Remote Australia Online

An ambitious and wide-ranging study of values in Education for Sustainable Development at a time of unprecedented change. Contents Pt. One. 1. Living and learning in a runaway world 2. Education for sustainable development 3. Education and values 4. Values in Australian schooling Pt. Two. 5. Global values for a sustainable world 6. Quality teaching and learning for sustainability 7. Curriculum for a sustainable world Pt. Three. 8. Introducing the Australian National Curriculum 9. Skills in the Australian National Curriculum 10. Knowledge in the Australian National Curriculum 11. Values in the Australian National Curriculum 12. Evaluating the Australian National Curriculum against the criteria for ESD 13. Conclusion. Includes a critical analysis of the Australian national curriculum This book is based upon a doctoral thesis presented to the University of Adelaide

From a longitudinal qualitative case study of 29 teachers newly appointed to rural and remote schools in Western Australia a theory and model of Quality of Worklife for Rural and Remote Teachers: Person-Environment Fit to Multiple Environments was developed. The theory identifies and synthesises the protective and risk factors associated with relocation to rural and remote schools. It posits that teachers must integrate into multiple environments: the sociocultural community of rural Australia, the geographic location, the organisation, the workplace and a specific work role, while renegotiating familial and social relationships. By synthesising factors that impact on the quality of worklife in this way, educational systems, communities and individuals can work to minimise risk factors and maximise protective factors to enhance quality of worklife and ultimately improve the retention of teachers in rural and remote areas.

It is essential to attract, recruit and retain quality teachers in rural and remote schools for provision of quality education to rural and remote students. A robust body of research confirms that teacher quality contributes to quality of education (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Hay McBer, 2000; Kaplan & Owings, 2002; OECD, 2002; Ramsay, 2000). Staffing histories of rural and remote schools identify persistent difficulties in recruiting and retaining teachers, but previous research has failed to address the experiences and perspectives of rural and remote teachers from the earliest phases of appointment, tracking their experiences over time. In times and places of persistent teacher shortages, teacher quality of worklife issues are paramount. Factors impacting on teacher quality of worklife may impact on teacher retention, staffing levels and ultimately the quality of education for children. For these reasons, this study aimed to develop substantive theory about the experiences of teachers commencing appointments in rural and remote schools by investigating the perspectives of novice, interstate and overseas-qualified teachers. The study sought to develop understandings of rural and remote teachers quality of worklife. In order to achieve this aime, the experiences of 29 teachers were examined, in four categories of teachers likely to be appointed to rural and remote locations: young novices; mature-aged novices; interstate; and overseas-qualified teachers in a qualitative collective case study. ... Awareness of the variety of factors in multiple environments, and the complex interplay between them, helps to account for the diversity of perspectives and quality of worklife outcomes for rural and remote teachers. Two theories were generated from ten propositions. The first theory, Quality of Worklife for Rural and Remote Teachers: Person-Environment Fit to Multiple Environments, identified protective and risk factors associated with workrole, workplace, organisation, geographic and socio-cultural community environments. The theory recognises spillover between work and non-work life experiences, impacting on quality of teacher worklife; however, factors directly associated with worklife impacted most significantly on quality of worklife. The second theory, Processes of Adaptation to Multiple Rural and Remote Environments, identified processes (teacher expectations, evaluations of environments, responses to environments) and coping strategies (direct-action, palliative and avoidant) as leading to one of four outcomes: integration; resilient integration; disequilibrium; and withdrawal. The case study findings offer original understandings of experiences of teachers newly appointed to rural and remote schools, through the development of theory about multiple environments teachers encounter and processes of adaptation associated with their relocation to rural and remote areas. The findings have implications for theory, policy and practice, and contribute new dimensions to the general quality of worklife literature.

