In 1988 Mt Druitt High will begin an elective course in Aboriginal Studies. The process for development for this course has taken two years and was on the basis that this course could only get off the ground if it had the full support and involvement of both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students and community members.

In 1986 the 32 Aboriginal students enrolled at the school formed a club and called themselves the Dharruk Koories (Mt Druitt is in the suburb of Dharruk, which was named after the Aboriginal tribe that originally inhabited the area). The group met weekly with me and the school community worker and quickly formed a list of aims.

To situate the Aboriginal Studies program I am designing, I would need to say that in a Year 11 course in Religious Education at a Catholic Girls’ Independent (non-systemic) High School in Brisbane, the Semester 2 area is Morality and Justice and involves a consideration of personal decision making, understanding stages of moral development, individual/personal moral issues and social, moral and justice issues. (I should add that the school is almost totally non-Aboriginal although it is multi-ethnic to the extent that it runs ESL classes at each year level).

This article is a follow-up to “Utilizing a Research Project as a Teaching/Learning Strategy : The Joys and Fears of Childhood” which appeared in Vol.15 No.3, 1987. In both projects the students contributed significantly.

In Semester II, 1987, a group of Aboriginal and Islander students in their second year of the Diploma of Teaching (ECE) at James Cook University conducted an action research project entitled “Cross-cultural Perspectives on Children’s Friendships in Middle Childhood”.