Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T12:53:22.279Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Policy Dynamism: The Case of Aboriginal Australian Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2011

TERRY MOORE
TERRY MOORE*
Affiliation:
Riawunna Centre, University of Tasmania, Locked Bag 1344, Launceston TAS 7250, Australia email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

With reference to an ethnographic study of Aboriginal Australians in formal schooling, this paper focuses on the dynamism of the policy process. It argues that social policy is different in its performance from its formal articulation. It proposes that other discourses complicate policy discourse in its implementation, and that the Aboriginal objects of policy respond creatively to their representation in policy in ways that contribute to that complication. Aboriginal political leaders adopt the subject imagined in policy, elaborate its normativity and pressure their constituency to perform it. The routine performance of this subject works to compromise individuals’ capabilities to negotiate their lived interculturality and multiplicity, and confirms Aborigines in their marginalisation. Thus, policy becomes a central, authoritative catalyst in the real-world constitution of the subject initially imagined. The paper proposes that if social policy engages with this complexity, it can be effective in its aims of contributing to Aboriginal education and development, and management of the emerging condition of diversity. In both cases, it must account for the discursive and performative agency of the objects of policy, making it necessarily context-specific and revisable.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 141 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, S. (2009), ‘The intercultural horizons of Johann P. Arnason's phenomenology of the world’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 30: 3, 249–66.Google Scholar
Adams, S. and Janover, M. (2009), ‘Introduction: theorising the intercultural’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 30: 3, 227–31.Google Scholar
Amin, A. (2002), ‘Ethnicity and the multicultural city: living with diversity’, Environment and Planning A, 34: 959–80.Google Scholar
Anderson, C. (2009), ‘Indigenous footprints on health curriculum’, Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 38: 40–5.Google Scholar
Baarda, W. (1990), ‘Cultural differences in schools’, in Walton, C. and Eggington, W. (eds.), Language, Power and Education in Australian Contexts, Darwin, Northern Territory: Northern Territory University Press.Google Scholar
Bhabha, H. K. (1994), The Location of Culture, London and New York: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Chambers, B. and Pettman, J. (1986), Anti-Racism: A Handbook for Adult Educators, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.Google Scholar
Christie, M. (1985), Aboriginal Perspectives on Experience and Learning: The Role of Language in Aboriginal Education, Melbourne, Victoria: Deakin University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, A. (2008), History's Children: History Wars in the Classroom, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.Google Scholar
Committee of Deans of Australian Medical Schools (2004), CDAMS Indigenous Health Curriculum Framework, Melbourne, Victoria: VicHealth Koori Health Research and Community Development Unit.Google Scholar
Commonwealth of Australia (1985), National Aboriginal Education Policy, Canberra, ACT.Google Scholar
Commonwealth of Australia (1989), National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy, Canberra, ACT.Google Scholar
Commonwealth of Australia (1999), National Indigenous English Literacy and Numeracy, Strategy, Canberra, ACT.Google Scholar
Cornell, S. and Hartmann, D. (1998), Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World, Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press.Google Scholar
Council of Europe (2008), ‘Living together as equals in dignity’, White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue, www.coe.int/dialogue, last accessed 20 July 2011.Google Scholar
Cowan, J. K. (2001), ‘Ambiguities of an emancipatory discourse: the making of a Macedonian minority in Greece’, in Cowan, J. K., Dembour, M. -B. and Wilson, R. A. (eds.), Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 152–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craven, R. (1998), ‘Getting started: understanding and teaching Aboriginal studies effectively’, in Partington, G. (ed.), Perspectives on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education, Katoomba, NSW: Social Sciences Press.Google Scholar
Dean, M. (1999), Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society, London: Sage.Google Scholar
Derkley, K. (2010), ‘Start making sense’, Swinburne, Swinburne University of Technology magazine, March: 8–9.Google Scholar
