In the Health sector, Cross-Cultural Awareness Training has been seen as a way to improve knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to therefore improve service delivery and therapeutic care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Health personnel may have undertaken this type of training in their workplace or as part of their education in an undergraduate degree program. Other sectors additionally undertake Cross-Cultural Awareness Training for similar reasons and in similar educational settings. This paper includes the views of a selection of Aboriginal women and highlights the need to extend beyond knowledge gained through Cross-Cultural Awareness Training to Anti-Racism Training. Furthermore, that Anti-Racism Training and addressing white race privilege is required in order to address the inequities within the health system, the marginalisation and disempowerment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Despite the end of colonialism, Zimbabwean rural school teachers still find themselves trapped in the colonial pedagogic practices that undervalue the importance of rural school children's experiential knowledge in science. This article explores the beliefs and attitudes of rural primary teachers towards incorporating Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous teaching practices in science education. A case study of 10 teachers in a rural school in Zimbabwe was conducted using the observation method which was complimented with a semi-structured interview. Twenty video recordings were carried out while the teachers were conducting science lessons. Classroom interactions and communications were vividly captured and analysed, while interviews were conducted after observations to capture explanatory details that may not have been apparent during video recordings. Inductive data analysis focusing on themes relating to teachers' views and practices yielded rich and informative details. Findings indicate that teachers are reluctant to integrate Indigenous knowledge and teaching techniques as pedagogical tools. The attitudes are a result of systemic and institutional expectations on teachers.

This paper reports on implications of a research study with a group of 44 Indigenous middle school students learning the science concepts of energy and force. We found the concepts of energy and force need to be taught in English as we failed to find common comparable abstract concepts in the students' diverse Indigenous languages. Three categories of describing the concepts were identified: nine students who used scientific genre to explain and demonstrate the concepts (20%); 15 students who used limited scientific genre to explain and demonstrate the concepts in terms of direct action (35%); and 20 students who did not use scientific genre to either describe or display by direct action their knowledge of the concepts (45%).

Indigenous students learning school science navigate language negotiations before negotiating the language challenges in science learning. School science achievement is measured using Standard Australian English concept descriptors. These assessment instruments are designed to measure the student's negotiations from Standard Australian English into science. It is possible that these instruments do not adequately measure the Indigenous student's negotiations from their vernacular language into science. Developing a Creole science could empower Indigenous students learning school science to develop the capacity to successfully negotiate the language systems.

Since its inception, Problem-based learning (PBL) as a process for learning and teaching has been used to enhance many skills based courses, including education programs at Bachelor College and the Aboriginal Technical Health Worker training program at the Centre for Appropriate Technology in Alice Springs. While PBL is an approach to learning and teaching which has been designed to provide a more holistic educational process for all students, Foster and Meehane (2007) suggest that many aspects of the courses are ideally suited for Indigenous students. In particular, this approach is useful when introducing students to a subject matter which is new both in being derived from another culture and not being accessible to Indigenous parents in the past. PBL provides a flexible approach to enable motivation and involvement of the students and their community. This paper considers the benefits of PBL for learning Information Technology and presents some course templates developed to support teaching Indigenous students at school.

This paper contends that Indigenous epistemologies in educational curriculum can serve as powerful counter hegemonic action to dominant discourses. It then discusses how the implementation and application of Indigenous epistemologies in adult educational curricula can support intellectual sovereignty and positive identity construction for Indigenous wellbeing.

This article directly responds to issues impacting on the social and academic outcomes of Indigenous students that were identified in the recent review of Aboriginal Education conducted by the New South Wales Department of Education and Training (NSW DET) in partnership with New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (NSW AECG). Not surprisingly, a common theme emerging from the review was the importance of student motivation and engagement for Indigenous students of all ages. The article reports on current research into the motivation, engagement and classroom pedagogies for a sample of senior primary Indigenous students. What is of particular interest is the cultural interplay of the lived experiences of these Indigenous students with schools, teachers and classroom pedagogies. Important questions arise from an analysis of this interplay about what might “free the spirit” for these and other Indigenous students.

