The negative trend of enrolment of Indigenous students into tertiary study indicates gaps between their current achievement and knowledge levels and university requirements for admission. This study was designed to determine the perceived needs, attitudes and knowledge of Indigenous secondary school students when considering admission to university; investigate remedial strategies in order to make university a more attractive choice for Indigenous students; and ascertain the types of assistance and support the Indigenous students would like to receive in order to meet the enrolment requirements as well as completion of study at university.

Focus groups were conducted with 50 Indigenous students in Years 10 to 12 within the Toowoomba District and surveys conducted with 30 first year Indigenous undergraduate and Indigenous Higher Education Pathways Program (IHEPP) students at the University of Southern Queensland.

The findings of the research illustrated that the school students were not aware of the IHEPP and university programs. Scholarships and bursaries need to be developed and publicised. Tutorial assistance and learning support (e.g., assignment preparation, multicultural activities, childcare facilities, group accommodation) needs to be promoted. Furthermore, there is a need for the university to establish and maintain relationships with local Indigenous communities and understand the “cultural dimension” impacting on Indigenous students and their families.

This article explores student and teacher engagement with Australian Indigenous Studies. In this article I identify key themes in the film September (2007) that demonstrate how the film can be used as a catalyst for student learning and discussion. Critical whiteness theory provides a framework to explore three themes, the invisibility of whiteness, the reachability of whiteness and the cultural interface. Critical whiteness theory identifies the way in which non-Indigenous people centralise and normalise whiteness within colonised societies, and particularly considers how white privilege is maintained. Interpreting the film September through the lens of critical whiteness theory contributes to translating curriculum and social justice aims of education into action.

Sound-field amplification is an educational tool that allows control of the acoustic environment in a classroom. Teachers wear small microphones that transmit sound to a receiver system attached to loudspeakers around the classroom. The goal of sound-field amplification is to amplify the teacher’s voice by a few decibels, and to provide uniform amplification throughout the classroom without making speech too loud for normal hearing children. This report discusses the major findings of a study which investigated the effects of sound-field amplification intervention on the communication naturally occurring in the classrooms of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. The audiological findings of the sample population of children are presented, as well as details of the classroom acoustic environment. Sixty-seven percent of the children began the field trials with a slight hearing loss. The results confirmed the extremely noisy and reverberant conditions in which teachers and children are operating on a daily basis. The findings indicated that sound-field amplification intervention encouraged the children to interact with teachers and peers in a proactive way. Teachers identified voice-related factors to be a major personal benefit of the systems.

Enacting high expectations for all students in the classroom is a complex undertaking. Underlying, out-of-awareness assumptions may lead to actions, behaviours or pedagogic choices that do not support these high expectations beliefs and intentions. For Indigenous education, this is compounded by public and professional discourses around deficit positioning, and by historical conditioning, where many Indigenous students do not see achieving in school as part of their cultural identity. High expectations are usually considered as a performance agenda — in terms of effort, learning and achievement. In this paper, we introduce the concept of high-expectations relationships where viewing and enacting high expectations through a relational lens equips educators with strategies to support such performance outcomes. We describe this relational lens where fair, socially just relating establishes a relational space of trust, thus enabling both student motivation and the firm, critically reflective relating necessary for quality learning. Using the voices of educators, we describe how high-expectations relationships can promote collegiate staff environments, strong teacher–student relationships and trusting and supportive relationships with parents and carers. We show how these positive educational attributes of any school community, seeded through a focus on high-expectations relationships, work to support the performance outcomes of a high-expectations educational agenda.

Australian undergraduate programmes implementing Indigenous studies courses suggest transformative educational outcomes for students; however, the mechanism behind this is largely unknown. To begin to address this, we obtained baseline data upon entry to tertiary education (Time 1) and follow-up data upon completion of an Indigenous studies health unit (Time 2) on student learning approaches, student-teacher rapport, classroom community, critical reflection (CR) and transformative experiences within the unit. Three-hundred-thirty-six health science first-year students (273 females, 63 males) completed anonymous in-class paper questionnaires at both time points. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that (a) CR was the strongest predictor of transformative learning experiences, (b) the relationship between deep learning approach upon entry to tertiary education and transformative learning experiences was mediated by CR and (c) rapport and classroom community accounted for significant variance in CR. These results suggest that students benefit from tutors’ ability to develop rapport and classroom community, leading to greater capacity for student CR. This in turn promotes transformative learning possibilities within the Indigenous studies learning environment. These findings provide a further rationale for institutions to embed Indigenous knowledge into courses and highlight the importance of evaluating their effect and quality.

