Publishing, postage, and prizes : classic Australian children’s literature in the public eye

2012 saw the publication of competing and complementary lines of Australian “classics”: “A&R Australian Classics” (HarperCollins) and “Text Classics” (Text Publishing). While Angus and Robertson were key in establishing a canon of Australian children’s classics in the twentieth century, it was the Text Classics line which included a selection of young people’s titles in their 2013. In turn, Penguin Australia launched a selection of “Australian Children’s Classics”. In so doing, these publishers were drawing on particular literary and visual cultural traditions in Australian children’s literature. Public assertions of a particular selection of children’s books reveals not only contemporary assumptions about desirable childhood experiences but about the operation of nostalgia therein. In encouraging Australian adults to judge books by their covers, such gestures imply that Australian children may be similarly understood. Importantly, the illusion of unity, sameness, and legibility which is promised by circumscribed canons of “classic” children’s literature may well imply a desire for similarly illusory, unified, legible, “classic” childhood. This paper attends to public attempts to materialise (and legitimise) a canon of classic Australian children’s literature. In particular, it considers the ways in which publishing, postage stamps, and book awards make visible a range of children’s books, but do so in order to either fix or efface the content or meaning of the books themselves. Moving between assertions of the best books for children from the 1980s to today, and of the social values circulated within those books, this paper considers the possibilities and problematics of an Australian children’s canon.

Circle Stories

Research background: Circle Stories was a live performance curated by Brydie-Leigh Bartleet, Naomi Sunderland, Gavin Carfoot and the Winanjjikari Music Centre as part of the Desert Harmony Festival 2013. The performance was the culmination of five years of research into intercultural performing arts practice, undertaken in partnership with Barkly Regional Arts. This work has built on existing scholarly work in community service learning by Marilynne Boyle-Baise, approaches to intercultural music making with Australian First Peoples by Karl Neuenfeldt, and studies of Indigenous popular music by Peter Dunbar-Hall and Chris Gibson. The performance followed the popular songwriters’ circle approach, in which Aboriginal musicians and elders presented their songs along with tertiary music students, as part of a broader dialogue with each other and the audience. Each performance provided an opportunity to highlight the importance of music in the development of intercultural knowledge and understanding. The project asked the research question, how can collaborative music performance foster mutual learning, intercultural knowledge and reconciliation? Research contribution: The project development and performance of Circle Stories identified that mutual learning and intercultural knowledge can result most effectively through long-term and meaningful relationships underpinning collaborative creative practice. Research significance: Following a general call for proposals, the performance was peer reviewed and selected for inclusion in the Desert Harmony Festival program. The research context of the work is detailed in Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Gavin Carfoot 2013. "Desert harmony: Stories of collaboration between Indigenous musicians and university students." International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives 12 (1): 180-196.

We have a lot to learn yet : a postcolonial lens in health promotion

Health promotion progresses a social justice and empowerment agenda and thus emphasises working with people to increase their control over their health. Certainly, Australia has experienced much success in this endeavour and is internationally recognised as a leader. However, health promotion has failed Indigenous Australians; a fact that is echoed in the health outcomes that ironically provide us with the “moral imperative” to act. Further investigation has also revealed health promotion’s foundation in colonial imaginings. Thus, this paper calls for the culture of health promotion to be examined as a risk factor for poor Indigenous health. To complement this call, this paper presents findings of an ethnographic study of Indigenous health promotion practice, undertaken from a postcolonial and critical whiteness framework. These findings provide a narrative of strength and innovative approaches, highlighting the value of Indigenous knowledge. These findings also contradict the biomedical tendency to construct culture as illness-producing. More broadly, this study’s findings entail important lessons for health promotion to consider, if it is to move beyond the rhetoric, to truly increase people’s control over their health.

Lessons from a face-to-face meeting on embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives : ‘A contract of intimacy’

This paper presents the findings from a conversation between an Aboriginal educator and a non-Indigenous pre-service educator about the importance and complexities of building productive partnerships. Although the participants focused on the challenges and benefits of building relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators and non-Indigenous educators in Australian early years settings, the more significant outcome of the meeting was the personal connection two young women were able to make when a friendship began to develop. The project was intended to enable an opportunity for the participants ‘to engage in reflexivity on their pedagogic work’, something Mills (2012) understands as crucial to the support of social justice and transformation in the classroom.

