As undergraduate curriculum is increasingly required to meet a range of intellectual, professional practice and personal learning outcomes, what purpose does Australian Aboriginal Studies have in curriculum? Most Australian universities are currently in the process of developing institution-wide approaches to Indigenous Australian content in…

This article takes the form of an interview with Sandy O'Sullivan, who is a partner on the Australian Indigenous Studies Learning and Teaching Network, about key issues that have arisen through Network discussions. She is a Wiradjuri woman and a Senior Aboriginal researcher at the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education.…

Universities in Australia are expanding their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies programs to include Indigenous populations from around the globe. This is also the case for the Indigenous Studies Unit at the University of Wollongong (UOW). Although systems of nomenclature in Indigenous Studies seek to be respectful of difference, the…

Working with beginning teachers to assist them to begin to "think what we do" (Arendt, 1998) in both mainstream and Indigenous education is problematic. This is particularly so because the majority of our teacher candidates, and indeed most of their university lecturers, are positioned close to the racial, social and cultural centre of…

This article details reflections of an interdisciplinary team of educators working with groups of health sciences students in preparing them for working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The first-year common core unit discussed here is one attempt to equip future health practitioners with skills and knowledges to work adequately…

For more than 3 decades governments and education systems have struggled to address the gaps in educational outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Over the past 10 years it has become increasingly apparent that central to redressing these gaps is the development of teachers who are able to effectively engage with Indigenous…

Photovoice, the most prevalent participatory visual research methodology utilised within social science research, has begun making its way into Indigenous contexts in light of its critical and pedagogical potential. However, this potential is not always actualised as the assumptions that undergird photovoice are often the same ones that…

In the remote schooling context, much recent media attention has been directed to issues of poor attendance, low attainment rates of minimal benchmarks in literacy and numeracy, poor retention and the virtual absence of transitions from school to work. The Australian government's recent "Gonski review" ("Review of Funding for…

MindMatters, implemented by Principals Australia Institute, is a resource and professional development initiative supporting Australian secondary schools in promoting and protecting the mental health and social and emotional wellbeing of members of school communities, preferring a proactive paradigm (Covey, 1989) to the position of "disaster…

This article reflects on pathways for Indigenous education in the developing agenda of the Australian Curriculum, the cross-curriculum priorities, the general capability area of intercultural understanding, and the positioning of Indigenous learners within the diversity of learners with English as an additional language or dialect (EALD).

A federal report released by the Department of Families and Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA, 2009), entitled "Closing the Gap on Indigenous Disadvantage: The Challenge for Australia", highlighted the inequality that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students based on a restricted access to resources, issues…

This article draws upon a Maori metaphor to describe the theoretical framework underpinning the methodology and findings of a research project completed by researchers from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2010. It explains how and why the project required the research team to synthesise key information from four New Zealand Ministry…

This article describes the objectives and methodology of a doctoral research project (Manning, 2008). It then draws upon the key findings of that project to briefly describe how an envisioned critical pedagogy of place partnership model, involving nominated members of the "Te Atiawa iwi" (tribe) and local history teachers, might enhance the…

Narratives have always been integral to Indigenous knowledge transfer. In this autoethnography the author shares her border crossings between her Indigenous knowledge systems and the often dominant Western knowledge system. Pertinent to these experiences are the stark contrasts that exist between the two knowledge systems and their educational…

For Indigenous scholars in health sciences, finding "ways of doing" research that value Indigenist knowledge is an important consideration. Indigenist research methodology offers a useful alternative to mainstream research approaches that draw upon orthodox Western knowledge systems. However, as Indigenous research approaches have only recently…