scholarly journals NEWS: UQ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student Participation Project

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-54

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at The University of Queensland has identified the need to develop detailed monitoring strategies to gauge the participation and academic performance of indigenous students at The University of Queensland. To reach this goal the Unit has launched a project which aims to investigate the participation and post-study destinations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katelyn Barney

Drawing on interviews with current and past Indigenous undergraduate students at the University of Queensland (UQ), this paper reports on findings from a project that explored the experiences of Indigenous Australian students and identified inhibitors and success factors for students. It also discusses one of the outcomes of the project and planned future developments that aim to provide better support for Indigenous Australian students at UQ. By knowing and acting upon the kinds of mechanisms that can assist Indigenous students, their experiences of tertiary study can be enhanced, leading to more students enrolling in and completing university study.


Author(s):  
Madeleine Benton ◽  
Shane Hearn ◽  
Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos

Abstract There remains significant under representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australian higher education systems. A number of strategies have been implemented by governments and universities to best support Indigenous students within higher education that have produced varying levels of success in increasing participation, retention and completions. One key strategy is the inclusion of Aboriginal Education Units within universities. The current study aimed to examine students experience and engagement with a range of support services across university, in particular with an Aboriginal Education Unit. Utilising a mixed-method approach, data were collected from 103 students who identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander at The University of Adelaide. Overall, students were most satisfied with support provided by family (70%) and the Aboriginal Education Unit (61%), followed by support provided by university faculties (49%), and the wider university (43%). The main reasons students were accessing the Unit was for academic and tutoring purposes, also rating tutoring as the most beneficial service provided by the Unit. This study highlights the importance of examining and evaluating enablers such as support mechanisms from the student perspective and has demonstrated the significant role Aboriginal Education Units play in the student experience, laying a crucial foundation for targeted support initiatives.


2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norm Sheehan ◽  
Polly Walker

We are Indigenous University lecturers involved in research with the Purga Elders and Descendants Aboriginal Corporation. Our research at Purga involves the instigation of Indigenous Knowledge as the basis of effective and valid research methodologies. This article will describe the work that the University of Queensland (UQ) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit is doing at Purga. It will then articulate the principles of Indigenous Knowledge Research that inform this work.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clair Andersen ◽  
Ann Edwards ◽  
Brigette Wolfe

‘Riawunna’ is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘a place of learning’ for Aboriginal people, from entry level to tertiary studies, at the University of Tasmania (UTAS) and operates on Hobart, Launceston and Burnie campuses. The Riawunna Centre was established to encourage Aboriginal people to aspire to higher levels of education, and to support them to be successful in their chosen course of study. One strategy developed to support the participation, retention and success of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is the Murina program. During the four year period between 2010 and 2013 every student at UTAS who graduated from the Murina program and chosen to enrol in undergraduate studies has been successful in completing their courses. One of the tools used to achieve this result is the strong use of narrative and images in our teaching. This whole-person approach to teaching resonates culturally with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but is also applicable to any student of any culture, especially those who come to university tentatively and with low expectations of what they can achieve.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bradley ◽  
Frances Devlin-Glass ◽  
Elizabeth Mackinlay

A project is currently underway at http://arts.deakin.edu.au which is innovative on a number of fronts. It has multiple beginnings: in the proactive, as culture dissemination work of a number of Yanyuwa and Garrwa women, who proclaimed in the white man’s world that they were ‘bosses themselves’ (Gale 1983) and who in various ways have sought to bring their culture to the attention of the wider world. This has been accomplished through a prize-winning (Atom Australian Teachers of Media awards in 1991) film, Buwarrala Akarriya: Journey East (1989), of are-enacted ritual foot-walk in 1988 from Borroloola to Manankurra 90 kilometres away. They also made a another prize winning film called Ka-wayawayarna: The Aeroplane Dance (1993) which won the Royal Anthropological Society of London award for the best ethnographic film in 1995. Since 1997 senior Yanyuwa women have been involved on a regular basis in sharing their knowledge of Yanyuwa performance practice with tertiary students in a subject called Women’s Music and Dance in Indigenous Australia which is offered as a course in anthropology through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, they have also lectured in core anthropology subjects in the faculty of Social and Behavourial Sciences Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Queensland. They have also engaged actively in work as language preservers and teachers at the Borroloola Community Education Centre (hereafter BCEC) and in the Tennant Creek Language Centre program called Papulu Apparr-Kari.


Author(s):  
Philemon Chigeza ◽  
Hilary Whitehouse

There is widespread agreement that Indigenous students’ cultural knowledge is desirably incorporated into curriculum and pedagogical practice. Classroom research shows Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners can use the cognitive tools of their cultural community to engage with school science. We looked towards our own practice as teacher educators to investigate the question: how can pre-service teachers explore how Indigenous cultural knowledge can be used more productively in mathematics and science classrooms? Teachers across Australia are now regulated by the National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST). Teacher education is now regulated by the National Graduate Teacher Standards (AITSL 2011). Standard 1.4 requires that graduating teachers are able to “demonstrate broad knowledge and understanding of the impact of culture, cultural identity and linguistic background on the education of students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds”. Standard 2.4 requires that graduating teachers “demonstrate broad knowledge and understanding of and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and languages”. In this paper we present an account of our present understanding of capacity building practises, which are those pedagogies that draw on Indigenous students’ cultural resources: cultural disposition, community knowledge and cultural capital. A key purpose of the presentation is to emphasise the socially negotiated, cultural and embedded nature of meaning-making in science education and how this can be made more apparent given the current focus on implementing the National Professional Standards for Teachers and the new Australian Curriculum.


2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Mackinlay ◽  
Katelyn Barney

Indigenous Australian studies, also called Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies, is an expanding discipline in universities across Australia (Nakata, 2004). As a discipline in its own right, Indigenous Australian studies plays an important role in teaching students about Australia's colonial history and benefits both non-Indigenous and Indigenous students by teaching them about Australia's rich and shared cultural heritage (Craven, 1999, pp. 23–25). Such teaching and learning seeks to actively discuss and deconstruct historical and contemporary entanglements between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and, in doing so, help build better working relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. As educators in this discipline, it is important for us to find pedagogical approaches which make space for these topics to be accessed, understood, discussed and engaged with in meaningful ways.


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