Teaching in and of itself is a difficult task fraught with obstacles to classroom success. For those who teach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students these obstacles are compounded by a political atmosphere that colours every decision made within the school and indeed within education departments.

As classroom teachers it is easy to say that politics has nothing to do with teaching and pretend that it is not an issue. As convenient as this attitude may be, it is denying the facts. Indeed all teachers involved in Indigenous education must accept that their role is political. They must see that part of their task is to overcome years of institutional policy and attitude that have contributed significantly to poor educational performances for Indigenous students in Australia.

In the recent history of Australia Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have only had widespread access to a university education for approximately 20 years. Before this, Indigenous graduates from Australian universities were relatively few. Universities were seen as complex, often alien places in Indigenous cultural terms; institutions of European Australian social empowerment and credentialling from which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff and students were virtually excluded.

Territory-wide the government, through its Department of Education, has the unenviably difficult task of maintaining and providing education which is both equitable and accessible to a cohort of students who represent a third of its student population. While their common qualifier is that these students are ‘Indigenous,’ their disparate worldviews often only share some common features. It seems that in recent years, rather than meet these diverse needs the department has determined that the only way around the difficulty is to apply a relatively prescriptive curriculum to its remote Indigenous schools. This is evidenced by the Intensive English, Foundation and General Studies programs now in place for secondary aged students. Many (including Indigenous) educators argue that perhaps this is the only pragmatic answer.

These are the views on the current position of Aboriginal disempowerment in Australian society, expressed by Lois O'Donoghue (1995: 5).

Jo Lampert's (1996) research discussed in her article Indigenous Australian perspectives in teaching at the University of Queensland speaks volumes about the challenges of attempting to make university curricula inclusive of Indigenous Australian perspectives. She documents the often ambivalent attitudes of academics towards opening up the curriculum to Indigenous Australians. The research discussed here seeks to add to our understanding of this process, focussing this time on the response of students to the introduction of Australian Indigenous perspectives into a single unit within a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Teaching program. The impetus to reflect on the process came with the shock of reading student papers, written at the end of the unit, and finding that effective communication about the educational needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples did not seem to have taken place, making a closer analysis of the teaching/learning process imperative. This investigation will address questions abouthowuniversities can communicate effectively about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

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.

There is growing interest and respect in the world regarding the knowledge and experience of Indigenous peoples. This is particularly so in industrialised ‘post-colonial’ societies such as Australia, which see themselves as committed to principles of equity and social justice.

There is a new political, economic and social context in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural knowledge is widely recognised and valued, even if not properly understood. In the search for a more precisely articulated national identity, Indigenous identity is claimed by many as integral to Australian identity. Coupled with this is a revised sense of coming to terms with the past, a recognition of what has been left out of histories taught from non-Indigenous perspectives. The cold war of invasion and resistance goes on but there are signs of an end in view.

This article is based on an interview conducted with four of the central figures in the development and operation of the Arrernte Early Childhood Project. The project works with Aboriginal families in the centre of Australia and is developing culturally appropriate curricula for children aged from three to six years, in the Arrernte language.

The project stresses the need to involve grandparents, aunts, uncles and elders in the development of curricula so that the Arrernte culture can stay alive alongside other Australian cultures.

The Strelley Community School is an Aboriginal Independent Community School — the first one established in Western Australia in 1976 and remains the oldest continually operational school of its kind in Australia. The Nomads Charitable and Educational Foundation is the school authority responsible for articulating school policy and administration.

There are now 13 Aboriginal Independent Community Schools in Western Australia and twenty three nationally (Mack,1995). They share a common philosophy of being non-government school systems created and administered by the community. Parents and students have a proactive role in determining school policies.

This project was designed to enhance the academic success and profiles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) through increased proficiency and awareness of computer technology. The program attempted to establish a community of practice with technology, that focused on teaching and mentoring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students by supporting their use of computer technology. Prior to this project, there was no sound base of support for encouraging the use of technology with this group of students in the university and thus they were reluctant and apprehensive about its use in their studies.

Initially, we focused on the development of the students' proficiency in word processing so that they could apply their newly learned skills directly to their coursework and assessment in the specific degree that they were studying. Secondly, we introduced the students to the Internet and finally we assisted them with the location of information in the Library and from other sources. Consequently, the key notions of the project related primarily to improving the students' skills in writing, communications, and searching and accessing information.

This paper looks at the issue of culture and identity formation in the context of Aboriginal education. The paper provides a brief overview of traditional understandings of the word ‘culture’ before it examines current notions and the ways those understandings impact on the formation of identity. The paper concludes with a look at some of the implications of such understandings for the policy and practice of Aboriginal education.

Firstly let me introduce myself to you. My name is Irene Calgaret. I am an Aboriginal of the Nyungar people from Bunbury, Western Australia. I attend Edith Cowan University, Bunbury as a first-year student, studying English as my major.

I am the mother of three lovely daughters and the grand-mother of four wonderful grand-sons. I have been a nurse for 25 years, employed at local Government and private hospitals, and at various other small, country town hospitals in our very large state of Western Australia.

Cultures of poverty represent a worldwide phenomenon of considerable topical interest. The term designates a social grouping with low socioeconomic and cultural levels (viewed from the dominant culture's perspective), and scant social and economic status. Consequently families in disadvantaged environments are subjected to adverse factors such as poverty, cultural and geograpical isolation, membership of a non-technological cultural group, physical deficiencies, and the high mobility and uprooting of families caused by migrant labour and rapid industrialisation and resultant urbanisation. Although the various social groups in cultures of poverty may differ worldwide in certain respects, they do share some of the following common indicators: low economic and social status, a low level of education, poor housing, limited privacy, insufficient or unsuitable food, inferior occupations or unemployment, limited community involvement, and a limited potential for upward social mobility. These characteristics are indicative of social groups that are caught up in a spiral or syndrome of poverty, deprivation and cultural destitution because of their disadvantaged milieu and psychosocial impediments. For this reason they are seriously handicapped in their efforts to achieve optimal self-actualisation, to improve their chances in life, and to make an invaluable, meaningful and constructive contribution to a dynamic technocratic society.

According to this teacher, assimilation is inevitable, therefore the school should assist that process. This paper examines and presents a perspective on the extent and effect of assimilation and suggests that the negative outcomes of the education of Nyungars is a result of assimilationist teaching practices and school culture. Further, it recommends that Nyungar education be underpinned by Nyungar control of Nyungar education, which consists of the followingprinciples: Nyungar decision-makers, Nyungar teachers, Nyungar parent involvement in educational implementation and decision-making and culturally appropriate teaching methods and teaching spaces.

This report looked at the important, but contentious issue of alternative assessment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people studying at the tertiary level. Presented below, its findings give expression to the views of 47 respondents, chosen from Indigenous communities, Commonwealth and State Government departments, the tertiary education sector and business.