Learnscapes are places where learning has been designed in ways that enhance the interaction with an environment (Tyas-Tunggal, 1997). A small rural primary school has creatively adopted a Learnscape as a significant focus to engage with its community. Within the school the Learnscapes Program works from the classroom to the playground and from there to the broader community to create a new place for learning. The Learnscapes Program allows cross curriculum boundaries to emerge and in the case of this school facilitates active participation with the school community, in ways that reengage culture, the community and curriculum. The experiences of this rural school as it promotes learning across the whole community through the exploration of Indigenous culture using Learnscapes are documented.

This is a slightly abbreviated version of part of a report commissioned at the end of 1995 by the Queensland Department of Education, Peninsula Region, and carried out with the help of teachers at Thursday Island State High School. It analyses some formal language differences between written Standard Australian English and spoken Torres Strait Creole (the language of most of the students) as a basis for workshop writers to develop material in a form suitable for teachers. Looked at objectively, most of the students’ errors in written English occur as a result of transference from their first language, or in areas of grammatical complexity which pose problems for all English as a Second Language learners. Certain common spelling errors seem also to be a result of transference from the Creole.

The report has been fairly widely circulated and is sometimes quoted inaccurately; hence the decision to publish the formal linguistic section here. Some of the material in the report - on the languages of the region, students’ language backgrounds and cultural factors influencing language choice and language mixing and issues of classroom management - has been omitted (see Shnukal, 1996; see also Morrison David, 2003). The report fulfilled its main aim of raising awareness of language issues and providing information and rationale for various language and literacy programs now operating in the region (Shopen & Hickey, 2003).

This research explores media reporting of Indigenous students’ Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results in two national and 11 metropolitan Australian newspapers from 2001 to 2015. Of almost 300 articles on PISA, only 10 focused on reporting of Indigenous PISA results. While general or non-Indigenous PISA results featured in media reports, especially at the time of the publication of PISA results, there was overwhelming neglect of Indigenous results and the performance gap. A thematic analysis of articles showed mainstream PISA reporting had critical commentary which is not found in the Indigenous PISA articles. The three themes identified include: a lack of teacher quality in remote and rural schools; the debate on Gonski funding recommendations and the PISA achievement gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. This study concluded the overwhelming neglect is linked to media bias, which continues to drive mainstream media coverage of Indigenous Australians.

The Aboriginal Education Policy (AEP) (New South Wales Department of School Education [NSW DSE], 1996) attempts to create a holistic approach to Aboriginal education for all students. This is done through emphasis on Aboriginal community involvement and incorporating Aboriginal content and perspectives in all stages of schooling. The policy is based on principles which express Aboriginal students' entitlement to the opportunities and understandings which come from education (NSW DSE, 1996: 8). The assumptions and values of the NSW DSE are shown by the emphasis placed on particular aspects of Aboriginal education. The practical impUcations of this policy are that teachers need to become more aware of Indigenous issues, and develop empathy for the past and continuing effects of colonisation.

In many areas of government policy there is a big gap between theory and practice, that is, there is a difference between what ought to occur and what actually eventuates. This is unfortunately true for education as well. That education actually alienates the young from the old and from their traditional life-style may in some way be substantiated. In theory this should not happen. Before any discussion on the pros and cons of such a state of affairs, however, there is a need to define what education is, to define some of the approaches officially accepted in Aboriginal education and to differentiate between the needs of some of the more recognizable Aboriginal groups and their life-styles.

Education can be defined as all the ways in which one person deliberately tries to influence the behaviour of another person. Behaviour may include knowledge, skills, habits, values and attitudes (Butts, n.d.). I believe education should serve either or both of two purposes -

1. the acquisition of knowledge, skills, habits, values and attitudes which can be used to assist his community/society to attain a better standard of living, that is, economic development and/or quality of life, and/or

2. to enable a person to be a better and more useful citizen in his/her society.

Since the 1970s considerable human effort and fiscal resources have been expended on improving the provision of education for Australian Indigenous peoples. The success or failure of such efforts and resources allocations is not clear and requires research. What is clear is that there has been an impact on the educational outcomes of Australian Indigenous peoples duringthis time. Indeed, there have been enormous advances in some areas and minor in other.

