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Abstract:
The Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation's Remote Education Systems project is midway through a five year research program. The focus of the research has been firstly on understanding the nature of the problems encountered by the system and those living in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities as they grapple with how to achieve success for students. In the process of gathering data, the project team has challenged many of the assumptions underpinning the core of the education system. It has also considered how success, aspiration and educational advantage might be reconceptualised if the system was to take into account the voices of those who live in the expansive ‘red dirt' of remote Australia. At this phase in our research, we are ready to put forward some tentative models that could pave the way for stakeholders to explore alternative forms and structures that better reflect the needs of students, their families and their communities. In this paper the authors present these models in the frame of a developing theory of educational engagement in remote Australia, based on a set of co-constructed philosophical assumptions that both build on mainstream aims of education (for example as expressed in the 2008 Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians) and at the same time reflect the realities of life in very remote Australia. The models are generated at the ‘cultural interface', situated in the ‘red dirt' of remote Australian communities. The models consider issues of governance, curriculum, reporting and pedagogy. The authors' intentions are not to provide definitive solutions, but rather options that can be debated and considered for practical use by the key stakeholders in very remote communities.