Objective: To compare infection-related mortality rates and pathogens isolated for Indigenous and non-Indigenous adult patients at Alice Springs Hospital (ASH). Design, participants and setting: Retrospective study of inhospital deaths of adults (patients aged ≥ 15 years) associated with an infection during a medical or renal admission to ASH between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2005. Main outcome measures: Admission- and population-based infection-related mortality rates and mortality rate ratios (MRRs) for Indigenous versus non-Indigenous adults. Results: There were 513 deaths, of 351 Indigenous and 162 non-Indigenous patients. For Indigenous patients, 60% of deaths were infection-related, compared with 25% for non-Indigenous patients (P < 0.001). The admission-based infection-related MRR for Indigenous versus non-Indigenous adults was 2.2 (95% CI, 1.6–3.1) (15.3 v 6.8 deaths per 1000 admissions; P < 0.001). After adjusting for age and year of death, the population-based infection-related MRR was 11.3 (95% CI, 8.0–15.8) overall (351 v 35 deaths per 100 000 population; P < 0.001) and 31.5 (95% CI, 16.1–61.8) for patients aged < 60 years. The median age of patients who died with an infection was 49 (interquartile range [IQR], 38–67) years for Indigenous and 73 (IQR, 58–80) years for non-Indigenous patients (P < 0.001). For Indigenous patients, 56% of infection-related deaths were associated with bacterial sepsis, with half of these due to enteric organisms. Other deaths followed chronic hepatitis B infection, invasive fungal infections and complications of strongyloidiasis. Conclusion: Indigenous patients at ASH are 11 times more likely than non-Indigenous patients to die with an infectious disease. This racial disparity reflects the ongoing socioeconomic disadvantage experienced by Indigenous Australians.

Argues powerfully that underclass students, many of whom are Aboriginal, should receive a rigorous schooling that gives them the means to negotiate the wider world. He examines the long-term failure of educational policy in Australia, especially in the indigenous sector.

Many studies and papers have explored and critiqued the “what” and the “why” of working at the cultural interface of mainstream curricula and local Indigenous knowledge, but this project sought to understand the “how”. Participants went beyond explorations of “cultural items” and worked in the overlap between the New South Wales Department’s Quality Teaching Framework and Indigenous Pedagogies drawn from local lore, language and the sentient landscape. Indigenous knowledge was used not merely as content, but to provide innovative ways of thinking and problem solving in the field of design and technology. The methodology for the study was based on a significant site in the local river system. The focus of the action research study shifted in the early stages from the students to the teachers, who required a radical shift in their thinking in order to set aside deficit logic, or stimulus-response approaches to teaching and learning, to embrace sophisticated Indigenous ways of knowing.

Reconciliation as a peacemaking paradigm emerged as an innovative response to some of the mass atrocities and human rights violations that marked the 20th century. It provided an alternative to traditional state diplomacy and realpolitik that focused on restoring and rebuilding relationships. To that end, those creating reconciliation processes have set themselves the difficult task of laying the foundations for forgiveness through the establishment of truth, acknowledgment of harm, and the provision of appropriate forms of justice. In 1991, the Australian government instigated a process of reconciliation between the indigenous peoples and wider society in order to "address progressively" colonial injustice and its legacy (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act 1991: Preamble). This article seeks to demonstrate, however, that restrictive policy framing and a lack of political will have severely hindered the progress of the Australian reconciliation process. An alternative conceptual approach to settler state and indigenous reconciliation is suggested.

The expectations placed on an evaluator working in an Indigenous context are often great. The ideal is someone in close relationship with the community, employing culturally sensitive methods, fostering broad community involvement, transferring evaluation skills and contributing to a process of empowerment and positive social change. The hard reality is that evaluators are most often outsiders with limited resources and precious little time to spend in the fi eld. By ‘outsider’ I mean someone not of the people, culture and place. They are typically short on contextual understandings and need to work across many project sites. This precludes the possibility of any real bonding with the participants. Furthermore, outsiders often struggle to ‘hear’ correctly and to elicit meaningful information from Indigenous people due to cultural barriers and poor rapport. Perhaps only a handful of locals will choose to become more than peripherally involved in an evaluation. These are major impediments that give rise to very real tensions between evaluation principles and practice. This paper refl ects on these tensions in the context of the national evaluation of the Australian Government’s Stronger Families and Communities Strategy (‘the Strategy’).