There are acceptable ways of studying Indigenous issues as a non-Indigenous scholar. Still, the role and identity of the scholar is important and debated within the study of Indigenous issues. The purpose of this article is to accept, but explore the premise of a distinction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous. I claim the possibility of taking a decentred space within Indigenous studies and move towards a methodological and theoretical foundation that is informed by scholars with different stances and backgrounds. A key approach is the intersectional approach to privilege. Neither privilege/oppression, Indigenous/non-Indigenous, nor insider/outsider are binary relations. From Indigenous methodologies such as kaupapa Māori, I emphasise, in particular, the local starting point, arguing that this is the way to transfer relevant issues to a bigger context.

The poor health status of Australia’s Indigenous people is well-documented, as are the links between health and education. Aboriginal communities recognise the utmost importance of improving educational, physical, social and economic well-being in an environment where disproportionate numbers of Aboriginal students fail to complete secondary schooling. The aim of this paper is to highlight the issues of access, participation, retention and outcomes for Indigenous students wishing to study or currently studying health courses at a tertiary level. This project used a qualitative descriptive approach, conducting in-depth interviews with a number of key stakeholders and students in rural Victoria. Sixteen participants were interviewed, 14 of whom were from the Indigenous community.

Participants identified key issues that were linked to the university and broader community environment. Factors in the university environment included lack of Indigenous staff within the mainstream university system, limited support and culturally inappropriate teaching that lead to negative learning experiences and poor motivation to continue with education. In the broader community, the isolating experience of leaving close-knit rural communities and the influence of past experiences on students’ aspirations for tertiary education was highlighted. The importance of community support and liaison with the university and marketing of health courses to the Indigenous communities in the region were key issues that participants identified as needing further attention.

This paper explores an Indigenous research methodology, the tivaevae model, and its application within the Cook Islands education system. The article will argue that the cultural values embedded within its framework allow for the successful implementation of this Indigenous methodology. The model draws from tivaevae, or artistic quilting, and is both an applique process and a product of the Cook Islands. It is unique to the Cook Islands and plays an important part in the lives of Cook Islanders. The tivaevae model will be explained in detail, describing how patchwork creative pieces come together to create a story and can be used as a metaphor of the past, present and future integration of social, historical, spiritual, religious, economic and political representations of Cook Island culture. Further, the paper will then make links with the model to teaching and learning, by exploring secondary schools’ health and physical education policy and practices. Finally, the efficacy of the model in this context and its research implications will then be discussed.

The Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC)-funded project ‘Exploring Problem-Based Learning Pedagogy as Transformative Education in Indigenous Australian Studies’ raised a number of issues that resonated with concerns we have had as professionals engaged in teaching and researching Australian Indigenous studies and Indigenous education. In this discursive paper we air some of the concerns we share which emerge from our collective research and teaching interests. We argue that Australian Indigenous studies and Indigenous education are too frequently collapsed or used interchangeably, and while there is tension between these areas rather than see as a problem we chose to interrogate this and argue for the potential for fruitful intellectual collaboration. This article problematises pedagogy and finds that sustained effort needs to be made to understand how pedagogical approaches to Australian Indigenous studies and Indigenous education are guiding and shaping each cognate area.

This article explores the shift in terminology that occurred in a 2-year Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC)-funded curriculum renewal project that set out to broadly explore current teaching and learning practice in Indigenous Australian studies (www.teaching4change.edu.au). While we started with the term ‘Problem-Based Learning’, it became clear as the project progressed that the terminology we were using was not politically or pedagogically appropriate. As the data began to reveal, the research team became increasingly uncomfortable with the colonial underpinnings and associations of the term ‘Problem-Based Learning’ (PBL), and began to explore the possibility of redefining what we do as something else entirely. A key outcome of the project was that PBL became PEARL, to describe the Political, Embodied, Active, and Reflective aspects of this teaching and learning approach in Indigenous Australian studies. The shift from PBL to PEARL was unexpected, but has resulted in exciting possibilities for migrating and extending theories of teaching and learning in Indigenous Australian studies into critical pedagogy, critical race theory and transformative education. Drawing on critical pedagogy, critical race theory and transformative education theory, this article explores the rationale behind the shift in terminology from PBL to PEARL. We also draw on student data from focus groups, questionnaires and lecturer reflection to examine the ways the results from this project hold great potential for the further implementation of PEARL into primary and secondary classrooms, specifically in relation to pedagogical practice in embedding Indigenous perspectives.

