There is virtually no disagreement among educational practitioners, theorists and policy makers on the outcomes they seek for Indigenous students. Their ultimate goal is to maximise the future life choices of the upcoming generation of students in an increasingly globalised world. Balancing mainstream curriculum with Indigenous community cultural knowledge, awareness and protocol is a difficult and, finally an individual matter to be negotiated between the school, each member of its student body and the home community. It is a task which has become increasingly urgent. Queensland - and Australia - can no longer afford the incalculable waste of intellectual and cultural capital and the dilution of participatory democracy which resulted from the pre-1980s requirement that Indigenous people be instructed only in basic literacy and numeracy. As Martin Nakata writes in this issue, "English literacy and understanding the world beyond our communities, beyond our local and cultural context, is as critically important for our future survival as understanding our traditional pathways. Anything that diverts us from the urgency of achieving educational success for future generations should be avoided." Nevertheless, while everyone agrees on the ultimate goal and its urgency, the policies and practices by which the goal is best achieved are, quite properly, a matter of contestation.

This paper critically examines some elements of the nation’s policy on Indigenous education priorities (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1989) and how they have framed our approaches to formal schooling issues over the past decade. I draw on some of the ‘cultural’ tensions in the policy position to illustrate the dilemma they produce at the level of practice. I then reflect on the implications of these tensions for literacy teaching as well as ways that they can be addressed. The conclusion brings these reflections back to a more theoretical level to consider how shifts at the level of theory might re-frame how we might best view the literacy issues and priorities in Indigenous contexts.

This paper examines some challenges we confront working with preservice teachers prior to serving in remote Indigenous communities. Some challenges include what preservice teachers bring to their studies - subjectivities, experiential understandings of teaching and notions of childhood/adolescence, culture and social justice, all of which involve minds, emotions and our notions of our places in society. Some challenges involve linking new notions of teaching to what they already know which may entail unlearning before relearning. Some challenges involve making sense of the theory/action dialectic - teasing out links between strongly held but unarticulated values, beliefs and actions that derive from them. Some challenges involve anticipating what it might be like to live and teach in a remote setting and preparing to work effectively across cultures. I then discuss how we might tackle them in the light of productive pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy (Osborne, 2001a, 2001b).

Many teachers and teaching assistants report that they lack an understanding of Standard Australian English grammar and that this hinders their work with Indigenous students who are learning English as a second language. This paper reports on the success of an accredited professional development strategy in Far North Queensland. This strategy is not based on out-of-context grammar lessons but promotes the idea that grammar is best learnt in communicative and collaborative classrooms which value fun and visual performance. The grammar activities are also embedded in current strategies for the teaching of literacy. This kind of professional development can reinvigorate teachers’ practices in order to increase literacy outcomes in Indigenous schools.

This paper is based on my recent experiences as a classroom teacher in Coconut Island State School on Poruma (Coconut Island), a Torres Strait primary school, and discusses best practice in explicitly instructing Islander students in Standard Australian English grammar. I argue for a variety of approaches, informed by a careful consideration of the students’ cultural understandings and their language needs. These are crucial for determining which grammatical approach is most effective in ensuring effective independent second language acquisition in Standard Australian English.

Education is about learning. But it is not always about teaching. Nor is it always held in formal educational settings. Here we present an example from Mua Island in Torres Strait, where cultural knowledge was recently communicated and passed down to the younger generation through community participation rather than through formal educational institutions. The role that community research and ceremonies play in customary learning is here brought out through recent commemoration of the legendary hero Goba on Mua Island.

This report was originally delivered to the State English as a Second Language Conference held in Brisbane in December 2001. It was part of a team presentation made to a plenary session by representatives from Torres Strait (Terry McCarthy, Mette Morrison David, Judy Christian Ketchell, Raba Jobi, Keith Fisher, Kay Ahmat and Susan Shepherd). Its aim was to inform Queensland English as a Second Language teachers about the language situation at Thursday Island State High School shortly after the appointment of an Education Advisor English Language Acquisition. The report deals with the linguistic background of the students, the teaching of languages other than English and the urgent need for appropriate professional development in English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language insights and methodologies.

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).

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?

This non-selective bibliography is limited to published material and is part of the Bibliography of Torres Strait to be found on the Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander Studies Unit’s website at . Torres Strait Islander authors are marked with an asterisk.