Dryzek, J. S. (2005), ‘Deliberative democracy in divided societies: alternatives to agonism and analgesia’, Political Theory, 33: 2, 218–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eades, D. (1988), ‘They don't speak an Aboriginal language, or do they?’, in Keen, I. (ed.), Being Black: Aboriginal Cultures in ‘Settled’ Australia, Canberra, ACT: Australian Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Fanshaw, J. P. (1999), ‘Warmth, demandingness and what else? A reassessment of what it takes to be an effective teacher of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’, The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 27: 41–6.Google Scholar
Flood, J. (2006), The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People Crow's Nest, New South Wales: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Folds, R. (1987), Whitefella School: Education and Aboriginal Resistance, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1979), ‘Governmentality’, Ideology and Consciousness, 6: 5–21.Google Scholar
Fredericks, B. (2008), ‘The need to extend beyond the knowledge gained in cross-cultural awareness training’, The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 37: 81–9.Google Scholar
Gibson, G. and Pearson, N. (1987), ‘Anthropology and tradition: a contemporary Aboriginal viewpoint’, ANZSS Conference, http://www.capeyorkpartnerships.com/downloads/noel-pearson-papers/anthropology-and-tradition-contemporary-aboriginal-viewpoint-1987.pdf, last accessed 10 August 2011.Google Scholar
Gilroy, P. (1991), ‘Sounds authentic: black music, ethnicity, and the challenge of the “changing” same’, Black Music Research Journal, 11: 2, 111–36.Google Scholar
Gordon, C. (1980), ‘Afterword’, in M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (ed. Gordon, C.), New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Grundy, S. (1994), ‘Being and becoming an Australian: classroom discourse and the construction of identity’, Discourse, 15: 1, 16–31.Google Scholar
Harris, S. (1990), Two Way Aboriginal Schooling: Education and Cultural Survival, Canberra, ACT: Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Harris, S. and Malin, M. (eds.) (1994), Aboriginal Kids in Urban Classrooms, Wentworth Falls, NSW: Social Science Press.Google Scholar
Hall, S. (1990), ‘Cultural identity and diaspora’, in Rutherford, J. (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence & Wishart.Google Scholar
Hollinger, D. A. (2000), Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism, New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Hollinsworth, D. (1992a), ‘Cultural awareness training, racism awareness training or anti-racism?: strategies for combating institutional racism’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 13: 2, 37–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollinsworth, D. (1992b), ‘Who should teach Aboriginal Studies?’, Aboriginal Studies Association Conference Papers, UNSW, 2: 247–57.Google Scholar
Hollinsworth, D. (1995), ‘Aboriginal Studies: an epistemological no-go zone?’, in Van Toorn, P. and English, D. (eds.), Speaking Positions: Aboriginality, Gender and Ethnicity in Australian Cultural Studies, Melbourne, Victoria University of Technology.Google Scholar
Hughes, P. (1981), ‘Aboriginal teachers for Aboriginal children’, in Menary, B. (ed.), Aborigines and Schooling: Essays in honour of Max Hart, Adelaide, SA: Adelaide College of the Arts and Education.Google Scholar
Hughes, P. (1984), ‘A call for an Aboriginal pedagogy’, The Australian Teacher, August: 20–22.Google Scholar
Hughes, P., More, A. J. and Williams, M. (2004), Aboriginal Ways of Learning, Adelaide: Flinders Press.Google Scholar
Hunter, I. (1988), Culture and Government: The Emergence of Literary Education, London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Jenkins, R. (1996), Social Identity, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Keeffe, K. (1988), ‘Aboriginality: resistance and persistence’, Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1: 67–81.Google Scholar
Kral, I. (2010), ‘Plugged in: remote Australian indigenous youth and digital culture’, Working Paper No. 69/2010, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra.Google Scholar
Kukathas, C. (1992), ‘Are there any cultural rights?’, Political Theory, 20: 1, 105–39Google Scholar
Kumashiro, K. K. (2000), ‘Toward a theory of anti-oppressive education’, Review of Educational Research, 70: 1, 25–53.Google Scholar
Kumashiro, K. K. (2001), ‘“Posts” perspectives on anti-oppressive education in social studies, English, mathematics and science classrooms’, Educational Researcher, 30: 3, 3–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurasawa, F. (2004), The Ethnological Imagination: A Cross-cultural Critique of Modernity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, W. (1995), Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, W. (2009), Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Langton, M. (2008a), ‘Trapped in the Aboriginal reality show: reimagining Australia’, Griffith Review, 19: special issue, 145–62.Google Scholar
Langton, M. (2008b), ‘The end of “big men” politics’, MoneySexPower, Griffith Review, 22: special issue, 13–38.Google Scholar
Lee, R. L. M. (2010), ‘On the margins of belonging: confronting cosmopolitanism in the late modern age’, Journal of Sociology, 46: 167–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipsky, M. (1980), Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, New York: Russel Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Mansell, M. (1989), ‘Treaty proposal: Aboriginal sovereignty’, Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 2: 37, 50–1.Google Scholar