This study examined teachers’ perceptions of the role of teacher aides in mathematics classrooms in rural and remote Indigenous communities. Twelve teachers from three schools in rural and remote Queensland participated in the study. The results from the first year of the project indicated that there were differences in how these teachers worked with their teacher aides, particularly the specific roles assigned to them in the mathematics classroom, with non-Indigenous teacher aides being given greater responsibilities for student learning and Indigenous teacher aides for behavioural management. As a result of teacher aide in-service on mathematics learning, teachers’ perception of the Indigenous teacher aides changed, resulting in each being given greater responsibility for student learning.

Recent reports on Indigenous education have revealed that high proportions of students have been placed in special classes for intellectual disability or behaviour disorders. This is not an isolated phenomenon. Indigenous students in Canada and Romani children in Europe are also disproportionately represented in special schooling. This paper asks whether systemic racism, which fails to perceive cultural differences between the ethos of Australian educational systems and the experiences and abilities of Indigenous students, is the catalyst for placing many Indigenous students in special schooling, away from the mainstream. The paper applies an analysis based on anti-discrimination law to argue that while allocation on the basis of intellectual disability or behaviour disorders may not be deliberate racism, the criteria developed for the allocation may be measuring conformity to the dominant culture. If the policies underlying this segregation are unreasonable in the circumstances, they could constitute indirect racial discrimination against Indigenous students. Educational authorities could be liable in law, even though the effect on Indigenous students is unintentional and said to be for the students’ “own good”.

This is a reflective opinion piece, on our efforts in Australia to achieve alignment between the goals of Indigenous self-determination, Indigenous studies programmes and decolonising theory for an open and critical dialogue in south–south scholarship agendas. In this spirit, extant approaches to Indigenous studies in the Australian higher education context are questioned, the scholarship recruited for this is challenged, and its advocated role in the education of all students is raised as a major concern.

The challenges of finding more productive ways of teaching and learning in Australian Indigenous Studies have been a key focal point for the Australian Indigenous Studies Learning and Teaching Network. This article contributes to this discussion by drawing attention to new possibilities for teaching and learning practices amid the priority being given to the more practice-oriented educational approaches for future professionals and the cultural competencies of all students and staff. We explore courses sequenced as Indigenous Studies Majors and discuss two different conceptualisations for framing teaching and learning in Indigenous Studies courses — decolonising theory and cultural interface theory — and the implications for some of the teaching and learning practices they facilitate, including the positioning of students and the development of dispositions for future professional practice. We suggest that those academic teams who structure course sequences in Indigenous Studies have a role to play in experimenting with shifts in teaching and learning frameworks and the design of course sequences to encourage approaches that are more focused on developing students’ breadth and depth of knowledge of the field, as well as their capacities for deeper engagements with Indigenous thought and the scholarly disciplines.

Socially accountable health curricula, designed to decrease Aboriginal health inequities through the transformation of health professional students into culturally safe practitioners, has become a focal point for health professional programmes. Despite this inclusion in health curricula there remains the question of how to best assess students in this area in relation to the concept, of cultural safety and transformative unlearning, to facilitate attitudinal change. To address this question, this study developed a research questionnaire to measure thematic areas of transformative unlearning, cultural safety and critical thinking in Aboriginal Health for application on undergraduate and postgraduate students and faculty staff. The Likert-scale questionnaire was developed and validated through face and content validity. Test–retest methodology was utilised to determine stability and reliability of the questionnaire with 40 participants. The extent of agreement and reliability were determined through weighted kappa and intraclass correlation coefficient. Exploratory factor analysis was calculated to determine construct validity for questionnaire items. For the overall population subset the tool met good standards of reliability and validity, with 11 of the 15 items reaching moderate agreement (κ > 0.6) and an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.72, suggesting substantial agreement. Cronbach's alpha was calculated above 0.7 for the thematic areas. The majority of items provided high factor loadings, low loading items will be reviewed to strengthen the tool, where validations of the revised tool with a larger cohort will allow future use to compare and determine effective teaching methodologies in Aboriginal health and cultural safety curricula.

