Barriers to indigenous education and educational research reform in Australia

Across all Indigenous education sectors in Australia there continues to be extensive debate about the appropriateness of proposed assessment criteria, curriculum content, language of instruction, pedagogical approaches, research practices and institutional structures. Until relatively recently, policy initiatives targeting these issues have been developed and implemented separately and without reference to the interrelated nature of the barriers that confront Indigenous peoples in their attempts to challenge mainstream educational and research practices that potentially marginalise their individual and collective interests. Increasingly, these issues are being linked under the banner of 'Indigenous education reform', and the potential for collective Indigenous community action is being realised. The current Indigenous education reform process in Australia is concerned with reversing the trend associated with patterns of academic underachievement by Indigenous students in the nation's school systems. Concurrently, reforms in the area of Indigenous education research are concerned with achieving fundamental changes to the way Indigenous education research is initiated, constructed and practised. Mainstream institutions. Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples have different interests in the outcome of the resolution processes associated with proposals to reform Indigenous education and research practices. It is through investigation of stakeholder positioning in relation to key issues, and through reference to stakeholder interests in the outcome of negotiated resolutions, that a critical approach to analysing Indigenous education and research reform initiatives can be achieved. The three case studies contained within this portfolio represent an attempt to investigate the patterns of contestation associated with the delivery of primary school education for Aboriginal students in the Northern Territory and the problems associated with implementing reformed Indigenous education research guidelines. This research has revealed pervasive mainstream community and institutional support for assimilatory policies and a related lack of support for policies of Indigenous community 'self-determination1. This implies insufficient support within the Nation-State for Indigenous proposals for education and research reforms that legitimise the incorporation of Indigenous languages and cultural knowledge and that aim to re-position Indigenous peoples as central to the construction and delivery of education and educational research within their own communities. Common barriers to the implementation of reformed institutional structures and educational and research practices have been identified across each of the three case studies. The analysis of these common barriers points to a generalised statement about the nature of the resistance by mainstream Australians and their institutions to Indigenous community proposals for educational and research reforms. This research identifies key barriers to Indigenous Australian education and research reforms as being: Resurgent mainstream community and institutional support for assimilatory policies implies a lack of support for increasing the level of Indigenous community involvement in the construction and delivery of education and educational research; Mainstream institutional commitment to the principles of economic rationalism and the incorporation of corporate managerialist approaches reduces the potential for Indigenous community involvement in the setting of educational and research objectives; The education and social policy agendas of recent Australian governments are geared toward the achievement of national economic growth and the strengthening of Australia's position in the global economy. As a direct result, the unique cultural identities and linguistic heritages of Indigenous peoples in Australia are marginalised; Identified 'disempowenng' attitudes and practices of educators, researchers and institutional representatives continue to impact negatively upon the educational outcomes of Indigenous students; Insufficient institutional support for the development of mechanisms to ensure Indigenous community control over all aspects of the research project continues to impede the successful negotiation of research in Indigenous community contexts; The promotion of 'deficit' educational approaches for Indigenous students reinforces the marginalisation of their existing linguistic and cultural knowledge bases; The relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia continues to be constrained by the philanthropically based 'donor-recipient' model of service delivery. The framing of Indigenous peoples as recipients of mainstream community benevolence has ongoing disempowering and negative consequences; Currently proposed national Indigenous education policies and programmes for the implementation of these polices do not adequately take into account the diversity in linguistic, political, cultural and social interests of Indigenous peoples in Australia; Widespread 'institutional racism' within mainstream educational institutions perpetuates the disadvantage experienced by Indigenous students and Indigenous community members who aim to derive benefit from education and educational research.

After hours schools as core to the spatial politics of in-betweeness

In this article the authors draw on a larger study in which their overall concern is to illustrate how diasporic identifications develop through a range of scales related to self, family, community, nation and beyond. They consider the Melbourne Greek community as an exemplar of diasporic experience and use it as a case study for their investigation, which is aimed at exploring how transcultural literacies relate to spaces which complicate and enrich identifications. In this article they consider the role of 'after hours' schools in the shaping of diasporic identities. These are community-based schools where Greek language and culture is taught. Commonly, classes are held on Saturday morning or in the evenings during the week. Such schools operate in classrooms that are rented from 'real' schools. By existing in spaces that are commonly occupied by mainstream day schools, students who attend 'after hours' schools experience a form of marginalisation that is also a right of passage. Here the authors argue that such 'in-between' spaces assist with the formation of 'in-between' identities that are emblematic of globalization.

