Susan L. Whatman

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.

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.

Building social and emotional efficacy to (re)engage young adolescents: capitalising on the ‘window of opportunity’

ABSTRACT Research confirms that when students disengage from learning, there is a greatly increased risk of them dropping out of school and not completing secondary education (Year 12). In an Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) report on Equity in Education [OECD. 2012. “Investing in Equity in Education Pays off”, in Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools. Paris, France: OECD. doi:10.1787/9789264130852-3-en], school dropout rates in developed countries averaged 20% and, in some countries, was as high as 25%. Lyche [2010. Taking on the Completion Challenge. A Literature Review on Policies to Prevent Dropout and Early School Leaving. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 53. OECD. doi:10.1787/5km4m2t59cmr-en] noted that school dropout does not ‘just happen’ but rather is a long process of disengagement from school. Students entering early adolescence are experiencing rapid and complex changes to their social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development that can positively or negatively affect their experience in education environments. During this time, there is also an increased expectation, both at school and at home, that young adolescents should accept greater responsibility for themselves and their learning. However, when individual students fail to regulate their behaviour or manage the increasing difficulty of the academic work, they can begin to disengage from learning and become entrenched in a downward cycle of poor academic achievement and poor social competence. With an increasing trend in young adolescents to disengage from learning, identifying how to reengage students is critical to their social and academic success. This study reports on the key features of an early intervention programme that targets young adolescent students who are already showing early signs of disengaging from school. Data show that the programme aligns with evidence-based practice and has had a positive effect in promoting and building students’ social and emotional efficacy and re-engaging them in learning.

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.

Re-Engaging 'Youth at Risk' of Disengaging from Schooling through Rugby League Club Partnership: Unpacking the Pedagogic Practices of the Titans Learning Centre.

ABSTRACT The youth learning re-engagement program known as the Titans Learning Centre (or TLC) is an approved alternative schooling program, developed in partnership with state education and a local National Rugby League (NRL) club, the ‘Titans’. Students typically in Grade Three or Four complete a 10 week program, interacting with professional A grade NRL players on a weekly basis during classroom learning time and lunch time ‘handball’ sessions. The project sought to understand the pedagogic practices of the TLC, using Bernstein’s social construction of pedagogic discourse, with its underlying instructional and regulative discourses, particularly the contribution by the players to what and how the students were learning. The ethical consent of recruiting children to the study was achieved via acceptance of a position in the program for classroom observations, with further consent sought for accessing students’ school performance data, student and parent surveys and interviews. Using case study methodology, Productive Pedagogies classroom audits (n = 26) were adapted for classroom observation. Interviews with relevant program stakeholders were conducted, including players (n = 12), NRL game development staff (n = 1) and teachers and teacher aides (n = 4). The findings revealed the pedagogic approaches of teachers and NRL players emphasised making regulative discourses visible to these young learners, developing supportive classroom environments and building students’ sense of connectedness to learning. The players articulated a genuine sense of contribution to the lives of the young learners and saw themselves as role models. The use of high profile athletes in youth re-engagement programs has been questioned in recent times, particularly their effectiveness in terms of student learning outcomes over time. However, we conclude that the depth of involvement in pedagogic action connected to student learning indeed enabled the NRL players to be considered role models for youth re-engagement in learning.

Postcolonial, decolonial research dilemmas: fieldwork in Australian Indigenous contexts

We come to this article as non-Indigenous teacher educators working as qualitative researchers in postcolonial/decolonial (Mignolo, 2000) times. We explore matters related to schooling in remote Australian Indigenous communities. In this article, we respond to Delamont’s invitation for qualitative researchers to revisit (Delamont and Hamilton, 1984) and think reflexively (Delamont, 2009) about our field work research methods. In doing so, attention is drawn to research processes involved with observing, narrating and writing lives and experiences. We highlight matters related to sequencing dilemmas (Delamont, 2009), the need to locate the self-as-researcher in the social (Delamont, 2007), and calling out ethical tensions associated with the ‘catch 22’ of confidentiality and acknowledgement (Delamont, 2007). Two separate researcher recounts of field notes are used to render visible our reflexive thinking as we attempt to negotiate Western educational research ethics policies and procedures and ways of knowing and being in Indigenous contexts.

Establishing Online Communities of Practice: The Case of a Virtual Sports Coaching Community

This chapter reports on a pedagogical innovation that aimed to develop a community of practice amongst sports coaches around the world who were completing an online postgraduate course of study. Strategies that reflected diverse understandings of rapport and relational teaching were introduced across 2015. Drawing upon understandings of practice (Kemmis et al., Changing practices, changing education, Singapore, Springer, 2014) and conditions or constraints upon practice—practice architectures (Kemmis and Grootenboer, Enabling praxis: Challenges for education, Amsterdam, Sense, 2008, pp. 37–62)—the chapter outlines how the sayings, doings and relatings of this community were shaped and shifted by the pedagogical decision-making of the lecturer. Data include students’ assessed contributions to online discussion, peer reviews, anonymous surveys, learning management system analytics and the lecturer’s reflections. Findings show that whilst building a sense of community and rapport in an asynchronous online environment is challenging, it is possible and, indeed, expected.