The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education

Editorial

Bronwyn Fredericks, Martin Nakata, Katelyn Barney — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700

We are pleased to bring you Volume 53 Issue 1 of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education.

We wish to thank the authors, reviewers, and editorial board members for their contributions to this volume. Thanks also to the Indigenous Engagement Division at The University of Queensland and Informit for their financial support of the journal. We hope you enjoy this volume of AJIE.

“Absolutely it was not safe”: Indigenous LGBTIQSB+ experiences of education in Australia

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Indigenous LGBTIQSB+ individuals occupy a unique intersection of identities that inform their lived experiences and the ways in which they navigate colonial settler educational institutions. Despite a considerable body of evidence demonstrating the importance of inclusion, educational policies in Australia remain outdated. These policies are frequently informed by a deficit approach that justifies the absence of Indigenous and gender/sexuality diverse content within school curricula. This further acts to shore up discriminatory practices and policies. Using interviews and workshops held with young Indigenous LGTBIQSB+ people, this article reports on the ways participants experienced educational institutional settings. First, participants reported on the kinds of policies and curriculum content that discriminated against and marginalised them, as well as highlighting some positive aspects of school and university. Participants also revealed the potentialities for Indigenous and LGBTIQSB+ inclusivity that could be facilitated within educational spaces. The article demonstrates the need for safer and more inclusive educational environments, which could be achieved through the decentring of settler knowledges and heteronormativity, transforming educational spaces at an institutional level to facilitate safety at interpersonal and collective levels.

Remote secondary education retention: What helps First Nations students stay until, and complete, year 12

John Guenther, Robyn Ober, Rhonda Oliver, Catherine Holmes — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Over recent years there has been a strong emphasis on year 12 completion as an indicator of success in remote First Nations education. The research reported in this article explores what students, school staff and community members say leads to secondary school retention and, ultimately, completion. The research was conducted in the Northern Territory and Western Australia during 2023 by a team of researchers from Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Curtin University and University of Notre Dame. The research focused on remote and very remote independent and Catholic schools. The findings suggest several factors encourage retention, including the supportive role of families (although questions remain on how families might also be supported to encourage their children), the quality of teachers and their teaching, specific school programs and initiatives, post-school pathways, and boarding schools. Student aspirations and motivation are also critical for retention. The findings have implications for schools, school systems, state and federal policies, and associated funding priorities.

“Smooth seas never made a skilled sailor”: Indigenous students’ academic buoyancy and the locale of the learner

Tamara Sam, Ailie McDowall — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700

This article explores how academic buoyancy, a concept from the educational psychology literature, can be used to understand the experiences of Indigenous secondary students’ schooling. Academic buoyancy refers to students’ ability to overcome everyday challenges of schooling. In this project, 11 Indigenous secondary students in a remote school shared their experiences of school and how they developed a range of capabilities to overcome the everyday challenges. Factors often seen as cultural impediments for Indigenous students, such as the “shame factor”, can be viewed as agentic attempts by Indigenous students to develop new capacities, such as a strategy to deal with the fear of failure. It is through these attempts that students develop strategies to negotiate the classroom without giving up their own cultural positions. This article extends earlier research on resilience to focus on the development of academically buoyant capacities that allow students to better navigate the complexities at the locale of the remote Indigenous learner.

Measuring attitude change in nursing students after completion of a First Nations peoples’ health unit: Embedding a validated tool in learning and assessment practices

Kylie McCullough, Angela Genoni, Melanie Murray, Darren Garvey, Linda Coventry — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700

The health inequities experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, rooted in the historical and ongoing negative impacts of colonisation and disrupted traditional lifestyles, sees higher rates of illness and hospitalisations, increased morbidity and higher premature death rates than other Australians. Nurses represent the majority of Australia’s health workforce and nursing students must have knowledge to provide culturally safe care to Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ Health and Wellbeing unit was developed and introduced into an undergraduate nursing curriculum. This project aimed to determine the effectiveness of the unit content in changing the attitude of nursing students towards care of First Nations peoples. A quasi-experimental design was used and included all undergraduate nursing students commencing this unit in 2020 at one university in Western Australia. Students completed a validated questionnaire prior to engaging with unit learning materials and again at completion of the unit. Complete paired data was available for 339 participants. Results demonstrated statistically significant change in attitude following completion of the unit. Embedding targeted education concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ health and wellbeing positively influences attitudes in caring for this population of patients.

Fairness, tika and political science in Aotearoa New Zealand: Some “inconvenient evidence”

Jack Vowles — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700

This article is a rejoinder to Annie Te One and Maria Bargh’s article, published in the previous edition of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, exploring whether the political science discipline in Aotearoa New Zealand is keeping pace with change with respect to Māori politics content in university political science programs, the number of Māori employed in the political science profession and the content of New Zealand's Political Science journal. While acknowledging the importance of their case, an assessment of the empirical evidence and further analysis of the data and the methods used by Te One and Bargh refutes their allegations in relation to all three issues. As one of the co-editors of Political Science, I note that, from 2012 to 2022, the acceptance rate of articles on Māori politics was 91.7% and that of Māori authors submitting on a Māori topic was 100%. Recognition and change are underway.