Broadening Conceptions of Curriculum for Young People: Reports from three student-teachers on exchange

Research reports prepared by three Australian preservice teachers--Paula Shaw, Chris Sharp and Scott McDonald--undertaking their teacher education practicum in Canada, form the basis of this paper. The reports provide critical insights into three aspects of education for young people in both Canada and Australia. They also provide critical insight into the ways in which a practicum research project, along with the opportunities afforded through an international experience, enabled the preservice teachers to broaden their understanding of the curriculum for young people, of issues relevant to the diverse needs of young people, and of themselves and their priorities as teachers. The preservice teachers investigated three topics: attempts to reduce homophobia in schools; the presence or absence of Aboriginal content in the school curricula in British Columbia and Queensland; and "schools-within-schools" as a means to meet the needs of diverse student populations. Linda Farr Darling from the University of British Columbia provides a response to the three reports.     

Beyond cultural competence: transforming teacher professional learning through Aboriginal community-controlled cultural immersion

ABSTRACT

This paper problematises the concept of cultural competence in teacher professional learning arguing instead for opportunities to develop critical reflexivity in the ongoing construction of a pedagogical cultural identity. In the Aboriginal context within Australia, this research study demonstrates how attaining cultural knowledge, understandings and skills is most effective when professional learning is delivered by local Aboriginal cultural knowledge holders. This research study analyses the New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Connecting to Country cultural immersion programme for local communities and schools. A mixed methods approach, analysing quantitative and qualitative data from questionnaires and interviews, highlights the significant impact this experience has on teachers in building relationships with local Aboriginal community members. Teachers reported learning new knowledge about local Aboriginal people, culture, history and issues that challenged their assumptions, personal and collective positioning and pedagogical approaches to teaching Aboriginal students. Implications from the study identify the significance of privileging Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing in order to realise culturally responsive schooling and empower teachers as critically reflective change agents in their schools. It further identifies the need for significant human and financial investment so that all teachers can engage with this authentic and potentially transformative professional learning experience.     

加拿大原住民与非原住民的收入差异

从加拿大2001年的人口普查中抽取3％的样本数据,分析了原住民和非原住加拿大人之间工资和薪金的差异,发现注册印第安人、梅蒂斯人与非原住民的年收入和周薪在跨组和组内都有显著差异。这种差异在很大程度上是由于人口、人力资本、职业以及这三种人口的区域差异。     

Inter‐disciplinary but not Undisciplined: Writing the history of Aboriginal “education”

The history of Australian Aboriginal peoples sits uneasily on the margins of Australian history in much the same way as Aboriginal peoples themselves exist on the borders and interstices of the society that has colonised them and dispossessed them of their lands and cultures. The history of education likewise, sits somewhat on the margins of the discipline of history. The history of Aboriginal education, therefore, has never been a large field of study, though a handful of individuals have made important contributions.

This article will consider some of the reasons for the current position of the study of how Aboriginal peoples have learned and been taught in the past and will suggest that there are a number of inter‐related reasons for the limitations of both research and analysis within the field. Some of these limitations stem from the discipline itself, others from the subject. They will be discussed using examples from research with Australian Aboriginal and Canadian First Nations peoples and with regard to some recent publications in Australia and New Zealand.     

Some Cultural and Moral Implications of Inclusive Education in India—a personal view

This article provides a personal viewpoint on and outline of the author's contribution to learning disability in India. It refers to her doctoral research on policy and the status of people with disability in India. It puts forth the view that although India addresses diversity in many ways it tends to exclude people with disability from national programmes. It argues that inclusive education should be context- and culture-specific and that inclusive programmes can develop, albeit incrementally, despite the fact that systemic change has not taken place. The article ends with the suggestion that moral and ethical considerations demand that people engaged with inclusion need to work towards inclusion of all children wherever necessary and that each individual first of all needs to internalise the change within themselves.     