Culture makes you stronger : Aboriginal women’s voices from the South Coast of NSW

This paper will describe a community based research project examining the health and wellbeing of a sample of Aboriginal women in Australia, and present preliminary findings of a community needs analysis. The Shoalhaven Koori Women’s Study (SKWS) is being led by an Aboriginal woman based within Waminda, an Aboriginal women’s community controlled service located on the South Coast of NSW. The community needs analysis is the first stage of the SKWS, and aims to explore Aboriginal women’s perceptions and experiences of wellness and wellbeing, including issues related to their personal strengths, health and social priorities, support needs and that of their families. Thirty Aboriginal women were interviewed using a survey that included closed and open ended questions. Methods used to administer the survey included yarning and Dadirri (deep listening), two valid and culturally safe approaches for data collection with Aboriginal people. Adopting these approaches ensured Aboriginal protocols were maintained and upheld throughout the research process. This enabled scientific rigour while also ensuring activities were culturally safe. Key findings of the survey will be presented, and how Waminda is modifying service delivery to better respond to the health and social priorities of Aboriginal women in the Shoalhaven region will be discussed. Community feedback of survey results will occur to validate the analysis from the community perspective.

Australian Aboriginal English and cultural conceptions : can they affect policing?

It is well established that there are inherent difficulties involved in communicating across cultural boundaries. When these difficulties are encountered within the justice system the innocent can be convicted and witnesses undermined. A large amount of research has been undertaken regarding the implications of miscommunication within the courtroom but far less has been carried out on language and interactions between police and Indigenous Australians. It is necessary that officers of the law be made aware of linguistic issues to ensure they conduct their investigations in a fair, effective and therefore ethical manner. This paper draws on Cultural Schema Theory to illustrate how this could be achieved. The justice system is reliant upon the skills and knowledge of the police, therefore, this paper highlights the need for research to focus on the linguistic and non‐verbal differences between Australian Aboriginal English and Australian Standard English in order to develop techniques to facilitate effective communication.

Australian Aboriginal virtual heritage

The thesis uses creative practice and Indigenous knowledge frameworks with design methods to explore the ways in which virtual technology can represent Indigenous history and culture.

Tensions between policy and practice : reconciliation agendas in the Australian curriculum English

In various parts of the world, Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are actively working towards Reconciliation. In Australia, the context in which we each undertake our work as educationalists and researchers, the Reconciliation agenda has been pushed into schools and English teachers have been called on to share responsibility for facilitating the move towards a new national order. The recently introduced Australian Curriculum mandates that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures be embedded with “a strong” but “varying presence” into each learning area (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2013). In this paper we consider the tensions between policy and practice, when discourses external to education are recontextualised into the discipline of English. We do so by applying an analytical framework based on Bernstein’s (1990, 1996,2000) sociological theories about the structure of instructional and regulative discourses. Our findings suggest that the space to exert Reconciliatory agendas in the Australian Curriculum English is ambiguous and thus holds the potential to not only marginalise Indigenous knowledges but also to create tensions between policy and practice for non-Indigenous teachers of English.

People’s perceptions about the importance of forests on Borneo

We ascertained villagers’ perceptions about the importance of forests for their livelihoods and health through 1,837 reliably answered interviews of mostly male respondents from 185 villages in Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo. Variation in these perceptions related to several environmental and social variables, as shown in classification and regression analyses. Overall patterns indicated that forest use and cultural values are highest among people on Borneo who live close to remaining forest, and especially among older Christian residents. Support for forest clearing depended strongly on the scale at which deforestation occurs. Deforestation for small-scale agriculture was generally considered to be positive because it directly benefits people’s welfare. Large-scale deforestation (e.g., for industrial oil palm or acacia plantations), on the other hand, appeared to be more context-dependent, with most respondents considering it to have overall negative impacts on them, but with people in some areas considering the benefits to outweigh the costs. The interviews indicated high awareness of negative environmental impacts of deforestation, with high levels of concern over higher temperatures, air pollution and loss of clean water sources. Our study is unique in its geographic and trans-national scale. Our findings enable the development of maps of forest use and perceptions that could inform land use planning at a range of scales. Incorporating perspectives such as these could significantly reduce conflict over forest resources and ultimately result in more equitable development processes.

The importance of science fiction and other STEM-related mass media in young people’s decisions to enrol in university STEM courses

This paper presents Australian results from the Interests and Recruitment in Science (IRIS) study with respect to the influence of STEM-related mass media, including science fiction, on students’ decisions to enrol in university STEM courses. The study found that across the full cohort (N=2999), students tended to attribute far greater influence to science-related documentaries/channels such as Life on Earth and the Discovery Channel, etc. than to science-fiction movies or STEM-related TV dramas. Males were more inclined than females to consider science fiction/fantasy books and films and popular science books/magazines as having been important in their decisions. Students taking physics/astronomy tended to rate the importance of science fiction/fantasy books and films higher than students in other courses. The implications of these results for our understanding of influences on STEM enrolments are discussed.