Women as consumers of a male domain : Australian Rules Football and its female fans

Looked at from a global perspective, sports are mostly male preserves. Those played by women seldom attract a large spectatorship and the numerous at-ground viewers of men’s play mostly are men. An exception is Australian Rules Football (AFL), a male sport that since the 19th century has drawn a considerable female following, with women accounting for about half of the ‘live’ crowds. From single-person and focus group interviews conducted with female AFL fans, we examine how women voice their support for a sport characterised by hyper-masculinity in players’ on-field and off-field behaviours, in the organisation and control of the sport, and in the ‘natural’ authority credited to men’s voices in commentary and interpretation of it. Given their marginalisation in AFL and in sports generally, what do women fans gain from their avid support of AFL and how does this influence the construction of their identities as women? We examine these issues from a perspective supporting the idea of multiple, fragmented identities.

Shilpa’s filthy hands

The celebrity Big Brother race row centers, in part, on the preparation, handling and consumption of food. While the ritual of formal and informal dining is a key trope of the series, in this instance it is used to construct notions of difference and Otherness. Eating/not eating Indian becomes a symbol of purity and danger: of Shilpa's filthy natural self that somehow lurked beneath her glamorous exterior. If one eats Indian one is consuming the Other, with the potential to be taken over or spoiled by it. Shilpa, then, comes to stand for a complex and contradictory mix of Eastern/Oriental gender stereotypes. However, at the same time, the racialised grammar of representation used to mark her out as Other draws attention to the white bodies attempting to deny her wholeness. In choosing to eat/not eat Indian one opens up a dynamic space for an interrogation of whiteness to emerge. In fact, Jade, Jo, and Danielle become inferior signifiers of national identity in an age of global consumption. By contrast, Shilpa becomes 'surplus value', a supericonic sign that resists the name calling, fetishisation, marginalisation demanded by those on the show. The Big Brother race row may well be a text that directly speaks to the new post-colonial communication flows in place in the contemporary age.

Jaisa Desh, Waisa Vesh? Exploratory notes on the representations of adivasis in popular Hindi cinema

This paper seeks to discuss specific examples of Adivasi representation in Indian cinema, particularly popular Hindi cinema or ‘Bollywood’ (as opposed to ‘art’ or ‘parallel’ cinema). This choice of popular Hindi cinema is an attempt to explore the ways in which it has distilled and codified the representations of ‘other’ groups for a mass audience. Popular Hindi films have an unmatched circulation and pre-eminence (Prasad, 1998) in India, making the impact of their representations important to consider. Commercial interests of popular Hindi films are paramount, their producers and directors are generally from the upper castes and classes of Indian society. In the push for commercial interests and popular storylines, adequate representations of Adivasis, and as scholars (Vasudev & Lenglet, 1983; Bagchi, 1996; Subramanyam, 1996; Gopalan, 2000; Vridi, 2003) have pointed out women and other social groups, remain stereotypical. Mainstream Hindi cinema, even in its post-colonial phase, has not provided images of various cultural groups in India which reflect their lived reality. It is this cinematic marginalisation and cultural stereotyping, which will be explored further. This paper is a preliminary exploration and will look at particular examples of representation in Hindi films, including Naagin (1954), Ajantrik (1957), Madhumati (1958), Yeh Gulistan Hamara (1972), Lal Salaam (2002), and Chak De! (2007). It is aimed that this exploration will provide a foundation for further research into representations in Hindi cinema and the wider discourses of power, politics and inequality in Indian society.

Lost in translation? Emotional intelligence, affective economies, leadership and organizational change

Not until the late 1990s did the rational/emotional binary embedded in mainstream literature on educational leadership and management come under challenge. Now the emotional dimensions of organisational change and leadership are widely recognised in the leadership, organisational change and school improvement literature. However, the dissolution of the binary did not draw from feminist social theory, critical organisational theory, the sociology of emotions or critical pedagogy. Instead, the strongest influence in educational leadership and administration has been from psychological theory, management theory and brain science, mobilised particularly through Goleman's notion of emotional intelligence. This article undertakes a feminist deconstruction of two texts: one from organisational theory by Goleman and the other on educational leadership and school improvement, in order to explore how ‘emotion’ has been translated into educational leadership. As a counterpoint, I identify the gaps and silences, appropriations and marginalisation identified from feminist perspectives. I argue that the emotional labour of teaching and leading cannot be individualised because emotion is both relational and contextual.

