government reports and the academic literature. A number of government initiatives have been introduced to actively involve parents and the community in school matters. In addition, various agencies have produced resource kits and guidelines to assist schools and communities to develop and foster partnerships, and partnership agreements. Much of this study has focused on working with Aboriginal peoples. The use of the term, ‘Aboriginal’ in this paper refers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Initiatives such as ‘What Works’ have had some success in building strong Aboriginal community and school partnerships, however, the literature also reveals that despite such initiatives, the levels of success vary from school to school, with some partnerships unable to develop or be sustained. In responding to a gap in the current knowledge, the authors examine the value of school–community partnerships in a rural and remote school where the percentage of Aboriginal Australian students is high. A brief summary of the outcomes of some of the major initiatives with aims to build effective school and community partnerships is provided. This is followed by the findings from a small pilot research study on the implementation of initiatives to build strong school–community relationships in rural and remote Indigenous school settings in Western Australia. The challenges that may inhibit the establishment of successful school–community relationships/collaboration are discussed and suggestions provided on how these challenges can be addressed.

The objective of this paper is to explore the learning challenges of a group of first-year Papuan medical students. Perspectives were obtained from a group of Papuan medical students (attaining high and low grades) and Faculty staff (Papuan and Non-Papuan) at the University of Cenderawasih, Indonesia. This qualitative case study research employed semi-structured interviews conducted online via Skype. Data were analysed using a general inductive method and classified into themes to reflect Papuan students' learning challenges. We identified three main themes, namely the individual, the university and the outside environment. We found that these Papuan students were affected by their individual challenges, such as self-perception and the level of their learning and social skills. At the university level, students faced difficulties in adjusting their learning and felt that they were lacking a quiet supportive learning environment. They were also influenced by outside environment factors, such as family and financial concern. Given the wide range of challenges faced by Papuan medical students, Faculty development initiatives incorporating cultural responsiveness into the curriculum and wider government support are crucial for the successful educational advancement of Papuan medical students, which ultimately leads to better health outcomes for the Indigenous people of Papua.

Tok stori is a Melanesian form of dialogical engagement. Although it has been generally associated with informal activities, this article points to the potential of tok stori as a pedagogical or teaching process. Set in a school leadership programme spread across the Solomon Islands, the discussion illustrates the value of approaching the education of school leaders through their own experiences and in a manner to which they are accustomed. Data are drawn from the stories of programme mentors. Of particular relevance are the relational implications of tok stori as these frame learning, the kinds of learning facilitated by tok stori, gender and the restricted nature of some knowledge, and the openness of tok stori to encourage and promote learning beyond the initial scope of a programme. Although tok stori can be informal, the data suggest that effective professional learning can take place through tok stori as pedagogy. As one amongst a number of traditional oral forms across the region and beyond, the claims made for tok stori in this context provide further support for the inclusion of Indigenous approaches to development work in and beyond Solomon Islands. This is important if development aid is to move to a new level of efficacy.