In Australia, as in other countries that have experienced colonisation, indigenous people are massively overrepresented in all stages of the criminal justice system. If criminal justice agencies are to provide culturally responsive and effective services to this group, it is important that they employ significant numbers of indigenous staff across all levels of their organisations. Despite the positive intentions of many justice agencies to increase the proportion of indigenous staff members they employ, the numbers remain low. In this article, we explore some of the possible reasons for this by reporting the results of focus groups conducted with existing indigenous justice agency employees. The employees raised a number of issues relevant to recruitment and retention. These are discussed in terms of their potential value in improving justice agency indigenous recruitment and retention strategies.

Objective: This paper discusses whether educating health professionals and undergraduate students in culturally respectful health service delivery is effective in reducing racism, improving practice and lessening the disparities in health care between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Approach: The paper supports the concept of race as a social construction that is discursively produced and reproduced. Studies on the effectiveness of cross-cultural education for undergraduate students and health professionals to reduce racism and deliver culturally respectful health care to indigenous or minority populations are examined for evidence of sustained improvements to practice. Conclusion: Programs in culturally respectful health care delivery can lead to short-term improvements to practice. Sustained change is more elusive as few programs conducted long-term evaluations. Long-term evaluation of programs in culturally respectful health care delivery is necessary to identify whether early changes to behavior and practices are sustained. Strategies linking policies to practice to reduce health disparities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians are also needed. Implications: Confronting the effects of racism in health services towards Aboriginal Australians is a priority requiring a multi-tiered commitment to strategies linking policy to practice to reduce health disparities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Part of this strategy includes preparing undergraduates and health professionals for culturally respectful health care with education programs that are evaluated for long-term improvements to practice.

This article describes the process of learning and development that occured when the prevention and early intervention project, Sing & Grow, began to provide services to Indigenous families. The first attempt at establishing a weekly music therapy service for Indigenous families presented many challenges which impacted on program implementation. Through analysis of the contributing factors, guidelines were developed and implemented in the following program, which resulted in a positve learning experience for the families and therapists involved. Four main themes emerged in the work and will be addressed: trust and rapport; pysical space; staff support; and cultural issues. It is hoped that the following discussion will be useful to clinicians working in cross-cultural and multi-cultural settings.

The revised edition of Reform and Resistance in Aboriginal Education takes a fresh look at the challenges and achievements that have occurred in this important area since the books original release in 2003. Interest in Aboriginal education has increased through federal government policy commitments arising out of the 2007 national apology and the Closing the Gap commitment by state and federal governments. As a result of the increased awareness which led to these initiatives, there have been a number of state and federal government responses giving prominence to Aboriginal education as a public policy and educational issue. Examining the impact of initiatives such as the Shared Responsibility Agreements, the Follow the Dream program, the NT Intervention, Noel Pearsons blueprint for educational reform on Cape York, and drawing on data from numerous sources including the MySchool website, Reform and Resistance in Aboriginal Education provides a comprehensive look at the effects on Indigenous students of these reform efforts. Contents Introduction / Quentin Beresford, Gary Partington and Graeme Gower The context of Aboriginal education/ Quentin Beresford Separate and unequal: an outline of Aboriginal education 1900-1990s/ Quentin Beresford Aboriginal families and the school system/ Margaret Sims, Moira O'Connor and Michelle Forrest Language and the classroom settting/ Ian Malcolm, Terry Kessaria and Janet Hunter The impact of health on the education of Aboriginal children/ Neil Thomson Attendance and non-attendance at school/ Jan Gray and Gary Partington Classroom management and Aboriginal students/ Gary Partingtonand Jan Gray Crime, justice and Aboriginal youth/ Quentin Beresford Living and teaching in Aboriginal communities/ Jim Heslop Directions and best practice/ Quentin Beresford.