Mansell, M. (2004), ‘Cry from the heart on Aboriginal education’, The Mercury, 25 October, 15Google Scholar
Marotta, V. (2009), ‘Intercultural hermeneutics and the cross-cultural subject’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 30: 3, 267–84.Google Scholar
McConvell, P. (1991), ‘Cultural domain separation: two-way street or blind alley? Stephen Harris and the neo-Whorfians on Aboriginal education’, Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1: 13–24.Google Scholar
McNamara, N. (1990), ‘Australian Aborigines − a question of identity’, in Hocking, B. (ed.), Australia Towards 2000, Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Merlan, F. (2005), ‘Explorations towards intercultural accounts of socio-cultural reproduction and change’, Oceania, 75: 167–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, T. (2009), ‘The exhaustion of progressive Aboriginal governance’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, School of Government and Riawunna, University of Tasmania, http://eprints.utas.edu.au/9959/, last accessed 20 July 2011.Google Scholar
Moore, T. (2011), ‘Misadventures with Aboriginalism’, Social Identities, 17: 3, 423–41.Google Scholar
Neill, R. (2002), White Out: How Politics is Killing Black Australia, NSW: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Ober, R. (2009), ‘Both-ways: learning from yesterday, celebrating today, strengthening tomorrow’, The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 38: 34–9.Google Scholar
Parekh, B. (2006), Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (2nd edn), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paridies, Y. (2006), ‘Beyond black and white: essentialism, hybridity and Indigeneity’, Journal of Sociology, 42: 355–67.Google Scholar
Pearson, N. (2000), Our Right to Take Responsibility, Cairns: Noel Pearson & Associates.Google Scholar
Pearson, N. (2007), ‘White guilt, victimhood and the quest for a radical centre’, Griffith Review, 16: Winter, 11–58.Google Scholar
Posnock, R. (1997), ‘How it feels to be a problem: Du Bois, Fanon, and the “impossible life” of the black intellectual’, Critical Inquiry, 23: 323–50.Google Scholar
Rose, N. (1999), Powers of Freedom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rowse, T. (2000), ‘Culturally appropriate indigenous accountability’, American Behavioural Scientist, 43: 1514–32.Google Scholar
Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991a), National Report Vol. 2, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.Google Scholar
Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991b), National Report Vol. 4, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.Google Scholar
Ruffolo, D. V. (2010), Post-Queer Politics, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.Google Scholar
Sarra, C. (2003), Young and Black And Deadly: Strategies for Improving Outcomes for Indigenous Students, Australian College of Educators, Quality Teaching Series, Practitioners’ Perspectives No. 5, iii–14.Google Scholar
Sayer, L. (2003), ‘Mansell calls for teaching revamp’, The Mercury, 20 February, 21Google Scholar
Smith, J. (2009), ‘Civilisational analysis and intercultural models of American societies’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 30: 3, 233–48.Google Scholar
Spencer Gulf Rural Health School (2001), ‘Working with Aboriginal people in rural and remote South Australia: a cultural awareness handbook for people working in health professions’, Whyalla, SA.Google Scholar
Sutton, P. (2001), ‘The politics of suffering: indigenous policy in Australia since the 1970s’, Anthropological Forum, 11: 2, 125–73.Google Scholar
Sutton, P. (2009), The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and the End of the Liberal Consensus, Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Tasmanian Department of Education and the Arts (TDoEA) (n.d. a), Aboriginal Studies: Framework and Guidelines, Hobart.Google Scholar
Tasmanian Department of Education and the Arts (TDoEA) (n.d. b), Aboriginal Studies: K-12 Framework for Curriculum Developers, booklet in TDoEA (n.d. a), Aboriginal Studies: Framework and Guidelines, Hobart.Google Scholar
Tasmanian Department of Education and the Arts (TDoEA) (n.d. c), Aboriginal Studies: Guidelines 9–12, booklet in TDoEA (n.d. a), Aboriginal Studies: Framework and Guidelines, Hobart.Google Scholar
Tully, J. (1995), Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Universities Australia (2009), ‘Indigenous cultural competency in Australian universities project’, http://universitiesaustralia.edu.au/page/policy-advocacy/indigenous-issues/cultural-competency/, last accessed 1 August 2011.Google Scholar
Uitermark, J., Rossi, U. and Van Houtum, H. (2005), ‘Reinventing multiculturalism: urban citizenship and the negotiation of ethnic diversity in Amsterdam’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29: 622–40.Google Scholar
Yuval-Davis, N. (1997), Gender and Nation, London: Sage.Google Scholar