Remote Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools and communities are diverse and complex sites shaped by contrasting geographies, languages, histories and cultures, including historical and ongoing relationships with colonialism, and connected yet contextually unique epistemologies, ontologies and cosmologies. This paper explores…

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…

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…

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…