The Australian medical education system is at a critical juncture in relation to what and how it delivers for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. Since 2004, three key organisations concerned with medical education have worked to provide a toolkit for implementation of sustainable reform within medical schools. The aim is a medical workforce trained in Indigenous health, and more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander doctors, leading to better health for Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

In November 2003 the Northern Territory Government released its Workforce Employment and Training Strategy (NT Government 2003a) for 2003 to 2005. One of the key features of this strategy, otherwise known as the Jobs Plan related to improving opportunities for Indigenous employment. The strategy noted that 60% of indigenous people live in settlements that have less than 1000 people and that the range of opportunities for employment are less than for other Territorians. It also noted that there were opportunities for employment in remote communities particularly in areas of tourism, mining, construction and horticulture. The action plan relating to this strategy highlights the important role of the Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) and the Northern Territory Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural Affairs (DCDSCA) in achieving a range of education and employment related outcomes. Given that education and training do have a positive impact on social well-being (ABS 2001; OECD 2001) it is worth considering whether the benefits apply to remote communities as they do more generally. The purpose of this paper therefore is to determine the relationships between vocational qualifications and indicators of community well-being1 in remote, mainly Indigenous communities of the Northern Territory. By determining the correlation co-efficient between the proportion of the adult population with certificate qualifications and the proportion of the population with other characteristics it may be possible to determine the extent to which in increase in one variable is related to an increase or decrease in another. The basis of the analysis presented is Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2001 Census data (ABS 2002) for remote Urban Centres and Localities (UC/Ls) where at least half the population is made up of Indigenous people. The analysis attempts to provide a statistical basis for an assessment of interrelated factors that work alongside vocational education and training (VET) outcomes—in terms of certificate qualifications held by individuals— in the context of capacity building in mainly Indigenous communities of the Northern Territory. The paper does not attempt to identify ‘problem’ locations or try to restate the inequities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Territorians in terms of education or employment. These are well documented in literature (ATSIC 1999; HREOC 2000; NTDE 1999; SCRGSP 2003). Nor does the analysis propose solutions to problems. It may however provide a basis for informed decision making about possible strategic directions of projects aimed at improving employment outcomes for Indigenous Territorians. It may also point to implications that may be considered in further research.

Key messages • Students’ identities and community membership—including the attitudes and experiences of their families and communities—contribute to their behaviour and beliefs about undertaking formal education and training. Understanding these influences is a key element in successfully engaging rural and regional learners in education. • Students are likely to succeed at their studies when their families and communities support their education. • Learners who successfully reconcile their studies with their identity and their community membership make use of a range of strategies. These include: accessing a supportive and recognised group in the local community; negotiating their study off campus; negotiating practical components in a known workplace, with local experts; and rehearsing ways to explain their study to their peers and community

This purpose of this paper is to initiate discussion about remote education as a system. The school is an integral part of any education system, as are the political, economic, cultural and socioeconomic factors that generally occur outside of the school boundary. In particular, this paper discusses initiatives and programs that have shown positive outcomes in Indigenous education. Some initiatives are occurring internationally, some are national and others are localised to a single school.

Aboriginal self-determination is a praiseworthy objective of government policy, but do we know how to implement this? Remote possibilities discusses this question by bringing together two traditions of work relevant to political development in northern and central Australia: anthropological studies of Aborigines’ ‘political’ culture and behaviour and recent public policy debates about the enhancement of local government and essential services for Aboriginal people in the north and centre. Dr. Rowse suggests that there persists an ‘Aboriginal domain’ which fits awkwardly into the recently elaborated policies and administrative structures of ‘welfare colonialism’. He warns that those concerned to ‘rationalise’ the administration of remote Aboriginal Australia need to develop their sensitivity to this domain and its effects lest they undermine the cultural basis of self-determination.