Aboriginal identity in education settings: privileging our stories as a way of deconstructing the past and re-imagining the future

From Aboriginal Australian perspectives and experiences, Aunty Judi Wickes and Marnee Shay bring a cross-generational, critical race analysis of Aboriginal identities and how they are implicated in the schooling experiences of Aboriginal young people. Using autoethnography, Aunty Judi and Marnee discuss their educational experiences in the Australian education systems from primary schooling experiences to university settings. These narratives bring forth the dominant discourses that continue to subjugate and subordinate Aboriginal Australians and Aboriginal Australian identities in Education settings. The paper distinguishes the narratives of two Aboriginal women and how on-going colonial and racialised constructions of Aboriginal identity continue to impact upon the educational experiences of Aboriginal peoples and consequently the engagement of Aboriginal young people in school settings. Moreover, we will use the process of critical self-reflection to re-imagine educational approaches to reconstruct our own experiences and consider what changes might improve the outcomes of Indigenous young people for future generations.     

Paulo Freire,Critical Literacy,and Indigenous Resistance

Using several case studies drawn from Freire’s cultural context and contemporary Canadian Indigenous resistance movements, this article questions whether a Freirean approach to critical literacy can work with Indigenous literacy needs without reproducing colonial power structures. It also seeks to examine current scholarship in the literacy education of Maritime Aboriginal people in Canada and to illustrate the need for critical pedagogies honoring multiple cultural literacies and ways of knowing among Indigenous youth.     

Ways of life: Knowledge transfer and Aboriginal heritage trails

Abstract

Aboriginal Heritage Trails are a growing phenomenon in Australia. They come in all shapes and sizes, from mere signage to—in the case of the famous Lurujarri trail out of Broome, Western Australia—a nine-day immersive experience walking the beach with one of the Goolarabooloo family groups. Here people experience the beautiful Indian Ocean coastline, extensive dinosaur footprints, storytelling, and meals of freshly caught fish, mangrove crab, dugong and turtle.

These trails are far more than ‘tourism products’. For the Aboriginal families, with all ages present, they enact inter-generational knowledge transfer. Academic disciplines also change when they are ‘on Country’: Palaeontologists learn that the dinosaur footprints are also the traces of the emu ancestor, marala, and their discipline adjusts its epistemological parameters accordingly. Aboriginal walking trails have the potential to change every discipline willing to ‘re-boot’ on a territorial, rather than global, scale.

Walking with one’s arts of paying attention on alert deepens and extends both European and Aboriginal knowledge, as they find agencies that can transfer and translate the multi-functionality inherent in the ecological ‘pluriverse’ that is this continent-wide network of dreaming tracks. Could this experiential model of knowledge transfer represent a path away from the nineteenth-century model of knowledge collection, storage and display that we find in universities and museums?     

Beyond "cool" and "hip:" engaging the question of research and writing as academic Self-woman of color Other

This article presents a self-reflexive analysis of the situatedness of the author and her work - research and writing - as a woman of color in the academy. The author critically examines self-reflexivity in relation to her research by drawing on her lived experiences as academic Self-woman of color Other, first as an international doctoral student and now as a junior faculty member. Drawing on critical and feminist perspectives, she argues that such self-reflexivity allows for an openness which eliminates the apparent dichotomy of Self-Other and offers new spaces for re-presenting difference(s). In particular, she construes her writing as a self-renewing site of activism and resistance to Othering and her teaching as praxis and self-assessment. She concludes that cutting-edge research and writing, when rigorously self-reflexive, are beyond "cool" and "hip," allowing us to maintain integrity and agency as educators and researchers.     

Lifetime risk of child protection system involvement in South Australia for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children, 1986–2017 using linked administrative data

