The Strelley Community School is an Aboriginal Independent Community School — the first one established in Western Australia in 1976 and remains the oldest continually operational school of its kind in Australia. The Nomads Charitable and Educational Foundation is the school authority responsible for articulating school policy and administration.

There are now 13 Aboriginal Independent Community Schools in Western Australia and twenty three nationally (Mack,1995). They share a common philosophy of being non-government school systems created and administered by the community. Parents and students have a proactive role in determining school policies.

The majority of the 27,000 Aborigines in the Northern Territory live in remote communities and on cattle stations, or are grouped around some of the smaller rural towns that are scattered through the 1,347,500 square kilometres of the Northern Territory. These extremely isolated communities may vary in size from, say, one hundred to over one thousand people. There is vast climatic and geographical variation, too, between the tropical communities around the beaches that fringe the Arafura sea, and those in the desert where the harsher climate and terrain have an appeal of their own to those who live there.

To educate 7,000 Aboriginal children, the Northern Territory endeavours to maintain 43 schools in Aboriginal communities, plus another 27 which are located on pastoral properties. Apart from two residential colleges located at Alice Springs and Darwin, which cater for secondary-age Aboriginal students, all Aboriginal schools could be regarded as remote, isolated by geographical distance from the larger centres. These 70 schools present complex logistical problems to those who supply and maintain buildings, equipment and staff. However, although formidable, the problems associated with remoteness are insignificant when compared with the social, cultural and linguistic factors that create distance between these traditionally oriented Aboriginal children and our western style of education.

Some Indigenous students are at risk of academic failure and science teachers have a role in salvaging these equally able students. This article firstly elucidates the research entailed in Indigenous science education in Australia and beyond. Secondly, it reviews the cultural and language barriers when learning science, faced by middle and senior year students of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. Finally, it outlines the effective strategies that science teachers could adopt to better engage these students in learning school science. In summary, the article will highlight the need for teachers to realise the importance of crossing borders from teachers' school science culture to students' culture. This holds implications for teaching practice and teacher identity in today's classroom.

This article reports on what happened when a Rumaki pūtaiao kaiako (Science) teacher at a New Zealand high school trialled the use of creative narratives with her Year-10 students as a way of developing their understanding of the human digestive system. These students were members of the school's Māori immersion unit, and creative narratives were in part utilised as a bridge between science discourse and the cultural knowledges these students brought to their learning. In this case study, students developed ‘Tomato Pip’ narratives through four versions, which told the story of a tomato pip travelling through the human digestive system. Word-count data based on these versions and from a summative test were analysed and correlations found between test scores and three categories of word-count total (total words, total science words and total discrete science words). A discourse analysis of one student's narratives identified two distinct voices in these texts: the personal narrator and the emerging biologist. Questionnaire and focus-group data indicated that the use of creative narratives was both motivational to these students and effective as a bridge into science discourse mastery. It is argued that the findings have implications for disciplinary literacy theory, Indigenous education and science instruction.

The Aboriginal consultative group to the Schools Commission in their report, Education for Aborigines, made the following statement about the involvement of parents in the education of their children:

These thoughts resound the sentiments of the Queensland Department of Education. We appreciate the need for parents to become more involved in education, in providing guidelines of what they feel should be taught to cater for the needs of the Aboriginal/Islander child.

Batchelor College is a tertiary education institution servicing the needs of Aboriginal communities mainly in the Northern Territory and “top end” of Australia. Within the School of Education there is the Teacher Education programme which has been operating in various forms since 1976, and has successfully piloted and implemented a community based operation known as Remote Area Teacher Education (RATE) (see Kemmis 1988). The program at mid- year 1990 underwent re-accreditation, and in his paper Reconstituting the Curriculum Framework for the Batchelor College Teacher Education Program, Ian Stewart (Head of School) argued for the development of four integrated strands over four sequential stages (Stewart 1989). These strands are: Community Studies; Curriculum Studies; Language Studies; and Professional Studies.

In the Northern Territory there are about 20 adult educators based in Aboriginal communities where the traditional life-style is still experienced to a great degree. These adult educators are required to identify the further education and training needs of the community and to implement programs to meet these needs. In this brief paper I shall examine ways in which the study of Aboriginal adult learning styles can be of use to these adult educators.

Before looking at specific Aboriginal learning styles it is necessary to look at those which are generally universally agreed upon as the basic learning styles applicable to adults. This is necessary in order to ensure that adult educators have a foundation on which to base some identifiably different learning styles inherent in Aboriginal culture.

