While conducting research intended to explore the underlying thoughts and assumptions held by non-Indigenous teachers and policy makers involved in Aboriginal education I dug out my first book on Australian history which had been given when I was about seven years old. Titled Australia From the Beginning (Pownall, 1980), the book was written for children and was not a scholarly book. It surprised me, then, to find so many of my own understandings and assumptions about Aboriginal affairs and race relations in this book despite four years of what had seemed quite liberal education in Australian history.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate some of the problems associated with the monolingual approach to the education of Aboriginal children. It does not set out to cover all of the problems experienced by vernacular-speaking children when English only is used as the medium of their primary formal education. By revealing some of the main areas of difficulty, though, it is hoped that bilingual education will be seen as a valuable tool for overcoming many of the problems.

Teenagers in the Western world are increasingly vocal in their demands for “relevance” in their school experience. Young Aboriginal men in their teens (although perhaps not fully conscious of what they are doing, or able to verbalize their feelings) are also “demanding” relevance in their school experience by several kinds of passive resistance. Two examples of this resistance are, that attendance at some Northern Territory schools is extremely low, and that young men trained in various trade courses are generally working in other trades. The educational system, of course, is not solely responsible for this situation, but we should respond to this new “post colonial” mood in Aboriginal communities. Examples of the “post colonial” era are: that Aboriginals know they are free to resist white pressures to work or attend school, or in fact to do anything “white”; that local Aboriginal councils are assuming much more responsibility for local management; that local Aboriginals cherish their new found power to say which white people can or cannot live in their community, and so on. Our prediction is that if schools don’t move with the times we will find that schools in Aboriginal communities will soon begin to appear to Aboriginals as the last “white strongholds” in these communities; that is “white” in terms of initiatives, in terms of ultimate authority, in terms of environmental setting, materials used, times at which things are done and content of what is taught.

For the white teacher to say, “But I’m open to Aboriginals taking more initiative”, is hardly practical because the Aboriginal teenager has not learned to be sufficiently aggressive or expressive to take initiatives in the face of the technologically dominant white teacher; therefore the first initiative-to-allow-initiative must be taken by the white teacher.

Mr. Lui is a school teacher at Coconut Island, and has been teaching in the Torres Strait Islands for ten years. Mr. Lui thinks it is important for the parents and the other people in the community to be interested in the school, and in this interview he talks about ways in which he works at Coconut Island to get the school and the community together.

The following article has been based on personal experiences and dealings with over 40 teachers and three different principals during the period 1976–1981, while at the Mornington Island State School. It is also based on discussions with teachers from other communities, advisory teachers, principals and inspectors during this period.

The article intends to look at the meaning of burn-out oomplaoenoy and how this syndrome so easily affects teachers and other workers, especially in remote Aboriginal communities. Although the article strongly supports all the recent innovations and planning in the area of curriculum development, conferences, and support systems in Aboriginal Education, still, that most fundamental criterion is missing – selection of teachers to work in these isolated areas with these innovated programs.

More importantly, the article also hopes to show what happens to the majority of teachers in these particular areas and how the burn-out oomplaoenoy syndrome operates. Perhaps the reader may then realise why such schools have enormous staff turn overs. Perhaps, also, education authorities should view these proven burn-out teachers in Aboriginal Education with greater understanding, support and value.

It remains my strong belief that each and every one of us is capable of working in •burn-out’. It is, however, much easier to adopt ‘complacency’. ‘Burn-out’ is that period of time during which one strives to work at maximum level and efficiency. Set-backs and failures are brushed aside and the person keeps attacking, keeps forcing himself to reach goals pre-set by himself or by others. By forcing ‘burn-out’, working to the limit, however, one can soon become burnt-out. Burnt-out is a dangerous time for the individual. Either he recognises the situation and opts for complacency, or he ‘cracks’ and is in that situation of being of no use to anyone, or he leaves the situation.

Dr Ian Malcolm (WA) has shown in several papers the difficulties teachers have communicating with Aboriginal children in the classrooms. Dr Stephen Harris (NT), in his PhD thesis, defined some of the differences between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal sociolinguistic rules of communication.

This study hypothesises that the rules of communication and organisation in the classroom used by Aboriginal teachers at Milingimbi will be different from those used by white Australian teachers.

It concludes that the two groups are significantly different in teaching styles, each tending towards its own traditional sociolinguistic rules, with some integration of rules from the other culture.

No conclusions are drawn as to the effectiveness of each group.

It is stressed that this is very much only a pilot study to open the way for further research and discussion.

Aboriginal artists, authors and songwriters have expressed their thoughts and experiences about Aboriginal education through plays, poems, short stories, novels and songs. Their views cover a broad spectrum of educational issues that focus on educational experiences since contact, the teaching of traditional Aboriginal knowledge as part of the school curriculum, and other issues in both ways education.

Some determinants of educability for Aborigines are discussed and such problems as integration aid involvement in decision-making by Aborigines reviewed. The role of the teacher in effective communication with Aboriginal children and Aboriginal communities and related aspects such as teacher expectation are considered. Research findings in behavioural science which relate to belief systems and attitudes are considered for inclusion in teacher education programs for the teachers of Aboriginal children. In conclusion, some proposals are made concerning teacher education programs.