Research methodologies in creative practice : literacy in the digital age of the twenty first century - learning from computer games

Literacy remains one of the central goals of schooling, but the ways in which it is understood are changing. The growth of the networked society, and the spread of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), has brought about significant changes to traditional forms of literacy. Older, print based forms now take their place alongside a mix of newer multi-modal forms, where a wide range of elements such as image, sound, movement, light, colour and interactivity often supplant the printed word and contribute to the ways in which meaning is made. For young people to be fully literate in the twenty-first century, they need to have clear understandings about the ways in which these forms of literacy combine to persuade, present a point of view, argue a case or win the viewers’ sympathies. They need to know how to use them themselves, and to be aware of the ways in which others use them. They need to understand how digital texts organise and prioritise knowledge and information, and to recognise and be critically informed about the global context in which this occurs. That is, to be effective members of society, students need to become critical and capable users of both print and multimodal literacy, and be able to bring informed and analytic perspectives to bear on all texts, both print and digital, that they encounter in everyday life.

This is part of schools’ larger challenge to build robust connections between school and the world beyond, to meet the needs of all students, and to counter problems of alienation and marginalisation, particularly amongst students in the middle years. This means finding ways to be relevant and useful for all students, and to provide them with the skills and knowledge they will need in the ICT-based world of the Twentyfirst century. With respect to literacy education, engagement and technology, we urgently need more information as to how this might be best achieved.

Tackling health inequalities : what do senior managers think

Objective: To describe how New South Wales (NSW) Area Health Service Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) understood concepts of equity in the development of NSW Health's Equity Statement; CEO knowledge and interpretation of a given concept being one aspect of developing policy.

Design and Setting: This paper describes the process through which NSW Area Health Service CEOs were involved in developing the Equity Statement, specifically:

1. Briefings with individual CEOs on key issues and identification of possible difficulties and potential 'equity champions'.
2. A two-hour workshop to explore ('pre-mortem') why the proposed statement might fail.
3. CEO involvement in identifying strategies that promoted equity already operating locally.
4. C onsultations with selected individuals about the draft recommendations.
5. Feedback to CEOs.

The article provides a case study of consultative policy making by illustrating how participant knowledge can both inform and be strengthened by involvement in the policy development process.

Results: There was a high level of awareness among CEOs of health inequalities and an acceptance of their responsibility to address them. They saw three main ways of doing this: a) equity of resource allocation for health service delivery within and between regions; b) equity of access to health services based on need; and c) equity of health outcomes. CEOs felt that making the health system accountable for health outcomes would provide pressure for system-wide resource allocation changes. They recognised that factors substantially impacting on health outcomes were outside the control of the health system. Furthermore, finding a balance to which they could be held accountable was difficult. All CEOs saw ensuring needs-based access to services as a key area where they could potentially have an impact; and they specifically saw challenges in a conflict between equity and efficiency, marginalisation of special treatment for disadvantaged people, balancing investment in rescue services and prevention/early intervention, and developing a rational health financing system. The resulting policy has been broadly embedded within the NSW health system with strong local support.

Conclusion: The NSW Health and Equity policy was embedded because CEO leadership and acceptance of the policy enhanced local ownership.

Screening women’s complicity in the holocaust : the problems of judgement and representation

This essay analyses the representation of female perpetrators in Holocaust fiction films, particularly in relation to the persecution of prisoners in the Nazi camps. The screening of women in general, and female perpetrators in particular, is shown to be problematic due to their frequent marginalisation and the gendered, voyeuristic ways in which women's bodies are often objectified in Holocaust films. While the actions of female perpetrators and their depiction in films pose acute problems of judgement and representation that need to be acknowledged, it is argued that films have the potential to effectively explore the issue of women's complicity in the Holocaust.

Structural barriers facing CALD youth in the education field

This brief paper focuses on structural barriers that impact upon the processes of providing inclusive education programs, as well as on wider societal policies that have the potential to engender social marginalisation and cultural alienation among CALD youth.