Cherbourg State School is some 300 kilometres northwest of Brisbane. It is situated in an Aboriginal community at Cherbourg with approximately 250 students, all of whom are Indigenous Australian children. Cherbourg State School aims to generate good academic outcomes for its students from kindergarten to Year 7 and nurture a strong and positive sense of what it means to be Aboriginal in today's society. In a context where the community continues to grapple with many social issues born of the historical processes of dispossession and disempowerment, Cherbourg State School is determined that its children can and will learn to become “Strong and Smart”. It is a journey that has been charted by Chris Sarra, the school's first Aboriginal principal, in his paper Young and Black and Deadly: Strategies for Improving Outcomes for Indigenous Students (2003), which describes how pride and expectations were engendered in the school over a four-year period from 1998. In this paper I will discuss the historical context of the school and its impact on the Indigenous people of Cherbourg. My aim here has been to consider the historical, political, social and cultural context around the creation of Cherbourg State School. I critically examine the historical records of the role of the State Government and the white settlers in the setting up and creation of the Aboriginal Reserve and later the primary school. Throughout I address an absence – a voice missing from history – the voice of the Aboriginal people. This exercise in collective memory was designed to provide an opportunity for those who have seldom been given the opportunity to tell their story. Instead of the official view of Cherbourg School it provides a narrative which restores the victims of history to a place of dignity and indeed humanity.

In this paper, I discuss several key issues – governance, employment, research, culture, anti-racism policies, curriculum, student support and student success – that are critically important in enabling universities to meet the educational needs of Indigenous peoples. I also analyse a representative sample of Australian universities and argue that Australian universities have generally failed to adequately address these key issues. Further, I compare this study to a similar study that I conducted in 2000 and analyse any similarities and differences between the two studies.

Indigenous students everywhere are known to require particular types and levels of support as they enter, and continue their studies within universities. Such support is often provided by designated support workers employed for that purpose. Our study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academic staff around Australia, however, found that teaching staff also spend considerable time and effort supporting their students' learning experiences both in and out of the classroom. Our findings suggest that this issue is multi-dimensional and complex. Outwardly, visible dimensions of Indigenous academic support roles, we found, are often just the tip of an iceberg. We argue that, while students' need for support is increasingly well documented, the informal support roles played by the few Indigenous academics have been under-reported and may not be visible, or recognised. Going further, we propose a new conceptual framework for analysing the unique context in which Indigenous academic work occurs.

This paper addresses the potential importance of assistant teachers in confronting the challenges of Indigenous literacy education. A discussion is raised with reference to a range of relevant literature, while reflections drawn from the author's involvement in evaluating the National Accelerated Literacy Program (NALP) in the Northern Territory are used to highlight an urgent need and vital opportunity to support assistant teachers – as mainstay figures in Indigenous education – in becoming “wellsprings” of literate practice and principled pedagogy. An overview of Accelerated Literacy methodology and the NALP is provided as a framework for considering how to embed strong literate practices and principled pedagogy in remote Indigenous communities through the provision of empowering professional development to Indigenous assistant teachers: facilitating for them a genuine and qualified status as literacy educators. The prospects and challenges of pursuing such an opportunity, in the context of NALP, are likewise considered.

This paper explores the role of oral language and representations in negotiating mathematical understanding. The data were gathered from two Indigenous Australian classrooms in Northern Queensland. The first classroom, a Year 6/7 consisted of 15 students whose ages range from 10 years to 12 years with eight being Aboriginal, six from Torres Strait and one from Papua New Guinea. The second classroom, a Years 4/5/6 classroom consisted of 14 Year 3/4/5 students, with eight being Aboriginal and six of Torres Strait Island origin. Both teachers had been working in this context for up to five years and were perceived by both the school community and local educational consultants as exemplary teachers of Indigenous Australian students. Data were gathered from conversations with the two teachers, and from videos of their lessons especially designed to illuminate issues they negotiate on a day-to-day basis when teaching mathematics. The results indicate that explicit consideration needs to be given to the careful development of precise mathematical language and concrete mathematical materials, the use of questioning in establishing classroom discourse, and the recognition that many of these classrooms are bilingual.

Designed as a “supplementary” tuition scheme, the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme (hereafter referred to as ITAS) is a strategic initiative of the National Indigenous Education Policy (DEET, 1989). This paper seeks to contribute to the literature of the analysis of the quality and efficacy of ITAS. Currently, the delivery of ITAS to Indigenous students requires enormous administration and commitment by the staff of Indigenous education support centres. In exploring the essential but problematic provision of ITAS to Indigenous university students, this paper provides insights into significant aspects of our program that move beyond assumptions of student deficit, by researching the quality of teaching and learning through ITAS, analysing administrative workload, and sharing innovations to our program as a result of participatory research with important ITAS stakeholders.