I doubt that anyone would disagree with the need to establish a positive teacher/child relationship in any classroom situation. The fact is that most young children are expectant of this happening and are conditioned by their home environment and experience to relate to the school and the teacher. There is no doubt that this attitude tempers any sense of strangeness and assists in the development of a feeling of security so necessary to a successful school experience. Many of the steps taken to foster a positive relationship between teacher and pupils occur spontaneously and as a result of mutual interaction, on the basis of a common cultural background. In the case of Aboriginal children in a class situation, this common cultural background cannot be presumed to exist. Many aspects of the Aboriginal culture are vastly different from the European one, not the least of the differences being that the very concept of the school institution does not belong to the Aboriginal culture.

Some understanding of the basic cultural differences is necessary to provide for the building up of a feeling of mutual trust and ease. Suggestions, hopefully of a practical nature, are offered to facilitate this most important aspect of a class teacher’s responsibilities, for without it, I am convinced little meaningful learning will occur.

We are very pleased to bring you Volume 42.1 of the Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. The articles in this Volume collectively address the urgent need to disrupt ‘business as usual’ in Indigenous education in national and global contexts, and in doing so, engage in new ways of thinking and framing policy and pedagogy. Currently in Australia, discussions around what ‘counts’ as ‘good’ policy and pedagogy in Indigenous education are increasingly placed in conversation with one of three agendas: Noel Pearson's ‘radical vision’ for contemporary schooling for Indigenous students, with a renewed emphasis and return to direct instruction; Chris Sarra's ‘stronger and smarter’ strategy, which promotes a commitment to a high-expectation, high-performance and a relational approach to Indigenous education; and initiatives driven by the ‘Closing the Gap’ reform agenda. Indeed, situated within the present climate of neo-liberalism orchestrating policy by numbers, there is ‘serious stuff’ happening at the moment that impacts in very real ways on the experiences and outcomes of our Indigenous children at all levels of schooling, the capacity of teachers to work within an Indigenous Australian education space for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, and the positioning of education as a location of possibility for ‘doing business differently’. The time for us as educators and researchers has never been more urgent — we have to be the ones to talk loud and to talk strong against colonial and neo-colonial moves to silence and exclude the counter stories we have to tell. In conversation as Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators working towards social justice in education, the articles in this Volume bring us these narratives.

This special issue of the Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, titled ‘South-South Dialogues: Global Approaches to Decolonial Pedagogies’, aims to contribute to the field of Australian Indigenous Studies and Education by further diversifying the perspectives, conversations and conceptual tools to engage with Indigenous pedagogies. Through a south-south conversational and conceptual approach, this special issue expands the conversation of Indigenous pedagogies internationally and conceptually from a global south location. At the same time, this special issue means to be a re-iteration of the first ‘South-South Dialogues: Situated Perspectives in Decolonial Epistemologies’ conference held in November 2015 at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, which displayed a south-south conversation lead by local and global Indigenous perspectives. This special issue further theorises what many local and global scholars view as implied in Indigenous education: that the mainstream field of education can be re-examined using a decolonial viewpoint, one that is led by the views of Indigenous peoples and people of colour from the ‘global south’. This issue also responds to a re-awakening of decolonial theories that have been embodied in ‘Southern Theory’ (Connell, 2007), Indigenous Standpoint Theory (Nakata, 2007), coloniality/decoloniality (see, for instance, Maldonado-Torres, 2007), among others that continue to re-examine the conditions in which colonisation continues to be epistemologically exerted and continue to propose ways to contest it. This re-invigorated conversation is one that can be addressed by a genuinely horizontal intercultural dialogue lead by the southern perspectives. This was, one way or another, what was observed and lived in the ‘South-South Dialogues’ conference that felt like the starting point of a newer form of knowledge production and pedagogy.

This article documents the establishment of the Indigenous Specializations program in the School of Social Work at the University of Victoria. In the absence of funding for Indigenous programs, First Nations professors Robina Thomas and Jacquie Green developed the Indigenous Specializations program ‘off the side of their desk’. This article describes the process of creating a culturally specific program for Indigenous students in a mainstream university. Many of the challenges depicted in the article are ongoing, alongside various successes and victories for Indigenous graduates.

As Aboriginal peoples gain more access to schools of social work, the academy needs to respond to their educational needs. This involves incorporating Aboriginal worldviews and research methodologies into social work education. This paper focuses on one definition of worldviews according to Aboriginal epistemology and implements an anti-colonial discursive framework in its analysis of education. It also critiques both the role of social work in the lives of Aboriginal peoples and the goals of social work education. Through the findings of a recent research project with Aboriginal social work students in Ontario, Canada, it raises key components that need to be addressed in the academy and provides ways in which this can be achieved. The overall theme flowing through this paper is that of decolonisation whereby reclamation of the belief that all peoples of the world have much to offer one another and life is a reciprocal process comes to the surface. In addition, the paper stresses the importance of this content being taught to all social work students and its relevance to all areas of Indigenous humanities.

In 2000 a program of English as a Second Language inservice provision was initiated by the Thursday Island State High School in response to teacher and community concerns about low literacy rates in Torres Strait, as measured by the National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia Bandscales and other related difficulties. In mid-May of that year an English as a Second Language conference was held on Badu Island and was attended by teachers from throughout Torres Strait. During the conference, Susan Shepherd (Education Adviser English Language Acquisition at Thursday Island State High School) conducted a question-and-answer session dealing with some of the most commonly asked questions: What is English as a Second Language teaching? What is an English as a Second Language learner? What is an English as a Second Language school? Why is the students’ English not improving in my school? Can we have learning support teachers? Why shouldn’t the children’s home language be banned from the school so that the students will learn English more quickly? Why can’t the children understand more about what they read? Why, if the local Creole is so much like English, do we need special programs in English?