Aboriginal children in remote communities have the lowest rates of success in school. The reasons for the lack of success are well known, and mainly lie outside of the schools and their programs. Education authorities have made some poor choices in the past. They have not enforced the necessary discipline on children to attend school, and they have placed cultural sensitivity above the needs of the child to cope in the modern economy. More recently they have begun to concentrate on programs in literacy and numeracy, but success is limited because of the perverse incentives of other government initiatives. These initiatives have been blind to the need to deal with the absence of an economy in remote areas, and the absence of a work ethic among Aborigines who are welfare dependent. The absence of the work ethic and the absence of work have severely constrained the returns on the investment in Aboriginal education. The correct policy response to failure at school will be determined not simply by additional programs at school, but by how various issues of transition to the real economy - work, individual obligation, mobility - are managed. The transition will be better managed if educators and governments understand that education is essentially an instrument in economic integration, and that many remote communities are not viable, and where they are not schools should not be used as pawns to keep them afloat. Moreover, educators and governments should understand that western education cannot and should not preserve Aboriginal culture. Most importantly, parents’ behaviour needs to change and where incentives to send children to school fail, compulsion must be used.

The ASGC Remoteness Structure is one of the seven structures that compose the Australian Standard Geographic Classification (ASGC). The Remoteness Structure is redefined after each Census. It was first defined as part of the 2001 edition of the ASGC and subsequently updated and redefined after the 2006 Census. The purpose of the Remoteness Structure: The concept of remoteness is an important dimension of policy development in Australia. The provision of many government services are influenced by the typically long distances that people are required to travel outside the major metropolitan areas. The purpose of the Remoteness Structure is to provide a classification for the release of statistics that inform policy development by classifying Australia into large regions that share common characteristics of remoteness.

The review’s findings need to be considered in context. In many ways the Territory exhibits a heightened version of the social crises that most of the Western world is now experiencing in terms of disaffected youth, the changed nature of work and life choices, as well as the impacts of global digital communication and technology. As a small, isolated, relatively less affluent part of Australia having the highest proportion of Indigenous people in the country and with a greater cultural mix of people than any other jurisdiction, the Territory’s problems are more public and sharply defined than elsewhere. The review team heard many times that secondary education in the Northern Territory is in crisis, and while the team does not share that view over all, there are major issues that must be addressed, particularly those associated with secondary education for young Indigenous people in remote communities, and for those young people – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – whose needs are not being met by what is currently being offered in our regional and urban secondary schools. Much of the discussion in the report may seem negative. However, the review team met numerous young people for whom the education system is working very well, and for whom the future looks bright; it met many committed, caring staff in schools and offices all over the Territory who are working extremely hard in often challenging circumstances to deliver quality education services to the young people in Territory schools; it saw exciting, innovative and potentially ground-breaking solutions to these challenges being tried, new initiatives being tested; it met senior officers in education systems determined to work with parents and the community to improve the quality of educational services being offered on the ground and improve outcomes for all of the Territory’s young people. Even so, there are significant issues to be addressed. These will take substantial time, major effort, long term commitment, more effective use of current resources and some substantial additional resourcing from both the Territory and Commonwealth Governments, if the NT is to have a nationally competitive secondary education system that works for all its young people. It will also require openness to change on the part of all stakeholders. The NT Government will need to take the lead, but the Commonwealth must play a bigger and more integrated role in Territory education, particularly if the very serious issues in Indigenous education are to be addressed effectively. It is for Governments to provide the necessary policy framework and resources, for the Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) to provide leadership, drive and support for the proposed changes, and for the schools and their communities to focus on young people in new ways so that they can achieve effective, sustainable lives.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a discussion of the issues identified through research of the relevant literature and consultation with VET online learners through telephone interviews, as well as outlining future directions for online learning in rural and remote Australia. This research was conducted under the auspices of the “Access and Equity in Online Learning (Stage 2) Strategy 2001 Australian Flexible Learning Framework”. The Project Plan for the “Australian Flexible Learning Framework” defines the project’s scope as: .... including distance, time, ICT literacy, functional literacy, and information literacy. Existing online initiatives that provide resources to this group of learners will be identified. The resources will be evaluated…to determine good practice that addresses the factors/barriers.

Those working in regional communities are often struck by the fact that one Indigenous community is successful in keeping crime rates low while another is not. This raises the question as to what are the essential differences between these communities? What are the defining elements of a strong Indigenous community? Does the size of the community make a difference, does it matter if cultural traditions are observed, is the form of leadership a key element, do strong women leaders or elders set the ‘tone’ in the community and does the vibrancy of the local economy make a difference? Knowledge about strong Indigenous communities could also tell us if the crime rate is linked to the strength of bonds between community members.