BackgroundChild protection services exist to reduce potential harms from child maltreatment. Many jurisdictions produce annual data on child protection system (CPS) involvement, leaving a gap in knowledge of lifetime involvement.ObjectiveTo describe lifetime involvement in CPS, by type of contact.ParticipantsAll 608,547 children born in South Australia (SA), Australia between 1986 and 2017.MethodsA retrospective cohort design using linked administrative data to report cumulative incidence of CPS involvement from birth to age <18 (or June30 2017) by Aboriginal status. CPS involvement was categorised into notifications (3 levels), investigations, substantiations and out-of-home care (OOHC). Cumulative incidence curves were derived for 5 birth cohorts.ResultsAcross childhood (to age <18 years), substantiated maltreatment was experienced by 3.2–3.6% of non-Aboriginal and 19–25% of Aboriginal children, 7 times reported annual substantiation rates. For most CPS categories CPS involvement increased until 2010, and was occurring earlier in life. By age 3, 0.5% of non-Aboriginal and 4.5% of Aboriginal children born 1986–1991 were the subject of a substantiation compared with 1.9% and 15% of non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal children, respectively, born 2010–2017. Incidence rates beyond age 3 were similar. OOHC contact was similar across cohorts, with ˜1.5% of non-Aboriginal and 12.7% of Aboriginal children ever-placed in care.ConclusionsData linkage is an essential tool for understanding life course involvement with the CPS and describing trends not observable from annual snapshots. Such information is critical for burden of disease estimates, informing policy and monitoring CPS performance.     

Infant removals: The need to address the over-representation of Aboriginal infants and community concerns of another ‘stolen generation’

ObjectivesThe removal of a child from their parents is traumatising, particularly in Aboriginal communities where a history of child removals has led to intergenerational trauma. This study will determine where disparities in child protection involvement exist among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children and characteristics associated with infant removals. Challenges faced by child protection and other agencies, and opportunities for overcoming these, are discussed.MethodsData from both the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and linked Western Australian government data was used to examine disparities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children in the child protection and out-of-home care system.ResultsNationally, Aboriginal children are ten times more likely to be placed in out-of-home care than non-Aboriginal children and this disparity starts in infancy. Infants were removed from parents with high levels of risk. Aboriginal infants were at increased risk of being removed from women with substance-use problems and had greater proportions removed from remote, disadvantaged communities than were non-Aboriginal infants.ConclusionsAboriginal infants have a high rate of removal. Although there are many complexities to be understood and challenges to overcome, there are also potential strategies. The disparity between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal infant removals needs to be seen as a priority requiring urgent action to prevent further intergenerational trauma.     

Aborigines of the Imaginary: applying Lacan to Aboriginal education

This paper applies the work of Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, to decipher the desire of the teacher in Aboriginal education. It argues that the images of Aboriginal people represented in Australian classrooms are effects of the teacher's Imaginary, the Imaginary being one of the three psychoanalytic domains theorised by Lacan over a period of 30 years of teaching. The author questions whether it is possible for teacher education courses to move the student teacher beyond the Imaginary, and beyond the inventions of Aboriginal people that he or she has produced in his or her own mind. A possible way out of this endless cycle of romantic idealism and deficiency is proposed outside the usual approaches to cultural awareness training and professional development.     

Action research: A situated perspective

Rigoberta Menchú has become an icon for the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination. For many academics and activists around the world, the accusations of lying made against Ms. Menchú by David Stoll brought into sharp focus the politics of "truthmaking" and the absolutist categories of fact and fiction. In this attempt to discredit Ms. Menchú, and through her, the Mayan experience of genocide by the Guatemalan military and its U.S. sponsors, important questions have been raised about how and when Third World women can speak, the conditions under which they will be heard, and the strategies used to silence them. In this paper, the author draws upon some of the lessons of the Rigoberta Menchú case to examine the politics of truth making in Canada in a recent controversy regarding a speech she made criticizing American foreign policy and urging the women's movement to mobilize against America's War on Terrorism. The highly personalized nature of the attacks on the author by political and media elites sought to accomplish a closing down of public space for informed debate about the realities of U.S. foreign policy and to silence dissent. Repeatedly emphasizing her status as an immigrant outsider, this controversy also contributed to the (ongoing) racialization of people of color as a treacherous "enemy" within the nation's geographical borders, against whom "Canadians" had to be mobilized.     

