The education system, as it relates to very remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia, faces challenges. While considerable resources have been applied to very remote schools, results in terms of enrollments, attendance and learning outcomes have changed little, despite the effort applied. The Cooperative Research…

Recent debates in Australia, largely led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island academics over the past 5 or so years, have focused on the need for non-Indigenous educators to understand how their practices not only demonstrate lack of understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, but even deny their presence. This debate has…

When people talk about education of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, the language used is often replete with messages of failure and deficit, of disparity and problems. This language is reflected in statistics that on the surface seem unambiguous in their demonstration of poor outcomes for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait…

For quite some time the achievements of students in remote Australian schools have been lamented. There is not necessarily anything new about the relative difference between the results of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote communities and their counterparts in urban, regional and rural schools across Australia. However, in…

This article sets the scene for the series of five articles on "red dirt thinking". It first introduces the idea behind red dirt thinking as opposed to "blue sky thinking". Both accept that there are any number of creative and expansive solutions and possibilities to identified challenges--in this case, the challenge of…

In Australia, the "remote education system" presents itself as a simple system where the right inputs, such as quality teachers and leaders will engender the outputs that have been set by the system, such as certain levels of English literacy and numeracy. The system has measures in place, including national testing, to report on its…