Red dirt thinking on curriculum in remote Aboriginal education; what do remote Aboriginal educators say we need to know and why?

Red dirt thinking on curriculum in remote Aboriginal education; what do remote Aboriginal educators say we need to know and why? Conference Paper

AARE 2013: Shaping Australian Educational Research

• Author(s): Osborne, Sam, Lester, Karina, Tjitayi, Katrina, Minutjukur, Makinti, Burton, Rueben, Alice, Teresa Alice
• Published: 2013
• Publisher: Australian Association for Research in Education

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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. Internationally and in Australia, Indigenous academics have called for a shift in the power dynamics that inform what knowledge is valued in Australian schools. Over the last few decades, political policies and priorities have moved through a series of positions on the continuum of the knowledge interface, ranging from two (or both) way learning, the ‘anti-colonial’ knowledge position and more recently, a return to nationally uniform approaches to measuring student achievement and ‘success’. In the current period of federating teacher standards, curriculum and assessment tools, the nation’s attention has shifted away from prioritising how schools might amplify the intergenerational knowledge and values that exist in very remote communities in order to close the achievement gap that exists between very remote Aboriginal students and other Australians in relation to nationally uniform education outcomes. This paper brings together Aboriginal educators from the very remote contexts of Central Australia and poses the question ‘what do young people in very remote Aboriginal schools need to know and why?’ In proposing the concept of a ‘red dirt’ curriculum, we explore the perspectives of senior Aboriginal educators in relation to the knowledge contest that plays out in schools across the very remote regions of Australia. In doing so, we then propose some key considerations for remote educators, leaders and the systems they work in as we pursue quality education and the justice agenda.

• Urls: https://www.aare.edu.au/publications/aare-conference-papers/show/8407/red-dirt-thinking-on-curriculum-in-remote-aboriginal-education-what-do-remote-aboriginal-educators-say-we-need-to-know-and-why
• Publisher Location: Adelaide