Jack Frawley

Indigenous Pathways and Transitions into Higher Education: An Introduction

University is not for everyone, but a university should be for everyone. To a certain extent, the choice not to participate in higher education should be respected given that there are other avenues and reasons to participate in education and employment that are culturally, socially and/or economically important for society. Those who choose to pursue higher education should do so knowing that there are multiple pathways into higher education and, once there, appropriate support is provided for a successful transition.

You’ve Got to Put Your Stamp on Things: A Rippling Story of Success

This chapter addresses Indigenous student equity in higher education by focussing on a narrative account of one Indigenous student’s successful transition into and completion of higher education studies. Throughout Australia, there have been many ‘small successes’ of Indigenous individuals who have completed higher education, but these stories are largely absent from the literature. There has, instead, been a strong focus on the barriers and challenges to Indigenous participation, and the high attrition rate. In a recent report, ‘“Can’t be what you can’t see”: the transition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students into higher education’, it was stated that success exists on a spectrum defined by individual and collective terms, as well as a range of measures utilised by universities and government departments. Success was viewed not so much as measured outcomes but more as a ‘ripple effect of many small successes’. Research shows that to attain a sense of success requires a high level of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is not created by easy success; it requires experience in overcoming obstacles and challenging situations through maintained effort and persistence. Self-efficacy is informed by four principal sources: performance accomplishments, modelling, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. Each of these sources provides rich themes for personal narratives of success.

Indigenous Knowledges, Graduate Attributes and Recognition of Prior Learning for Advanced Standing: Tensions Within the Academy

Indigenous Knowledges (IK) is now considered in many universities to be essential to the academy and is referenced in individual universities’ Indigenous Education Statements, Reconciliation Action Plans and/or strategic plans or frameworks. Many universities report on how IK is put into practice through teaching and learning initiatives; however, this does not occur without tensions. These tensions exist around how IK is defined, taught and assessed, and how graduate attributes are determined. Most Australian universities recognise that previous formal study and life experiences contribute to higher education study, and have in place a procedure that recognises the contribution of prior learning for advanced standing to account for this; however, in many cases the rhetoric of transformation does not match the practice. IK within the academy calls for transformative practice, not just within teaching and learning, but practice that is formally assessed and measured at the entry and exit levels, and this should include a process that recognises the contribution of prior learning for advanced standing.

From Policy to Practice in Higher Education: Cross-Cutting Issues in Indigenous Pathways, Transition and Participation

An aim of this volume is to acknowledge the diverse approaches and strategies used to support and enhance pathways and transitions into higher education for Indigenous learners. Authors have approached this from various standpoints and so this book has a focus on social justice and equity issues in Australian and international contexts, and cross-cuts a range of disciplines including humanities, social sciences, education and public policy. Issues raised in this volume include transitions and pathways policy, theory and practice, but are very much grounded in the need for a transformative academy, one which truly engages with communities and has an intercultural foundation. Nakata (2002) views the academy as a ‘cultural interface’ where there is an ‘intersection of Western and Indigenous domains… the place where we live and learn, the place that conditions our lives, the place that shapes our futures and more to the point the place where we are active agents in our own lives – where we make our decisions – our lifeworld’. The ‘cultural interface’ has commonalities with the concepts of ‘both ways’ (Wunungmurra 1989; Marika et al. 1992; Ober and Bat 2007) and ‘interculturalism’ (Abdallah-Pretceille 2006; Coll 2004; Frawley and Fasoli 2012) as these are concerned with similar notions of space where systems, organisations, communities and people meet and interact, where there is balance, where knowledge is negotiated and where new knowledge is shared equally. This is the challenge for higher education: that within the cultural interface context, each university is a place for everyone.