Charles Darwin University (CDU) is committed to community engagement and is developing ways of embedding this role within university structures and processes. One strategy to achieve this was the Indigenous Community Engagement (ICE) research project, conducted in 2007 and 2008. The ICE Project aimed to document and make explicit the engagement embedded within past and ongoing projects with Indigenous people as a way of informing the development of CDU’s community engagement strategies. This paper documents the origins, methodology, findings, recommendations and implications of the ICE Project. CDU has a long history of conducting successful teaching and research projects with Australian Indigenous people. A key assumption underpinning the development of the ICE project was that there were numerous examples of good existing collaborations between CDU staff and Indigenous communities that the university as a whole could learn from. One of the critical aspects of the project was to create space for Indigenous people, from both within and outside the university, to participate and tell their stories of engagement, including what they consider it to be and what the preconditions are for good community engagement. The ICE Project demonstrated that good community engagement with Indigenous people is an emergent process embedded in respectful relationships between individuals. Successful Indigenous community engagement depends on recognising Indigenous knowledge and its practices and Indigenous identity as central to the development of partnerships and collaboration between the university and Indigenous communities. Successful Indigenous community 3 engagement also requires that university staff see their professional relationships with Indigenous people as extending beyond the life and concerns of individual projects.

• The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) was contracted by the Australian Government Attorney-General’s Department (AGD) to examine the way that Australian governments had sought to address Indigenous substance use and related offending. • The study was planned over two stages, with Stage 1 involving a comprehensive summary of the diversion programs currently operating across Australia and the issues relating to Indigenous offending and access to diversion programs. The extent to which Indigenous offenders are diverted, the outcomes of their participation and the barriers to their ability to both access and successfully complete programs will be examined in Stage 2 of the study. This report presents the findings of Stage 1. • Stage 1 was qualitative in nature and involved the examination of a range of reference materials, including the research literature, legislation and policy. Consultations were also conducted in all states and territories with relevant justice, corrections, police, health and other program personnel. Thirty-six interviews, primarily conducted face-to-face, took place across the states and territories with approximately 55 stakeholders. Those consulted ranged from program staff to policy practitioners who were directly involved with diversion programs. • Various tasks designed to inform the direction of Stage 2 of the study were undertaken, including an audit of the available data sources regarding the extent of Indigenous contact with the criminal justice system and the distribution of a questionnaire to gather consistent information regarding the variables contained within various program datasets. The results of these tasks are listed in appendixes A and B.

This paper argues that a fundamental issue confronting Australian indigenous groups and communities is how to develop the capacity to engage strategically with the general Australian society, in particular with its political and economic dimensions. ‘Strategic engagement’ refers to the processes through which indigenous individuals, groups and communities are able to interact with, contribute to, draw from—and of course potentially reject—the formal and informal institutions of the dominant Australian society in a considered and informed manner that provides them with real choices as to where to go, and how to get there. It refers to a process, not an outcome. This capacity for strategic engagement is dependent upon many factors, but effective governance mechanisms in particular are critical. Governance can be seen as the formal and informal structures and processes through which a group, community or society conducts and regulates both its internal affairs and its relations with others. This paper focuses on principles for effective governance within indigenous organisations. It argues that nowhere in Australia do indigenous people live in self-defining and self-reproducing worlds of meaning and practices; rather they inhabit complex and contested intercultural worlds. Therefore, if institutions for more effective governance are essential to strategic engagement, then they must draw not only from indigenous values and practices, but also from those of the general Australian society, and indeed from relevant international experience. It is argued that it is no longer defensible to resort to the mantra of ‘cultural appropriateness’, nor solely to traditions and customary practices in determining principles by which effective indigenous institutions should be established and should operate. Rather, the challenge is to develop distinctively indigenous institutions which nonetheless facilitate effective engagement rather than limiting it. This paper suggests a set of principles for this task.