This paper is based on my reflections as an Indigenous academic, working at the coalface with Indigenous students in the Faculty of Business at the University of Technology Sydney. These reflections are informed through my experience of designing, facilitating and teaching a block-mode program developed specifically for Indigenous Australians – the Bachelor of Arts in Community Management and Adult Education. I speak to the challenges of developing appropriate programs for Indigenous Australians attempting to effect social change on the ground in communities and community organisations. The underlying principles, considerations, and effective strategies for program design and delivery are described. These highlight the complex role of facilitators who must manage the interface between Indigenous community contexts and knowledge, those of academic knowledge and institutional practices, and the needs of Indigenous students as learners and future professionals.

This ethnographic study tested the hypothesis that positive social interactions in sport will contribute positively to the Aboriginal identity of urban, Australian Aboriginal children. Nine male and female children aged 11-12 years were observed and interviewed. Significant responses were extracted and meanings were identified and grouped into various themes (Colaizzi, 1978). Interactions between Aboriginal participants were different from interactions with non-Aboriginal children and each provided different sources of information toward children's Aboriginal identity. The hypothesis was supported because the outcomes of interactions in sport among Aboriginal children enabled them to positively express their Aboriginal identity together in a group, speak an Aboriginal language and interact with each other in ways that further affirmed their Aboriginal identity. In comparison, non-Aboriginal peers contributed positively to Aboriginal student's self-esteem because of the positive feedback they provided in school sport. Furthermore, non-Aboriginal students' social interactions with Aboriginal peers were purposeful for making friends, acceptance and respect between each other.

This paper presents evidence collected from an evaluatory study of the Kickstart program conducted by Australian Football League (AFL) Cape York in far North Queensland. The aim of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of the Kickstart program in meeting its overall objective of enhancing lifeskills of Indigenous Australians through participation in AFL. Evidence collected via interviews with Indigenous youth, parents, teachers and Kickstart stakeholders (including community representatives) suggest mixed meanings surrounding the interpretation of “lifeskills”, and yet improvement in the education, attitudes and lifestyle choices of Indigenous youth in the selected Cape York communities.

This paper explores how the academic performance of Indigenous students has been investigated in the higher education literature and where this fits within the academic support context and teaching and learning developments in Australian universities. The authors suggest an approach to Indigenous academic skills support that equips Indigenous students with tools for managing their engagements with the content of Western disciplines. A case is made for more focussed research around Indigenous students' approaches to processing intellectual content while developing their own Indigenous standpoints.

Indigenous academics over the past decade and a half have been focusing strongly, in terms of theory development, on Indigenous epistemologies and research methodologies. What has not been given equal academic attention is the theoretical articulation of Indigenous pedagogy, not only as a valid system of knowledge and skill transfer, but also as one that conveys meaning, values and identity. In this paper, we want to explore some of the practical aspects of Indigenous pedagogy in a tertiary setting by way of a student-teacher dialogue and also discuss the wider implications of a theoretical articulation from our perspective as researchers and academics. We argue that at the intersection of the discourses on transformative pedagogy and Indigenous education in Australia lays an unexplored concept which, properly articulated and implemented, could have great benefits for all learners. Having been afforded attention elsewhere, particularly in North America, it is time to discuss Indigenous pedagogy as a teaching methodology based on Indigenous values and philosophies in Australia today.

In this article the perceptions of school experiences by male Aboriginal youth at risk of becoming in contact with the juvenile justice system are presented. These adolescent boys, from inland rural New South Wales, attend Tirkandi Inaburra Cultural and Development Centre (Tirkandi). Tirkandi is a short term residential centre designed to provide at risk boys with an opportunity to participate in strengths-based culturally appropriate educational, cultural, social and personal programs. In this study, participants give detailed accounts of schooling describing their lives as students. Their voices offer a powerful insight into the situated construction of agency and identity in classroom life, culture and learning among Aboriginal students. They serve as a window in to how perceptions and voice are socially-culturally-politically configured – both in their production and deployment. Further, they show the complexity and deeply problematic nature of how individuals' lived experiences collide across contexts when these contexts operate in isolation. The insider's voices, presented in this paper, are significant because they offer valuable insights that will encourage educators to be challenged by the relational architectures dominating teaching practices. These voices form not just the backdrop but the centerpiece for discussion in this paper.