The Injinoo Home Language Program: A Positive Community Response to Marginalisation and Institutional Racism

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Turner
Keyword(s):  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
Community Response ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Institutional Policy ◽  
Classroom Teachers ◽  
Language Program ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Torres Strait

Teaching in and of itself is a difficult task fraught with obstacles to classroom success. For those who teach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students these obstacles are compounded by a political atmosphere that colours every decision made within the school and indeed within education departments.As classroom teachers it is easy to say that politics has nothing to do with teaching and pretend that it is not an issue. As convenient as this attitude may be, it is denying the facts. Indeed all teachers involved in Indigenous education must accept that their role is political. They must see that part of their task is to overcome years of institutional policy and attitude that have contributed significantly to poor educational performances for Indigenous students in Australia.

Doing it Differently. Link and Learn — the work of the Indigenous Education and Training Alliance

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
Education And Training ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Significant Area ◽  
Torres Strait ◽  
Education And Employment ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
And Training

The Indigenous Education and Training Alliance (IETA) is a staff college of Education Queensland. Its primary focus is to broker and deliver professional development to educators around the policies contained within Partners for Success: strategy for the continuous improvement of education and employment outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Education Queensland (Education Queensland, 2000b). This paper describes how IETA's work to support one of the policies, Literacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students, has been theorised and enacted. It also discusses the organisation's successes and challenges in the significant area of language and literacy pedagogy for Indigenous students.

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

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-54
Keyword(s):  
Academic Performance ◽  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Student Participation ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Monitoring Strategies ◽  
Torres Strait ◽  
The University

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.

scholarly journals Editorial

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. iii-iv
Keyword(s):  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Australian Journal ◽  
Research Groups ◽  
Research Journal ◽  
Torres Strait

The challenge for any research journal today is how to continue to make the work we publish relevant, contemporary and innovative for the research groups, educational organisations, and Indigenous communities locally and globally that we serve. At the same time, we recognise it is important for us to continue our work in The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education within the critical pedagogical agenda in which it began; that is, the empowerment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through education, combined with a concern to critique and challenge the national and international colonial contexts in which Indigenous education is positioned today.

scholarly journals Editorial

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. iii-iii
Author(s):  
Katelyn Barney ◽  
Martin Nakata
Keyword(s):  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Torres Strait Islander People ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
25Th Anniversary ◽  
University Environment ◽  
Common Goals ◽  
Torres Strait

We are very pleased to bring you Volume 46 of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. This year is a particularly significant time for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues and education. It marks the 25th anniversary of the landmark Mabo decision that refuted the legal doctrine of terra nullius and recognised that the Miriam people were continuously present and exclusively possessed Mer in the Torres Strait. It is also the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, a significant milestone resulting in constitutional change to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the national census. This year also marks the release of the Universities Australia Indigenous Strategy 2017–2020, which is designed to provide a sector-wide initiative that binds all universities together with common goals. The strategy includes important initiatives to increase the numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people participating in higher education, increase the engagement of non-Indigenous people with Indigenous knowledge and educational approaches, and improve the university environment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

scholarly journals Listening to and learning from the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to facilitate success

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katelyn Barney
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
Indigenous Australian ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Torres Strait ◽  
The University ◽  
Tertiary Study

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.

scholarly journals Incorporating Indigenous Students’ Cultural Knowledge More Productively in Mathematics and Science Classrooms: One Focus for Pre-Service Teacher Education Research and Practice

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philemon Chigeza ◽  
Hilary Whitehouse
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Professional Standards ◽  
Science Classrooms ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Torres Strait ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Mathematics And Science

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.

scholarly journals Introduction

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Mackinlay ◽  
Katelyn Barney
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Indigenous Australians ◽  
Working Relationships ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Indigenous Australian ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Torres Strait ◽  
Pedagogical Approaches

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.

scholarly journals Editorial

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. iii-iii
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Mackinlay ◽  
Martin Nakata
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
School Principal ◽  
Educational Success ◽  
Remote Community ◽  
Indigenous Children ◽  
Torres Strait ◽  
Pedagogy And Curriculum ◽  
Education Business

We are very pleased to bring you Volume 45 of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. At this moment in time, we feel that the work of AJIE has perhaps never been more important, particularly as it relates to engaging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and communities in systems of schooling. In May this year we witnessed the evacuation of school teachers from the remote community of Aurukun, Queensland in fear of violence. A group of 15 disengaged young people had threatened the School Principal and as a consequence of the evacuation, 300 engaged children were subsequently disengaged from School for the remaining five weeks of term following the closure. There is no doubt that teacher safety is paramount, similarly, there should be no doubt that community consultation and engagement in a move like this one equally so. The questions which hang in the air relate to why such levels of disengagement exist. Why are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people disengaged from schooling in Aurukun? What makes it okay that a large number of engaged Indigenous children were forcibly made to disengage from school? Why is there such disengagement from government in engaging local people in the ways in which education business is carried out with and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and communities? The papers in this volume of AJIE then, all speak strongly to issues of engagement – the kinds of pedagogy and curriculum that can and should be in place, the kinds of relationships that can and should be in place, and the kinds of outcomes made possible when such educational moves are made. A resounding message from all of the articles in this volume is that the on-going engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, parents, and communities is key to defining and achieving what educational success might mean for each individual child, context and classroom. This is by no means a new message, but the recent events in Aurukun remind us that it is one we must keep returning to – the stakes for complacency and forgetting are too high.

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