Conference Papers
Session E2.1. Policy, testing and Assessment
1. Jerry Schwab: Carrots or sticks? Future directions in Indigenous education policy
In Australia education is clearly promoted as a key part of ‘the answer’ to the marginalisation and disadvantage of Indigenous people. Indeed, three of the six targets in the Labor Government’s ‘Closing the Gaps’ policy framework involve education. Yet Indigenous education policy in Australia is far from straightforward. It has always been influenced and shaped by many forces. Indigenous education policy is developed and implemented at a number of levels over a range of jurisdictions: by the Commonwealth, by States and Territory governments, by the non-government education provider sector and by Ministerial Councils and other bodies attempting to tie together (and shape) the interests of these and other policy players. These players are diverse: educators, unions, researchers, politicians, philanthropists, business leaders, public servants, media personalities, editors, parents and community leaders to name but a few. Many of these individuals are themselves Indigenous and all have strong views about what’s wrong with Indigenous education and how it should be fixed. Few observers would disagree that Indigenous policy in Australia has become increasingly conservative in recent years, yet several major education program initiatives spearheaded by prominent national Indigenous leaders have received significant government funding and support during this same period. Do such programs represent the fruition of decades of movement toward Indigenous self-determination in education? This paper addresses this question through the exploration of three such initiatives and asks what the funding of such programs signals about current and future directions in Indigenous education policy.
Author bio: R.G. (Jerry) Schwab is a Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at The Australian National University where he carries out research related to Indigenous education, literacy and youth policy. He has been involved with educational research and development in Australia and overseas (USA, Canada, United Arab Emirates and Egypt) since the mid-1980s. Since joining CAEPR in 1995, he has carried out primary and secondary research on issues as diverse as Aboriginal community-controlled schools, notions of educational 'failure' and 'success' among Indigenous students, Indigenous workforce development and Indigenous education outcomes at the primary, secondary and post-compulsory levels. He has long standing research interest in the relationship between schools and communities. His recent research has focused on Indigenous youth and new media, learning, philanthropy and land and resource management as an avenue for the educational and social re-engagement of Indigenous youth in remote regions. He has carried out major consultancies for a number of clients including the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Health and Family Services, the Queensland Department of Education, Training and the Arts, the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust and the Murdi Paaki Regional Enterprise Corporation.
2. Anthea Jo Taylor: Testing what? The education revolution and the assessing of young Indigenous children
The push to implement standardised testing in Australian schools and increasingly preschools follows the now discredited US pattern. It has occurred here with little critique or debate, notwithstanding a few murmurs of objection from a handful of professionals and parents. Drawing on recent work in urban schools, this paper explores the manner in which too many young Indigenous students are likely to be misjudged in such blanket testing and assessing regimes and disadvantaged by the inevitable pedagogical changes that accompany such schemes.
Author bio: Dr Anthea Jo Taylor has been involved in research, policy development and curriculum and instruction in Aboriginal affairs, adult literacy and secondary and post-compulsory education. She has taught both anthropology and education at the tertiary level and is currently Adjunct Senior Lecturer at ECU. The research reported here builds on the findings of a project undertaken while on a three-year Visiting Research Fellowship at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
3. Jane Simpson: Testing languages in remote communities: Indigenous languages and English
Indigenous children in remote communities may come to school speaking traditional languages and new Indigenous languages. As part of formal education they need to learn standard English as a language of wider communication. Their family and community may want them tokeep speaking their home languages. Both these aims are achievable simultaneously, even though policy-makers sometimes mistakenly believe they are not. Part of achieving these aims requires accurate information about what children are speaking and who they are speaking what language to. Language testing is needed to ensure that children are reaching appropriate levels of mastery of their home languages and of standard English. But to do this accurately, language testing must be sensitive and valid. Home language testing has barely begun in Australia, and we describe briefly a test we carried out at Yakanarra. Testing of standard English has been carried out for a number of years, and Indigenouschildren in remote communities had the lowest test scores. The usefulness and validity of the tests for these children is questionable, since tests are standardised on groups of English language speaking children. We focus on the language conventions (grammar, spelling and punctuation), and show that the basis for grammar testing is unclear, and does not seem to be based on understanding of second language development. We conclude that the NAPLAN tests need to be very carefully monitored for the assessment of children living in remote Indigenous communities, and that more specific tests are needed which derive from an understanding of the stages that Indigenous-language-background students are likely to pass through in acquiring standard English.
Author bio: Jane Simpson is Chair of Indigenous Linguistics and Head of the School of Language Studies at the Australian National University. She works on Australian Aboriginal languages, especially syntax and semantics, but also place-names, dictionaries, land-claims, kinship systems, and reconstructing what languages were like from old written sources. It includes long-term study of Kaurna, Warlpiri (Warlpiri morphosyntax Kluwer 1991), Warumungu (A learner's guide to Warumungu IAD Press 2002). She has also been working on the ACLA project investigating children’s language in Indigenous communities, which has included study of creoles and mixed languages (co-editor Gillian Wiggleworth Children’s language and multilingualism Continuum: 2008), and with Patrick McCOnvell and Jo Caffery, has written an AIATSIS discussion paper on bilingual education.