A qualitative and quantitative study of the issues affecting the teaching of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in the Australian Curriculum: Problems and Solutions.
The Indigenous curriculum content in the Australian Curriculum is tasked as the latest attempt to improve outcomes for Indigenous students. This project aims to investigate how teachers approach this cross-curriculum mandate, consider teachers’ attitudes regarding the teaching of Indigenous content, and identify the complex factors that act as barriers to the success of teaching this content. Employing an innovative design that combines policy analysis, survey research and qualitative research to consider the structural, epistemic and curriculum factors impacting on the success of this policy mandate. This will illuminate the affordances and constraints of new ways of understanding the inclusion of Indigenous content into the curriculum.
Aboriginal-led teacher professional learning to improve teaching and learning
The primary aim of the Culturally Nourishing Schooling (CNS) project is to affect structural, sustainable change in Aboriginal education through local Aboriginal community-led teacher professional learning programs. Such an undertaking is urgently required, as was reiterated with the launch of the revised ‘closing the gap’ policy as many Aboriginal students are not well served by Australian schooling. The proposed project is a collaborative undertaking between local Aboriginal communities, educators, and University researchers in 5 city/regional/rural NSW secondary schools. It forms part of an initiative known as the Aboriginal Voices: Transforming Indigenous Education (AV) program based on the researchers’ rigorous systematic analysis and synthesis of a decade of research in Indigenous education.
