Susan Mlcek

Competing Knowledges in Lifelong Education.

This is a discussion paper about access to, and participation in learning opportunities for Māori learners in New Zealand, and Indigenous learners in Australia. Teaching and learning practice in three separate institutional education programmes—one in New Zealand and two in Australia—highlight the problematic nature of inclusion based on competing knowledge systems and frameworks. These systems relate to differing worldviews about how knowledge is privileged and disseminated within society. One view is that whiteness behaviour, through a western worldview, is the erasure of inequality because it presents as the norm in many adult education teaching situations; quite often manifested as indulgent practice, but one that also reinforces the hegemony of normativity. In contrast, an Aboriginal/Indigenous worldview is one that places knowledge within a spiritual realm; constantly resituating the individual into the nexus between individual and cultural ties. The discussion here, is about ideas of whiteness behaviours being present in curriculum delivery, whereby mainstream ideals produce planes of engagement that encapsulate white subjectivities which are both visible and invisible, and represent just one chronology of whiteness. That is, consciously and unconsciously patterned behaviours of delivering curriculum, no matter what the discipline area, have the potential to produce accessibility and achievement, but many would argue that these same behaviours also reproduce inequalities. Ideas from the above theme, take on a whole new perspective with a focus on building workplace and academic skills to the exclusion of cultural identity development. Acquiring skills has the potential to provide another form of competence, yes, but may also undermine learner confidence in being able to transition successfully to further community or higher education programmes. For example, such development alone does little to improve and strengthen literacy, language and numeracy capability for learners to be able to access and undertake tertiary studies, but may do more to compound debates about whiteness behaviours implicit in the post-colonial criticism of ‘whose interest is being served’.

Providing post-compulsory education options through 'new-look' rural partnerships

Abstract The tree change phenomenon started around Australia from about 2003 and continues to this day, even into places like the Western Plains area of New South Wales. Relocating from the city to rural areas for a lifestyle change is attributed to this phenomenon. An ever-growing interest in post-compulsory education solutions that run parallel to this change offers tantalising scope for research and discussion, especially in the way that rural communities continue to redefine themselves in the face of sometimes seemingly insurmountable odds. At the very least, many of these communities are ‘under siege’ from the effects of environmental extremes as a result of climate change, shrinking resources, lack of access to services, and sometimes, through the effects of negative human intervention. Although there are opportunities for some individuals and particular sections of a community to prosper and get ahead, there are others who rely on strategic partnerships to offer community solutions where everyone can ‘have a go’. This paper discusses a unique type of educational partnership – a co-enrolment program – between a rural technical and further education (TAFE) college and an inland national university (Charles Sturt University), whereby the challenges of delivering post-compulsory social work education to regional and rural communities is addressed in both philosophical and pragmatic ways. The situation will be discussed from several different angles, including how the programs run both in tandem with each other as well as separately, autonomously, but with a constant level of scrutiny that is a common thread in the precariousness of rural renewal.

Decolonizing methodologies to counter ‘minority’ spaces

Abstract Māori living in Āotearoa New Zealand are strongly connected to their communities, through woven threads of genealogy [whakapapa], spirituality [wairua], language regeneration [Te Kōhanga Reo, and Kura Kaupapa Māori movements] and a distinctive Treaty of Waitangi [Te Tiriti ō Waitangi] legacy that informs relationships, expectations and guidance from past and future generations. These are part of a holistic orientation towards the force of communities and family [whānau] being able to sustain individuals-within-community. For example, utilizing whakapapa (connected layering) is about engaging in the narrative of what it means to be Māori; a stabilizing cultural identity that many non-Māori [Pākehā] find challenging to understand. Abroad, Māori are still a ‘minority culture’ as they are in NZ, and they often find themselves dispersed from the major forces of the above connectedness and unique epistemological tradition. There are touchstones to place and Indigeneity that become even more significant as they provide a means to resist the bifurcation of the self from the environment, and the individual construct from the collective. They become a crucial part of countering the diasporic anomie of being ‘away from home’. Being a member of the Māori diaspora living in Australia, I use an auto-ethnographic lens to undertake a profound decolonizing methodology in naming stories from the present and privileging stories from the past, in order to deliberately reclaim heritage.

Developing Global Perspectives and Respectful Knowledge Through International Mobility Programmes

What is at the heart of developing a global perspective? Cultural sensitivity and the principle of reciprocity are central. At Charles Sturt University, the Wiradjuri phrase “Yindyamarra Winhanganha”—“the wisdom of respectfully knowing how to live well in a world worth living in”—informs the way our social work international mobility programmes contribute to that realization. A multidimensional approach to planning and facilitation requires insightful leadership and an alignment of access and equity themes embedded throughout the curriculum. Outcomes for staff and students are life-changing; they are transformational and include critical reflection on eco-social work, human rights, and social justice within programmes that contribute in meaningful ways to host communities.