Juliana M. McLaughlin

The potential of critical race theory in decolonizing university curricula

This paper critiques our experiences as non-Indigenous Australian educators of working with numerous embedding Indigenous perspectives curricular projects at an Australian university. Reporting on these project outcomes alone, while useful in identifying limitations, does not illustrate ways in which future embedding and decolonizing projects can persist and evolve. Deeper analysis is required of the ways in which Indigenous knowledge and perspectives are perceived, and what “embedding” Indigenous Knowledge in university curricula truly means to various educational stakeholders. To achieve a deeper analysis and propose ways to invigorate the continuing decolonization of Australian university curricula, this paper critically interrogates the methodology and conceptualization of Indigenous knowledge in embedding Indigenous perspectives (EIP) in the university curriculum using tenets of critical race theory. Accordingly, we conduct this analysis from the standpoint that EIP should not subscribe to the luxury of independence of scholarship from politics and activism. The learning objective is to create a space to legitimize politics in the intellectual/academic realm. We conclude by arguing that critical race theorys emancipatory, future and action-oriented goals for curricula would enhance effective and sustainable embedding initiatives, and ultimately, preventing such initiatives from returning to the status quo.

Acquaintance or partner? Social economy organizations, institutional logics and regional development in Australia

The social economy as a regional development actor is gaining greater attention given its purported ability to address social and environmental problems. This growth in interest is occurring within a global environment that is calling for a more holistic understanding of development compared to traditionally economic-centric conceptions. While regional development policies and practices have long considered for-profit businesses as agents for regional growth, there is a relatively limited understanding of the role of the social economy as a development actor. The institutional environment is a large determinant of all kinds of entrepreneurial activity, and therefore understanding the relationships between the social economy and broader regional development processes is warranted. This paper moves beyond suggestions of an economic-centric focus of regional development by utilizing institutional logics as a theoretical framework for understanding the role of social enterprises in regional development. A multiple case study of ten social enterprises in two regional locations in Australia suggests that social enterprises can represent competing logics to economic-centric institutional values and systems. The paper argues that dominant institutional logics can promote or constrain the inter-play between the social and the economic aspects of development, in the context of social enterprises.

Beyond Dependency Theory: A postcolonial analysis of educating Papua New Guinean high school students in Australian schools

This paper explores the social and educational implications of the Secondary Schools Scholarship Project (SSSP) in which Australia gave over 1,000 adolescents from Papua New Guinea three-year scholarships to study in Australian high schools. Drawing from postcolonial theory, the paper uses concepts of ambivalence, hybridity, hegemony, contradiction, and national discourse to analyse an array of issues which would not be in the purview of dependency theory. These issues include not only the cultural “border-crossings” and tensions experienced by the Papua New Guinean scholarship winners during their Australian sojourn and return to Papua New Guinea, but also the complex ambiguities in the outcomes and implications of a foreign aid project for a decolonising country. The scholarship programme illustrates the politics of foreign aid in education, including the contradictions of receiving aid from a donor country which is garnering substantial benefits from the recipient country, and the complexity of the postcolonial challenge of utilising this aid in a way that meets national educational goals in a globalising world.

Quality and Efficacy of the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme (ITAS) for University Students

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 effi cacy 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 signifi cant 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.

Introduction : issues in (re)contesting Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous studies

The formalised naming and positioning of Indigenous Australian standpoint within the academy is relatively new and borrows from feminist traditions (Nakata, 2002; Rigney, 1997). Articulating one’s own standpoint is recognition of one’s subject position and proponents of standpoint contend that one’s own identity and subject position is implicated in one’s practice within the academy. The ready acceptance of Indigenous Australian standpoint is testimony to the discontent experienced by Indigenous Australians and Indigenous peoples from other places in relation to the disciplines that formerly held principal authority in relation to knowledge-building about Indigenous peoples, chief amongst these is of course anthropology and other social sciences. Off the back of this, Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous Studies are gaining traction, incremental change is revolution without the “r”, and today’s academics who are Indigenous have got the space to centre Indigenous knowledge in our work within the academy. Academics who are non-Indigenous to Australia and other places have also got the opportunity to consolidate their position within the academy on shifted ground. This special supplementary edition of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education offers a significant new contribution to this shifted ground and is guest edited by Sandra Phillips, Jean Phillips, Sue Whatman and Juliana McLaughlin of the Oodgeroo Unit of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The edition is the published outcome from the inaugural (Re)Contesting Indigenous Knowledges and Indigenous Studies Conference hosted by the Oodgeroo Unit in 2006, and the papers bound in this supplementary edition have been blind-refereed and revised for publication. Authors for this Volume submitted from across Australia, South Africa, Norway, Thailand and Canada. This 2006 conference was the first of a series of international conferences planned around the themes of Indigenous studies and Indigenous knowledge. The second conference is being hosted by Jumbunna House of Learning, University of Technology Sydney, in July, 2007, with a third slated for 2008.

Indigenous knowledges as a way to disrupt norms in physical education teacher education

ABSTRACT The maintenance and reproduction of prevailing hegemonic norms have been well explored in physical education teacher education (PETE). A related problem has been the exclusion of Indigenous knowledges around health and physical education (HPE) in students’ experiences of HPE and PETE. The danger is that certain ways of being and becoming a PE teacher, other than the sporty, fit, healthy (and white) teacher, are excluded, positioning other preservice teachers’ experiences, knowledges and ways to teach as deficient. In this paper, we discuss findings from an investigation (Australian Office for Learning and Teaching CG10-1718) into the HPE practicum experiences of Indigenous Australian preservice teachers, illustrating the resources they bring to Australian HPE and PETE through the lens of John’s Dewey’s notion of growth and Todd’s [(2014). Between body and spirit: The liminality of pedagogical relationships. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 48(2), 231–245] ideas of liminality of pedagogical relations. This enables us to discuss Indigenous preservice teachers’ capacity in disrupting norms in HPE and fostering the liminality of the pedagogical relations in PETE.

Embedding Indigenous Knowledges

In this chapter we propose that there are certain conditions that enable the agency of pre-service teachers to enact curriculum decision-making within their pedagogical relationships with their supervising teachers as they endeavour to embed Indigenous knowledges (IK) during the teaching practicum. The case study, underpinned by decolonising methodologies, centred upon pre-service teacher preparation at one Australian university, where we investigated how role modelling in urban and remote schools occurred in the learning and teaching relationships between pre-service teachers on practicum and their supervising teachers.