This article reports on a large mixed methods research project that investigated the conditions of success for Aboriginal school students. The article presents the qualitative case study component of the research. It details the work of four schools identified as successful for Aboriginal students with respect to social and academic outcomes, and showed what was common and contextually different in their relationships with community and their approaches to curriculum and pedagogy. The article shows there were eight common themes that emerged in the analysis of the schools’ approaches, and these themes are considered key indicators of the ‘seeding success’.

Drawing on Gregory Cajete’s (1994, p. 55) explanation of “Pathway” (Path denoting structure, Way implying a process), a research framework was developed exploring Aboriginal women’s perceptions and experiences of health and health services. Developing the research methodology was like laying out the Path, as a well thought out structure or the plan for the research. It relates as an external landscape, not just in terms of the Path itself, but also the research process within the landscape of the site of the research. The Way, being the process, involved enabling a clear, thought out process for me to follow and additionally one for me within my Self. The research was informed and guided by Aboriginal women. I also travelled an internal landscape in the journey of the Self, within my own learning and coming to terms with myself as an Indigenous researcher within the Pathway.

While there has been much debate (Christie et al., 1987; Eckermann, 1988; Kleinfield and Nelson, 1991; Gibson, 1993; Ulstrup, 1994; Guild, 1994; Nicholls et al., 1995) on the in-appropriateness of applying culturally descriptive ‘learning styles’ in meeting the educational needs of Indigenous students, the reality of the existence of individual life experiences of Indigenous Australians has often been overlooked. That omission diminishes the dominant role which socio-cultural considerations have taken in past colonising practices with the effects of those practices often having become transgenerational among individuals today. This paper attempts to move on from that debate, questioning the validity of a canon that could be accused of merely perpetuating colonial paradigms and failing to acknowledge the integrity of the individual. The importance of determining and establishing effective communication is the key in understanding, and catering for, differing educational approaches, in the past labelled teaching and learning ‘styles’. Consequently, cultural awareness which is inclusive of the diversity of Indigenous Australians is still necessary in opening and maintaining that communication between educational stakeholders in the school community.

In the era of Indigenising the academy, health disciplines like nursing are required to teach Indigenous peoples' health, history and culture in their undergraduate programmes in order to meet national accreditation standards. This inclusion of Indigenous peoples' perspectives within nursing education towards registration thus qualifies respective Indigenous perspectives as legitimate parts of the Australian nursing profession's scope of practice, which may sound like a reason to celebrate. However, caution should be exercised. Indigenous and Western knowledge systems are incommensurable. The practice of defining Indigenous perspectives for placements within curricula could be likened to extractive colonialism. Thus, the commodifying of Indigenous perspectives in creating competitive education products is problematic. As a Meriam and Wuthathi man who grew up in the Zenadth Kes (Torres Straits) now living and working on Turrbul and Yuggera country, and as a nurse academic, being immersed in this space of contentions is my reality. In order to enhance the education preparation of nursing students I teach, while simultaneously protect my embodied Indigenous knowledges and the Indigenous perspectives included in the curricula I teach, I privilege Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing in my teaching practice. This yarn is about my experience in this cultural interface.

Over the 10 years of ‘Closing the Gap’, several interventions designed to improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have been trialled. In 2014 the Australian Government announced the ‘Flexible Literacy for Remote Primary Schools Programme’ (FLFRPSP) which was designed primarily to improve the literacy outcomes of students in remote schools with mostly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. The programme, using Direct Instruction (DI) or Explicit Direct Instruction, was extended to 2019 with more than $30 million invested. By 2017, 34 remote schools were participating in the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia. This paper analyses My School data for 25 ‘very remote’ FLFRPSP schools with more than 80% Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander students. It considers Year 3 and 5 NAPLAN reading results and attendance rates for participating and non-participating primary schools in the 3 years before the programme's implementation and compares them with results since. Findings show that, compared to very remote schools without FLFRPSP, the programme has not improved students' literacy abilities and results. Attendance rates for intervention schools have declined faster than for non-intervention schools. The paper questions the ethics of policy implementation and the role of evidence as a tool for accountability.