Youth (in)justice : oral language competence in early life and risk for engagement in antisocial behaviour in adolescence

Youth offenders are complex and challenging for policymakers and practitioners alike and face high risks for long-term disadvantage and social marginalisation. In many cases, this marginalisation from the mainstream begins in early life, particularly in the classroom, where they have difficulty both with language/literacy tasks and with the interpersonal demands of the classroom. Underlying both sets of skills is oral language competence—the ability to use and understand spoken language in a range of situations and social exchanges, in order to successfully negotiate the business of everyday life. This paper highlights an emerging field of research that focuses specifically on the oral language skills of high-risk young people. It presents evidence from Australia and overseas that demonstrates that high proportions (some 50% in Australian studies) of young offenders have a clinically significant, but previously undetected, oral language disorder. The evidence presented in this paper raises important questions about how young offenders engage in forensic interviews, whether as suspects, victims or witnesses. The delivery of highly verbally mediated interventions such as counselling and restorative justice conferencing is also considered in the light of emerging international evidence on this topic.

The end of the Keating-Howard-Rudd-Gillard era?

Australian political discourse is dominated by ahistorical hyperbole, every election defeat is a landslide, every consecutive electoral loss indicates complete political marginalisation, every poll slump is a crisis, and every struggling leader is the worst ever. Australian Labor is not faring well but we need to distinguish between the ebbs and flows of the political cycle and the fundamentals. Australian politics may be approaching a fundamental break. The political era that began in the early 1990s may be coming to an end and with it Labor's hegemonic position in Australian politics that has endured since Gough Whitlam.

Interethnic understanding and belonging in suburban Melbourne

Modelling and mapping ethnicity is a methodological approach used to understand the changing socio-spatial structure of the city. Such an approach uses a range of indicators to identify ethnic groups, map them in urban space and explain the changing nature of ethnic concentrations. The unintended consequences, however, are the labelling, marginalisation and exclusion of ethnic minorities. Critical approaches, in contrast, focus on making visible the politics of representation that mark and stereotype ethnic minorities and ethnic concentrations. Within contemporary research on ethnicity such work has drawn attention to the exercise of power in the constitution of ethnic identities, the invisibility of whiteness and the inherent tensions that are likely to arise in negotiating ethnic cultural differences in local places. Although this article draws attention to such tensions in a particular place, Dandenong, it engages in this discussion to argue that the everyday negotiation of cultural difference also provides the potential to blur fixed ethnic boundaries and contribute to interethnic understanding and a sense of belonging. Drawing on in-depth interviews with people who live and/or work in Dandenong, suburban Melbourne, this article underlines that such positive insights from everyday multiculturalism have the potential to inform and broaden policy debates on diversity and social inclusion in the multicultural city.

Exploring Aboriginal People's connection to country to strengthen human-nature theoretical perspectives

Purpose
Aboriginal people across Australia have diverse practices, beliefs and knowledges based on thousands of generations of managing and protecting their lands (Country). The intimate relationship Aboriginal people have with their Country is explored in this chapter because such knowledge is important for building insight into the relationship between social and ecological systems. Often in research Aboriginal views have been marginalised from discussions focused on their lands to the detriment of ecosystems and human health. This chapter aims to understand if such marginalisation is evident in Western human–nature relationship discourses.

Approach
This chapter provides a critical literature review which examines whether Aboriginal people’s diverse understanding of their ecosystems have been incorporated into human–nature theories using the biophilia hypothesis as a starting point. Other concepts explored include solastalgia, topophilia and place.

Findings
Critiques of these terminologies in the context of Aboriginal people’s connection to Country are limited but such incorporation is viewed in the chapter as a possible mechanism for better understanding human’s connection to nature. The review identified that Aboriginal people’s relationship to Country seems to be underrepresented in the human–nature theory literature.

Value
This chapter emphasises that the integration of Aboriginal perspectives into research, ecological management and policy can provide better insight into the interrelationships between social and ecological systems.

Prison rape : is it okay to make jokes about rape in prison?

The trivialisation of sexual violence through what passes as humour is much less common than it once was. Jokes about rape are not innocent, are not harmless fun, are not unconnected to the horrible crime they make light of. Their gradual marginalisation represents social change of real importance. But there is one last refuge of the rape joke in mainstream popular culture, and its continued presence reflects a shameful blind spot in our society. It is a joke which conceals a horrible and damaging reality which is somehow both a taboo topic and a truth universally acknowledged.

A picture that circulated widely on Facebook and other social media last year captures the horror in the humour. It is a picture of a man’s back, decorated with a huge image of an alluring, naked woman, with the man’s buttocks marked to look like breasts. The caption: This man had what he thought was the best tattoo in the world . . . until he went to prison. How can a gag about a man being anally raped while in prison be widely popular, seen as funny, a giggle to share? Were the prospective victim a child or a woman, or were the rape in almost any other setting, the reaction would surely be revulsion and anger. Jail rape, though, somehow remains funny.