We are very proud to present this timely and significant Special Issue of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, guest edited by Katelyn Barney (The University of Queensland), Cindy Shannon (The University of Queensland) and Martin Nakata (The University of New South Wales). This collection of articles focuses on the activities of the Australian Indigenous Studies Learning and Teaching Network, an initiative funded by the Office for Teaching and Learning. The Australian Indigenous Studies Learning and Teaching Network was formed to bring leaders and early career academics in the field together to build relationships, debate and discuss central issues, and explore and share teaching and learning strategies in the discipline at tertiary level. These discussions at once untangle and re-entangle the processes, pedagogies and politics at play when Indigenous Studies becomes defined as a discipline.

The Australian Indigenous Studies Learning and Teaching Network was established in 2011 to develop a focused national network of scholars to engage in key discussions about teaching Indigenous Studies at tertiary level. Funded by the Office for Learning and Teaching (2011–14), the Network combines leaders and early career academics and builds relationships between scholars in the discipline, identifies key issues and explores effective teaching and learning approaches. This introductory essay places this Special Issue of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education (AJIE) in context by exploring the aims and outcomes of the Network along with the positioning of the Network team. It also examines key challenges for the Network and possible future directions.

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.

Indigenous Studies can be both exciting and challenging for teachers and students. This article will examine how an existing learning theory can be harnessed to help teachers better understand these challenges and manage some frequently seen student behaviours. Much of the discussion in Indigenous Studies pedagogy to date has focused on the curriculum and what we should be teaching, with a growing body of literature, for example, related to the inclusion of Indigenous Knowledges. However, there is less written about how students learn in Indigenous Studies. Drawing on the notion of the Cultural Interface and the ‘zone of proximal development’ to highlight the complexity of Indigenous Studies classrooms as a site of necessary struggle for students, the article considers possibilities for reconceptualising and reorienting teaching. The paper explores using the threshold concepts framework to gather evidence about how students learn or indeed don't learn, in Indigenous Studies. Threshold concepts are key ideas, critical to mastering discipline specific knowledge, which facilitate students’ ability to think like a discipline experts.

This article explores the implementation of PEARL (Political, Embodied, Active, and Reflective Learning) in two courses at The University of Queensland: a first-year introductory Indigenous Studies course and a second year Indigenous Education course. We draw on findings from a 2-year (2010–2011) Office for Learning and Teaching (then ALTC) funded curriculum renewal project and findings from a pilot project (2013) implementing PEARL in a compulsory Indigenous Education course for all pre-service teacher educators in primary and secondary teacher training at The University of Queensland. Drawing transformative education theory into conversation with critical pedagogy and anti-colonial/racist education, we share student data from focus groups, questionnaires and reflective journals to examine the shift in students’ understanding of Indigenous issues, histories and peoples. Finally, we reflect on the ways the results hold great potential for the further implementation of PEARL into other university level courses, specifically in relation to a ‘pedagogy of solidarity’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

As undergraduate curriculum is increasingly required to meet a range of intellectual, professional practice and personal learning outcomes, what purpose does Australian Aboriginal Studies have in curriculum? Most Australian universities are currently in the process of developing institution-wide approaches to Indigenous Australian content in undergraduate curricula. One Australian university began this task by mapping how, where and why Indigenous perspectives, issues and content are included in undergraduate curriculum. This article reports on the findings of the mapping of Indigenous content and approaches to teaching at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and thereby contributes to a strengths-based approach to understanding the purpose of Indigenous perspectives and issues in undergraduate curricula.

This article takes the form of an interview with Sandy O’Sullivan, who is a partner on the Australian Indigenous Studies Learning and Teaching Network, about key issues that have arisen through Network discussions. She is a Wiradjuri woman and a Senior Aboriginal researcher at the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education. O’Sullivan emphasises the strengths of the Network and difficulties the Network participants have had in defining ‘Indigenous Studies’. She also discusses the important work for the Network to do into the future, to continue to strengthen relationships between educators and improve teaching and learning of Indigenous Studies at tertiary level.

Universities in Australia are expanding their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies programs to include Indigenous populations from around the globe. This is also the case for the Indigenous Studies Unit at the University of Wollongong (UOW). Although systems of nomenclature in Indigenous Studies seek to be respectful of difference, the politics of naming in the global context raises some complexities worthy of discussion. In this article, four scholars discuss the politics of naming in relation to teaching a joint Indigenous Studies subject at the UOW and Northern Arizona University.