Towards the end of last year I wrote a somewhat optimistic article for the West Australian Newsletter of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, under the heading, ‘A Plea for Alternatives in Aboriginal Education’.

The data reported in this article were collected in 1990 and 1991. To determine if verbal reasoning abilities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tertiary applicants have changed over the years, data for a more recent group of applicants were examined. Data from a sample of 100 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tertiary applicants for 1994, 1995 and 1996 were subjected to analysis.

The over-riding objective of an Aboriginal Education Policy should be to achieve equity between Aboriginal people and other Australians in participation at all stages of education by the turn of the century. Education opportunities must be available to Aboriginal people regardless of where they live and in a manner that is appropriate to the diverse cultural and social situations in which they live. It is therefore essential to ensure access for Aboriginal children and adults to school and tertiary education, to ensure that Aboriginal communities are able to influence the way in which education is provided, and to ensure that it reflects their social and cultural values (Hughes Report, 1987: 17).

Our school has 30% of culturally different children of Aboriginal ancestry,. This, in a primary school population of 180, represents a significant proportion. This group can be, and is, defined by colour of skin, facial features, and different life style. Membership of this group is decided both by public opinion and by other members of the group.

Our town with a population of some 600 people is representative of many small rural communities with a significant proportion of people of Aboriginal descent. Some of these families, about 30%, live in houses provided by the Aboriginal and Island Affairs Department which are of comparable standard to those of the white people in the town. The remainder live in shanty type settlements which are common to such towns and which are usually located on the town outskirts.

In his book How Children Fail, John Holt talks about the strategies children have for coping with school. The strategies of most children, says Holt,

I didn’t really get to thinking much about children’s strategies until I had stopped teaching and gone into a few classes to observe as a fly on the wall. Most of what went on in the classroom went completely unnoticed by the teacher. And what the teacher did notice, she seemed often to misunderstand. The children had an amazing variety of strategies which really had the teacher fooled. Some of them had fooled me too, for the years I had been teaching. I thought that if I were to point out some of the strategies which I saw, teachers may begin to look more carefully at their own and their children’s behaviour.

The Hon. John Dawkins (then) Minister for Employment, Education and Training, launched the Aboriginal Education Policy at a grand event in the Committee Room at Parliament House on 26th October 1989. The Prime Minister blessed the occasion with his presence and a short speech. Three of the former Chairs of the the National Aboriginal Education Committee were there, as were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educationists from most Australian states. Only New South Wales, which decided to boycott the launch, wasn’t officially represented.

There are two reasons for calling the policy that the Minister launched the Aboriginal Education Policy. Firstly, because it is the first policy formally endorsed by any National government; and secondly, because it responds to the call made in the 1988 Report of the Aboriginal Education Policy Task Force, for a concerted national effort –

A one and a half year study of listening and reading among rural children in north-west New South Wales, indicated marked differences among Aborigines and whites in listening and reading. A Motivation for School Schedule, included in the initial test battery predicted over fifty per cent of variance in listening comprehension, administered at the end of years 2 and 3, for Aboriginal girls, and was significant in a multiple regression with Aboriginal girls’ end of year three reading scores as the criterion. The schedule contributed little, if anything, towards predicting reading success for white children or Aboriginal boys.

The research underlines the importance of teachers understanding the conflict some girls from minority groups face when attending schools organized by the dominant culture, particularly when the vocabulary of the dominant language is assumed to be understood by all children in the same way.

It is disturbing that some commentators on Aboriginal education in Australia draw the superficial conclusion that, “the school system has failed Aboriginal children very badly”.

There is abundant, undisputed evidence that Aborigines, as a group, consistently score much lower in English reading, writing and arithmetic tests than any other identifiable group in Australia. They leave school at an earlier age and at a lower achievement level than the national average.