The following paper was presented to a group of teachers, curriculum advisers, school support centre personnel and review officers at a one day conference organised by the Metropolitan West Region of the Queensland Department of Education. The time allocated for this session was 35 minutes. I therefore decided to focus on what I consider to be the two major barriers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student participation in schooling: recognition and valuing by teachers of children's identity and language. For other factors contributing to children's participation, such as curriculum relevance, parent/community involvement in decision-making, I provided participants with handouts which I had developed during the past four years or so.

Katherine High School is the only school offering secondary education in the region and thus is catering to the educational demands of a culturally diverse community. In seeking to meet these requirements the school has endorsed the Participation and Equity Program (PEP) of the Federal Department of Education and one highly successful and continuingly popular experimental component of this program has been the TESL (Aboriginal) unit.

This unit represents the attempts of educators and community members to construct an educational environment in which the aspirations of the Aboriginal people can be ameliorated without compromising their Aboriginality.

The influence that television exerts on audiences, especially children, is a matter for much debate. Films have been given less consideration as a matter for concern, no doubt because they are less ubiquitous and less accessible than television. However, in an isolated traditionally oriented Aboriginal community, films, in both the large screen and the newer video format, provide the single major source of entertainment and information on the larger European society. It is possible, in the absence of other forms of sustained contact with European society, that its influence can provide children with inappropriate and culturally dysfunctional models for behaviour.

From observations at a particular isolated community, films appear to influence people’s ideas about the outside world and their attitudes and behaviours in certain situations. This influence is particularly noticeable in the attitudes, language and behaviours evidenced by children. It is often possible to tell what film has lately been shown in camp simply by observing the children at play. The greater the impact a film has made in terms of ‘action’ and excitement, the greater the length of time will aspects of that film be incorporated into play situations. Children are excellent imitators and it is common for specific phrases from films to be used in children’s games long after the film has been shown.

The imitation of language, situations and attitudes portrayed in films is, however, not confined to play situations. For example, in the isolated community with which I am most familiar, a month ago two young men ‘bailed up’ a visiting European contractor and stole his motor vehicle. The circumstances of the theft, bag over the head to disguise identity, flashlight directed into the eyes to dazzle – as well as the language and attitude of the two men, paralleled an episode witnessed in a film three nights previously. The relation between film and incident was so well recognised at camp that the incident itself became a popular piay-scene for children : “Give me the keys or I’ll blow your head off.”

This paper reports on the processes experienced in the development of a language programme in a high school in the western suburbs of Sydney in 2006 and represents the ideas and views of the two key participants. We consider the different perspectives held by the key participants on the project and how these need to be worked through in order to come to a place where the two (or more) systems of knowing and learning can be symbiotic rather than pushing against one another. The two systems being referred to are, in brief, a Western academic position, held by the linguist on the project, and an Indigenous intuitive position, held by the language tutor on the project. We report on the steps forward and backward in this process and how the participants felt and dealt with the emotional and intellectual demands incurred throughout the process. Much of this “two steps forward, one step back” process has resulted from the struggle for the non-Indigenous linguist to understand the Indigenous tutor’s knowledge, input and feelings. Likewise the tutor had to come to understand the linguist’s knowledge base and what she was trying to do. We hope that this paper will open up many issues for consideration and discussion such as collaborative research, teaching and learning and working as a partnership.

The role of artistry in transformative maintenance of law and custom is a theme widely researched and discussed in Aboriginal arts related literature. However, it is the aim of this paper to contribute to a wider discourse about learning and economic participation in remote Australia, and in particular the role of multimodality as a significant asset. The paper draws from relevant literature and two case studies; one from Keringke Arts, and one from Eastern Arrernte teacher and artist, Kathleen Kemarre Wallace. In customary form, multimodality combines and recombines various modalities — including dance, song, sand drawing, body painting and design, storytelling, stories, rhythm, petroglyph and ochre-painted rock art — enabling the intergenerational teaching and learning of rich cultural heritage in ways which connect that experience to the law and custom of the homelands. Multimodality, as it is used in this paper, draws on the concept of ‘form-relationality’; the way various modalities are combined and recombined, as elements which together describe a body of knowledge and yet separately provide myriad detail. Although beyond the scope of this paper, multimodality is also a mediating influence between contemporary and customary elements and contexts. This paper considers the complexity of multimodality as an asset in a contemporary arts market.

