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Session E7: Tertiary education: enrolment, retention and post-graduate intake

1. L. Barry & R. Nicholson: Non-Indigenous perspectives on supporting academic learning for Australian Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander students

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 232KB

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the role and impact of academic support provisioned by non-Indigenous academic staff and primarily targets the needs of identified Indigenous Environmental Health trainees employed by NSW Health and enrolled in the UWS B App. Sc. in Environmental Health. The academic support role aims to provide students with opportunities to engage with teaching staff in a supportive academic environment; providing a consistent, familiar and trusted link with the university throughout the students’ academic learning career. At the same time, the support role aims to strengthen university staff engagement with Indigenous students while provisioning the academic learning of Environmental Health traineeships. However, as the current role employs a non-Indigenous academic, recognition of the challenges in providing academic support to Indigenous students in a real-life setting has arisen. These challenges include the need to acknowledge cultural aspects of academic learning, while tailoring support to individual student needs within the broader university and workplace environments. Identified barriers to non-Indigenous engagement with Indigenous students have been found to reduce the level of willingness for engagement with the learning environment on the part of some students. These barriers have been observed to impact negatively on the development of a culturally appropriate rapport between academic support and student, particularly when face to face engagement with individual students is further minimised through access issues as a result of significant geographic separation of the university campus and the students’ home and workplace. Further, questions are raised around whether individual support staff empathy for culturally specific barriers to student learning is in itself sufficient to overcome part-time funding limitations of the support role while addressing cultural impediments to the desired learning outcomes.

Author bios:

Rosemary Nicholson, Lecturer & Head of Programs within the College of Health & Science, has been instrumental in facilitating cross-disciplinary academic support for Indigenous students within the Environmental Health stream.

2. Marion Milton, Maree Gruppetta, Terry Mason &  Les Vozzo: Ideals and retention: perspectives of students in a Bachelor of Education (AREP) course

Full paper |Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 152KB

Abstract

Many urban and semi-rural Aboriginal people today want to make a difference and improve not only their own lives but the lives of other members of the Indigenous population of Australia. One of the ways to do this is through education. By training to become a teacher, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders can have a real impact on the outcomes of their students, as well as on the wider community through providing specialised knowledge and information about Aboriginal culture. This paper presents a cross sectional analysis of the reflections on goals by Australian Indigenous student teachers enrolled in years 1-4 in a Bachelor of Education (AREP) program. There will a discussion of the often idealistic initial goals and the tensions between study, work, family commitments and achievement which is reflected in retention and completion rates.

Author bios:

Marion Milton is a senior lecturer at the Badanami Center for Indigenous Education. She has taught Indigenous teacher education students over a number of years, initially in WA and currently in NSW, as well as previously teaching in regular BEd courses, reviewing, supervising and examining Masters and Doctoral students. She is involved in national and local research and has published numerous journal articles in the areas of child and adult literacy, teaching English as an additional language and literacy difficulties. She was recently on the research advisory committee of major government-funded research undertaken by ACER, on the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy and a reviewer for the international Journal ‘The Reading Teacher’.

Les Vozzo is a senior lecturer at the Badanami Centre for Indigenous Education. Les has for the past 5 years taught pre-service Indigenous teachers in a range of course units in their teacher education program. Les is passionate about supporting pre-service and in-service teachers in applying practitioner research methods in their teaching and building partnerships between schools and communities.

Terry Mason is from the land of the Awabakal language group and currently works as a Senior lecturer in the Badanami Centre for Indigenous Education at the University of Western Sydney. He is the former Academic Co-ordinator of the Bachelor of Education Degree delivered through the Aboriginal Rural Education Program. Terry is the national chair of the NTEU Indigenous Policy Committee and the Indigenous representative on the Board of the Welfare Rights Centre. He is active in the NSW AECG. Terry was the primary Indigenous reader of written submissions to the “2004 NSW Review of Aboriginal Education” and was a key researcher in the “Successful transition programs from prior-to-school to school for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children” project. He has contributed solely and jointly to numerous Australian and overseas publications and presented papers in the area of transition, starting school and student support.

Maree Gruppetta is a Guyinbaraay woman (pronounced Gun – ub- er – ree) and an Indigenous Academic, currently working in the Badanami Centre for Indigenous Education at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). Maree previously taught in the School of Education at UWS for 8 years and prior to that was teaching in schools. Maree has taught in both Primary and Secondary classrooms, after completing a Bachelor of Teaching (Primary), and a Bachelor of Education (Honours) in Gifted Education, followed by a Master of Teaching in Special Education (Secondary). Maree is currently finalizing her PhD; the Doctoral research project is titled: The Life Journey of Gifted Adults: a narrative exploration of developmental differences, and investigates the narrative life experiences of gifted adults across multicultural Australia.