Relationship to place: positioning Aboriginal knowledge and perspectives in classroom pedagogies

This project is based on research conducted with 12 schools in New South Wales, Australia. It examines how each school incorporates Aboriginal perspectives in its Kindergarten to Year 6 program with a view to identifying quality practice. As we interviewed teachers in these schools, it became clear that there is considerable confusion over the difference between Aboriginal perspectives and Aboriginal knowledge with both concepts being used interchangeably to teach syllabus content and information about Aboriginal people. We endeavour to clarify these concepts and to suggest how teachers might incorporate Aboriginal knowledge in their programs, without recreating some of the stereotypical representations that are often an effect of current pedagogies.     

Making “Second Generation,” Inflicting Linguistic Injuries: An Ethnography of a Mainland Chinese Church in Canada

ABSTRACT

Based on a larger ethnography, this article explores intergenerational relationships between First-Generation Immigrants and Second-Generation youth and focuses on psychological damages (Piller, 2016), particularly linguistic injuries, within a new mainland Chinese church in Canada. Specifically, I show why Second-Generation young people were largely separated into the English congregation, with little support from the parent generation in the Mandarin congregation. Drawing on language and non-language ideologies (Bucholtz, 2001) and semiotic processes of differentiation (Irvine & Gal, 2000), particularly fractal recursivity, focusing on relevant practices and discourses, I analyze and delineate linguistic injuries suffered and perpetuated by First- and Second-Generation members. Exploring their origins and manifestations, I tentatively define linguistic injuries as psychological damages caused by judgement based on language or language use at the interpersonal and institutional levels, but originated from “structures” such as ideology and legislation. Implications and future directions of this research are discussed.     

从赋权自治到能力建构:加拿大原住民教育政策的新路向

在原住民运动的推动下,加拿大原住民教育政策确立了赋权自治的取向。但原住民教育依然面临挑战与困境,原住民缺乏担当和发展教育的现实能力。为此,加拿大政府和原住民采取了一系列新的策略、措施,以提升原住民能力为路向,积极完善教育政策,为原住民教育的发展提供本原性动力,以求从根本上综合解决原住民教育问题。     

Toward an effective model for implementing distance education programs

Abstract

As a response to the challenges and constraints now facing postsecondary education, institutions are attempting to find new strategies that will more effectively address the need for change in the way educational services are provided. In early September 1995, three institutions in Alberta, Canada—the University of Alberta, Fairview College, and Kayas Cultural College—embarked on a new partnership in offering a selected number of introductory Faculty of Arts courses in remote northwestern regions of the province. The primary mode of delivery was synchronized, multi‐point videoconferencing (to as many as six sites), with all courses delivered from the University of Alberta campus. Slightly more than 70% of the student cohort for the first academic year were Aboriginal. This discussion highlights the implementation and evaluation of this partnership and proposes a model for the effective planning and implementation of distance education initiatives.     

Introduction: Through our eyes and in our own words

The realities of Indian belief and existence have become so misunderstood and distorted at this point that when a real Indian stands up and speaks the truth at any given moment, he or she is not only unlikely to be believed, but will probably be contradicted and "corrected" by the citation of some non-Indian and totally inaccurate "expert." More, young Indians in universities are now being trained to see themselves and their cultures in terms prescribed by such experts rather than in the traditional terms of the tribal elders ?. In this way, the experts are perfecting a system of self-validation in which all semblance of honesty and accuracy is lost. This is not only a travesty of scholarship, but it is absolutely devastating to Indian societies. (Deloria, as cited in Rose, 1992, p. 404)     

First Nations,Métis,and Inuit education: The Alberta initiative for school improvement approach to improve indigenous education in Alberta

The education of minority students is of considerable interest within the literature. Ensuring that all children receive quality programming and that they successfully graduate from school is of concern for parents, educational stakeholders, and society alike. In Canada, the indigenous populations of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) students have fallen significantly short of acceptable graduation rates. In an attempt to address this issue, results from 16 selected projects funded by the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) that focused upon FNMI Education will be discussed. A comprehensive review of the projects suggests that by involving Aboriginal parents and Elders in meaningful ways and by focusing upon Aboriginal language, culture, and history not as an “add-on” but an integral part of Canadian history and culture, Aboriginal students are more likely to remain in school.