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Session E4.2: Providing effective schooling: Indigenous knowledge(s), education and culture

1. Dierdre Heitmeyer: Ka-Wul:  An Indigenous space within a mainstream High School

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 5.3MB

Abstract

Ka-Wul Indigenous Resource and Education Centre is situated within Singleton High School in the Wonnaruah nation in the Hunter Valley of NSW. Many of the Indigenous people living in the area have been disconnected from their history and culture due to colonisation. At Singleton High School there has been a concerted effort to construct a space and place for the 63 Indigenous students enrolled at the school so that there can be a reconnection back to the knowledge and culture of the Wonnaruah nation. This has been made possible from partnerships with community industries such as Coal and Allied; Xstrata Coal; NSW DET; DEEWR; The University of Newcastle; and the Indigenous community of the area. The construction of the space and place has been fundamental in this reconnection, with many of the students now intending to undertake their HSC and SC. A Ka-Wul Dance Troupe has been established with students now performing at many community events. Without this dance troupe there would have been no participation and connection to community by many of these students. Students have also been participating in an international project of connecting culture with learning and have produced a story set in the Singleton area that will be published and used for the local primary schools as a support tool in their reading. Negotiations are under way to produce their work in an animated format for local students to engage in their learning journey. The Ka-Wul students participate in the teacher education secondary program at the University of Newcastle presenting their work and explaining how important it is for Indigenous students to have a space and place for successful schooling.
Other activities include provision of a comprehensive NAIDOC program organised and delivered from the Ka-Wul Centre ensuring that all local schools experience working with Aboriginal people and participating in Indigenous events; A Homework Centre run from Ka-Wul with the older students participating as mentors to the younger students; delivery of staff cultural awareness workshops that are faculty specific and engage Indigenous facilitators that have expertise within the key learning areas of the curriculum; purchasing of resources that made available to staff, students, and community, with an emphasis on collecting local resources whenever possible. Community partnerships are strengthened with Ka-Wul staff organising community education programs; DET meetings; AECG meetings; and community get to togethers held at the Ka-Wul Centre. These contacts are vital to the Indigenous students having connections with all these groups with students engaged in cooking BBQ’s; helping community and general contacts with all these groups.

This paper will be presented by some of the Indigenous students and Aboriginal workers attached to the Ka-Wul Centre and will highlight the work that has reconnected both the Centre and school with the Indigenous culture and people of the Singleton area. It will show how lasting and meaningful partnerships are possible when there is an identified space and place for Indigenous people within a colonised community and highlight the importance of space and place for successful outcomes to a group of Indigenous students within a mainstream high school.

2. Michael Donovan: Aboriginal Cultural Knowledge it lives in my town: urban communities and engagement of Aboriginal students

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 464KB

Abstract

Aboriginal Cultural Knowledge (ACK) is held within Aboriginal Communities in every Community setting from remote to Urban. Different aspects and levels of this knowledge are maintained at an Aboriginal Community level but this knowledge is entrenched within the local setting. Within my presentation I want to show the importance of involving and working in partnership with the local Aboriginal Community in any of these settings to allow this knowledge to be exchanged in an educational environment to support the learning of Aboriginal students and to educate all students about Aboriginal Australia. The title of the presentation is “Aboriginal Cultural Knowledge it lives in my town, Urban communities and engagement of Aboriginal students”

My presentation fits within the Education, Economy and Employment strand under the ‘challenges in the urban environment to employment and effective schooling’ and will examine the topic of service provision when working with Aboriginal students in education institutions. I am currently working on a PhD examining Quality Teaching (QT) and its effectiveness with Aboriginal students. Quality Teaching is a framework supported by the NSW DET about good teaching practices that have a solid research foundation. Some elements of QT focus on cultural knowledge, background knowledge and connectedness. All of these elements are important features for Aboriginal students as stated by Aboriginal pedagogical theorists such as Hughes, Harris, Heitmeyer and Halse & Robinson.

As an educator who has worked in Aboriginal education over the last 16 years I have worked with Aboriginal Communities and how there Community knowledge has some importance and relevance to the local Aboriginal students in that School. That Community owned ACK allows the local environment to be presented through an Aboriginal viewpoint, so all students may connect to their local environment not just as a contemporary landscape but with the history and stories of the local Aboriginal Community.

3. Simon Leonard: Thinking historically about contemporary approaches to the education of gifted Aboriginal students

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow flash 5MB

Abstract

Contemporary educational discourses do not explicitly articulate the idea of ‘Aborigines as inferior’ but neither do they construct Aboriginal people as competent, let alone as gifted. In policy, and more so in practice, ideas of educational equity continue to focus on access to mainstream curriculum and pedagogy and while cultural issues and ideas are not opposed and may even gain limited support, they are not seen as part of the core business of schooling. Such discourses do not allow many gifted Aboriginal students to be catered for in the mainstream schooling system. This is particularly so in urban settings where cultural connections are not always obvious to non-Indigenous teachers.

This paper will explore the life stories, collected as oral history, of four Aboriginal people growing up in or moving to an urban setting. Through a process of peer identification all four are considered successful and, through consideration of their stories, all four can be considered gifted. These stories reveal both diversity of experience in education and training for gifted Aboriginal students and the complexities that arise for both the students and their teachers when there too often seems to be a choice between culture and developing ‘mainstream’ talents. Two of the storytellers, though, articulate a rejection of this post-colonial/neo-colonial dichotomy in favor of an anti-colonial approach to their own personal development.

The challenge these stories present is to think about students as people who exist in a real, historical, social and cultural world when we think about policy and pedagogy.