Since its inception, Problem-based learning (PBL) as a process for learning and teaching has been used to enhance many skills based courses, including education programs at Bachelor College and the Aboriginal Technical Health Worker training program at the Centre for Appropriate Technology in Alice Springs. While PBL is an approach to learning and teaching which has been designed to provide a more holistic educational process for all students, Foster and Meehane (2007) suggest that many aspects of the courses are ideally suited for Indigenous students. In particular, this approach is useful when introducing students to a subject matter which is new both in being derived from another culture and not being accessible to Indigenous parents in the past. PBL provides a flexible approach to enable motivation and involvement of the students and their community. This paper considers the benefits of PBL for learning Information Technology and presents some course templates developed to support teaching Indigenous students at school.

In the context of a stark discrepancy in the educational outcomes of Aboriginal Australians compared to non-Aboriginal Australians, this article aims to contribute the voices of rural Aboriginal high school students to the discourse. This article utilises an appreciative enquiry approach to analyse the opinions and aspirations of 12 Aboriginal high school students in a South Australian regional centre. Drawing on student perspectives from semi-structured interviews, this article contributes to and contextualises the growing body of literature regarding educational aspirations. It demonstrates how rurality influences a complex system of intrinsic attributes, relationship networks and contextual factors. It offers an important counterpoint to discourses surrounding academic disadvantage and highlights the lived experience of rural Aboriginal Australians.

Working in an Institute that centres Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies provides a challenge for the ongoing development of our understandings of Indigeneity and how we embed and embody these understandings. It also creates the opportunity for reflection and development both of pedagogical principles, as well as construction. Trends within the Institute to move to a new degree offering, led the University of Newcastle and the Wollotuka Institute to revisit questions of how to have these conversations together, how to create shared ideas about appropriate approaches and how to translate these shared understandings into real-time outcomes for students studying our courses. These processes are observed here with some examples provided to illuminate the challenging processes taken by experts involved with embodying Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies in this area through all processes of an indigenous centred unit in an Australian university.

This paper relates findings from learning circles held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with urban Aboriginal men. The purpose of the circles was to determine how an Aboriginal cultural identity is formed in urban spaces. Education settings were mentioned by the research participants as a significant contribution to their cultural identity development. Participants described elementary and secondary school experiences as lacking in Aboriginal inclusion at best or as racist. In contrast to these earlier experiences, participants described their post-secondary education as enabling them to work on healing or decolonising themselves. Specific strategies for universities to contribute to individual decolonising journeys are mentioned. A university that contributes to decolonising and healing must provide space for Aboriginal students where they feel culturally safe. The students must have access to cultural knowledge and its keepers, such as elders. Their teachers must offer Indigenous course content and demonstrate respect and love for their students. Courses must be seen to be relevant to Indigenous people in their decolonising process and use teaching styles that include humour and engender a spirit of community in the classroom. In particular, Indigenous language courses are important to Aboriginal students.

This case study of an adult and community education provider based in far north Queensland describes its capacity to balance various iterations of public policy against its vision for the future of Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders. Community-controlled organisations wanting to contribute to economic and social development in regional/remote Australia through the use of formally recognised vocational education and training have adjusted to at least three major sociopolitical changes at the national policy level since the early 1990s. These include redefining equity, marketising the delivery of public services and increased centralisation. The contemporary orientation of vocational education and training as part of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy has become a highly prescriptive and heavily centralised mechanism for the establishment of employment outcomes. This has been framed as an obligation and right of Australian citizenship as opposed to the other wellbeing and personal development benefits of education. This registered training organisation has navigated four burdensome (re)definitions of equity that have made planning and delivery of true lifelong training objectives difficult. The provider has embraced the marketisation of the sector and navigated other policy changes in order to provide the services and knowledge set out in the college mission statement.

Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton have both used the terms “co-dependency” and “rescuing” as part of their challenge to the rights-based focus informing Indigenous policies in Australia since the 1960s. Their premise is that the liberal/Left welfare-based agenda, for decades, has largely overlooked Indigenous responsibility. At the same time, they recognise that policy frameworks strongly influence agency and individual responsibility. I examine the implications of this argument within the tertiary education environment, using systems theory to foreground the complexity of individual change within well-established social patterns. This paper reflects on how my thinking and pedagogy have generally been based on a “moral vanity” that, at times, has sanctioned shallow and passive learning experiences that have failed to challenge student achievement.

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.