Celebrating and sustaining Indigenous knowledges through higher education

In its intervention at the 10th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2010, the World Indigenous Network Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) acknowledged that despite a history of protracted but limited attempts by Governments globally to address the low participation and graduation rates of Indigenous peoples from higher education at post graduate level, this continues to be an area of considerable concern. This paper speaks to the development of an innovative academic process that profiles the ground breaking work of WINHEC and a cohort of Indigenous academics in developing academic programs designed to address this systemic failure. The concept of these programs was endorsed in 2006 at a WINHEC conference where Indigenous representatives from across the world met to discuss in part, historical and contempory impediments to Indigenous success within higher education. The goal of WINHEC has been to develop a nested suite of inventive postgraduate awards founded within the scholarship of Indigenous Knowledge which encapsulates an epistemological approach. This has been a ground breaking process that has included collaborative and intellectual contributions of Indigenous academics from diverse cultural nations across the globe and, in particular, Australia. In 2012 the culmination of this dream and the suite of courses developed, honours and embrace the uniqueness of Indigenous Knowledge and the cultural integrity of Indigenous Leadership.

Indigenous epistemology : creating an international Indigenous higher education space in the wake of the western “university of excellence”

Interest in the participation of Indigenous peoples in higher education has, in recent times, gained momentum with an increasing number of advocates challenging the global history of culturally inept policies and practices imposed within the western higher education system. To address the challenges being presented by Indigenous communities and other groups (often relegated under the banner of disadvantaged or equity) Western Universities are promoting a shift toward inclusive policies and practices. Frustrated with the offerings of the Western Higher Education system, a global movement of Indigenous academics, Elders and knowledge holders are developing strategies to meet the educational needs of their own communities, in order to find a way forward. The mobilization of Elders and Indigenous academics has resulted in the development of a global higher education network which is proving to be a significant force in changing the position of Indigenous participation in higher education. The World Indigenous Network Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) has presented a significant challenge to those barriers within the western higher education system that has historically demonstrated an inability to develop culturally inclusive practices within their institutions. This paper examines the development of a world Indigenous higher education movement and its contribution to the history of the “university” within the context of western higher education institutions. Outlined in this examination will be a synopsis of the development of the “University of Excellence” and the creation of an international Indigenous space within higher education.

Writing Indigenous vampires: Aboriginal gothic or Aboriginal fantastic?

The usual postmodern suspicions about diligently deciphering authorial intent or stridently seeking fixed meaning/s and/or binary distinctions in an artistic work aside, this self-indulgent essay pushes the boundaries regarding normative academic research, for it focusses on my own (minimally celebrated) published creative writing’s status as a literary innovation. Dedicated to illuminating some of the less common denominators at play in Australian horror, my paper recalls the creative writing process involved when I set upon the (arrogant?) goal of creating a new genre of creative writing: that of the ‘Aboriginal Fantastic’. I compare my work to the literary output of a small but significant group (2.5% of the population), of which I am a member: Aboriginal Australians. I narrow my focus even further by examining that creative writing known as Aboriginal horror. And I reduce the sample size of my study to an exceptionally small number by restricting my view to one type of Aboriginal horror literature only: the Aboriginal vampire novel, a genre to which I have contributed professionally with the 2011 paperback and 2012 e-book publication of That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! However, as this paper hopefully demonstrates, and despite what may be interpreted by some cynical commentators as the faux sincerity of my taxonomic fervour, Aboriginal horror is a genre noteworthy for its instability and worthy of further academic interrogation. (first paragraph)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students conceptions of formal learning and experiences of informal learning

This paper describes an investigation of conceptions of learning held by 22 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from three universities in Queensland, Australia. Other areas investigated were students' experiences of informal learning, their reasons for studying and the strategies they used to learn. Research into conceptions of learning is gaining impetus and current beliefs include the premise that approaches to learning adopted by university students, and hence learning outcomes, are closely related to their conceptions of learning. There is substantial research focused on Aboriginal learning styles in early childhood and primary school which indicates that Aboriginal children prefer to learn in a practical way as well as through observation and imitation and trial and error. Very little research has focused specifically on Aboriginal university students' conceptions of learning. Results of this study found that these students view and approach formal university learning in much the same way as other university students and most hold quantitative conceptions of learning. The most interesting result was the difference between students' conceptions of formal learning and their experiences of informal learning. Many students' experiences of informal learning were grounded in practical activities or exhibited a cultural focus, however, most formal learning is not dependent upon practical or cultural knowledge. It is proposed that formal learning for Indigenous students recognise and include an Indigenous perspective such as integrating, where appropriate, practical strategies for learning. We also suggest that Indigenous students be helped to develop conceptions that will enable them to learn formal, theoretical material successfully.