As an educator it is not something that I am proud of – and I should say that most other educators would feel much the same way. It is the task of all of us who are involved in the education of Aborigines to do all in our power to rectify the situation. But it is too glib, too shallow by far, to heap all the blame for Aborigines’ low achievement on the schools, the school teacher or the school system.

Do those who make their sweeping condemnations suggest that all teachers, all schools, all the school systems across Australia – both government and non-government, have singly, and collectively failed the Aborigines? Is it claimed that in the 166 years since Governor Macquarie’s first school for Aborigines, successive generations of teachers have failed to ‘crack the code’, so to speak?

If so, isn’t this an incredible state of affairs? Can we really believe it to be true?

Teaching Aboriginal studies to a diverse student cohort presents challenges in the pursuit of developing a critical pedagogy. In this paper, we present Children of the Sun (2006), a local film made by Indigenous youth in the Illawarra region south of Sydney, New South Wales. We outline the film's genesis and its utilisation in our praxis. The film is a useful resource in the teaching of urban Aboriginal identity to primarily non-Indigenous students in the discipline of Aboriginal studies. It contributes to the development of critical thinking, and our own critical practice as educators and offers a starting point to address pre-conceived and stereotypical notions about race and colour. We situate this paper within a theoretical framework of identity and whiteness studies to explore the issue of light skin in relation to the constraints of identity surrounding urban Aboriginal youth, as represented in Children of the Sun. We discuss the usefulness of this film as a self-representational text that subverts and challenges pre-conceived notions of Aboriginal identity.

This paper explores the prescriptive, distancing and separating qualities that exist in Western systems of knowledge production. It examines scientific language and how discrimination takes place in the university setting and explores the ways in which academic knowledge production affects the learning experiences, participation and completion rates of Indigenous students. It suggests improving teaching and learning strategies to enhance unacknowledged learning processes towards providing inclusive learning practices, and to strengthen educational outcomes for Indigenous students with the prospect of improving their completion rates at universities.

The purpose of this report is to investigate the need for and purposes of parental and community involvement in an Outer Torres Strait Island school, namely Saibai State School, and to explore and report on some of the approaches to community involvement that we have trialled in our school.

If a school is aiming to educate its students for an active role in the society, then it is vital that the school be a living, active part of that society. It is unrealistic for teachers to assume that the school can stay separated from the community but still educate its students in a real and meaningful way.

This project was designed to enhance the academic success and profiles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) through increased proficiency and awareness of computer technology. The program attempted to establish a community of practice with technology, that focused on teaching and mentoring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students by supporting their use of computer technology. Prior to this project, there was no sound base of support for encouraging the use of technology with this group of students in the university and thus they were reluctant and apprehensive about its use in their studies.

Initially, we focused on the development of the students' proficiency in word processing so that they could apply their newly learned skills directly to their coursework and assessment in the specific degree that they were studying. Secondly, we introduced the students to the Internet and finally we assisted them with the location of information in the Library and from other sources. Consequently, the key notions of the project related primarily to improving the students' skills in writing, communications, and searching and accessing information.

A dramatic increase in the number of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders undertaking teacher education courses in Colleges of Advanced Education and Universities has occurred over the past ten years. In 1976 it was estimated that there were approximately 59 Aboriginal Teacher Education students throughout Australia (Anderson § Vevoorn, 1983:122). Today, in one institution alone - James Cook University - there are almost double this number. It is estimated that there were approximately 400 Aboriginal/Islander student teachers in 1985.

One of the biggest debates in Australian Indigenous education today revolves around the many contested and competing ways of knowing by and about Indigenous cultures and the representation of Indigenous knowledges. Using Bakhtin's theories of dialogue and voice, my concern in this paper is to explore the polyphonic nature of power relations, performance roles and pedagogical texts in the context of teaching and learning Indigenous Australian women's music and dance. In this discussion, I will focus on my experiences as a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland and my involvement in this educational setting with contemporary Indigenous performer Samantha Chalmers. Like a field experience, the performance classroom will be examined as a potential site for disturbing and dislocating dominant modes of representation of Indigenous women's performance through the construction, mediation and negotiation of Indigenous knowledge from and between both non-Indigenous and Indigenous voices.