This article reflects on pathways for Indigenous education in the developing agenda of the Australian Curriculum, the cross-curriculum priorities, the general capability area of intercultural understanding, and the positioning of Indigenous learners within the diversity of learners with English as an additional language or dialect (EALD).

This article examines the nature of oral language and representations used by teachers as they instruct young Indigenous Australian students at the beginning of formal schooling during play-based activities in mathematics. In particular, the use of Standard Australian English (SAE), the mathematical register used, and the interplay with mathematical representations during classroom instruction are analysed based upon the teachers' selfreported practices. The data are drawn from structured telephone interviews with 40 teachers in 15 schools from rural and remote or multicultural settings in Queensland at the initial stage of a large, longitudinal study. The specific aim of the study was the identification of effective pedagogical practices that may assist young Australian students from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds to negotiate western mathematical understanding. The findings indicate that despite experience in these settings and focused professional learning sessions, the majority of these teachers report practices which reflect a strong emphasis on literacy acquisition rather than mathematical understanding. It is the contention of the researchers that the use of oral language with a rich selection of mathematical representations strongly supports mathematical understanding.

Some Indigenous students are at risk of academic failure and science teachers have a role in salvaging these equally able students. This article firstly elucidates the research entailed in Indigenous science education in Australia and beyond. Secondly, it reviews the cultural and language barriers when learning science, faced by middle and senior year students of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. Finally, it outlines the effective strategies that science teachers could adopt to better engage these students in learning school science. In summary, the article will highlight the need for teachers to realise the importance of crossing borders from teachers' school science culture to students' culture. This holds implications for teaching practice and teacher identity in today's classroom.

A federal report released by the Department of Families and Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA, 2009), entitled Closing the Gap on Indigenous Disadvantage: The Challenge for Australia, highlighted the inequality that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students based on a restricted access to resources, issues of isolation, staff and student retention, and cultural differences and challenges. In New South Wales (NSW), the Department of Education and Training (DET) and the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) in 2003/2004 undertook their own review of Aboriginal education in NSW Government schools that revealed significant concerns about the outcomes being achieved by Aboriginal students in NSW DET schools, confirming the more recent FaHCSIA (2009) findings. In 2006 the NSW DET implemented the Enhanced Teacher Training Scholarship Program (ETTSP) to empower 20 final-year education students to successfully engage with Indigenous students in schools and their wider community during their internship period. Using themes, this article explores the experiences of 10 University of New England scholarship holders at the end of their final year of teacher training and immersion/internship experience in 2010. The article puts forward useful recommendations for both teacher universities and students intending to teach in schools with high Indigenous student populations.

Reading seasons and environments has been a long-held practice for Torres Strait Islanders through their close relationships with their islands and seas. This research project worked with elders on Erub (Darnley) Island, in the eastern group of islands in the Torres Strait, to document and synthesise their knowledge of seasonal patterns and indicators, and climate change. This knowledge varied from details on the migration and nesting patterns of the main totem birds, to the movement of the Tagai star constellation, to the onset of wind patterns indicating certain planting or fishing cycles. The importance of documenting and transferring such knowledge is that it continues the task of generating interest among the younger generation to ‘read’ their landscape, which is especially pertinent given the projected impacts of climate change. The ability of islanders to identify indicators and ‘read’ their country is an important tool in monitoring and adapting to environmental change, as well as maintaining culture, livelihoods and environment. This article outlines this knowledge, and documents the process of utilising this knowledge to develop a seasonal calendar, which was also transposed into a larger mural at the local primary school. The school children were involved in assembling the mural, and its contents will now form part of the teaching curriculum. It is hoped that by documenting and sharing such knowledge, younger generations can see its value, for instance in monitoring the impacts of environmental change, and in turn it will be valued by them.

This article examines the issues surrounding the mapping of the oral language development of Standard Australian English (SAE) in the early school years of remote and very remote Aboriginal education in the Northern Territory (NT). Currently, teachers in this context have 2 mandated documents as guides that chart the development of SAE oracy. However, a close inspection of both documents demonstrates an incomplete view of English oracy for this unique education and linguistic context within the broader Australian social milieu. A detailed profile of emerging English oracy is not captured by current profiles that do not recognise the influences of homeland Aboriginal language groups on the acquisition of SAE. A more detailed emergent SAE oral profile can be constructed from existing oral SAE language samples. These samples have been collected by the NT Department of Education and Training (NT DET) from 6-year-old children participating in the Indigenous Language Speaking Student (ILSS) program. The development of an emergent oral SAE profile will be an extremely useful adjunct for the 2 existing documents. This article is a preliminary mapping of the issues with current SAE oral language profiles for remote and very remote Aboriginal school children.

As part of strategies to improve dog and community health in rural and remote Indigenous communities, this study investigated preferences and impacts of dog health education programs. Semistructured interviews with 63 residents from five communities explored learning preferences. Though each community differed, on average yarning was preferred by most (68.4%) respondents, followed by visual (65.0%) and practical learning (46.9%). Text-based and computer/screen-based learning were important to 16.2% and 14.6% of respondents respectively. With paper-based visual and text resources, respondents reported a preference for locally made (28/36 or 78%) over mainstream resources. Twenty eight residents involved in the creation of locally made resources reported satisfaction, knowledge exchange, and displayed enthusiasm for the process. Colour resources were more successful than black and white resources or word of mouth in terms of program advertising, alerting 67% (10/15) of respondents compared to 6% to 24% for programs using word of mouth. Dog health programs that incorporated education programs based on these identified preferences achieved significantly better results in terms of improvements in mange prevalence and average condition score, partly through increased community understanding and engagement with the program. Thus, culturally appropriate and locally relevant education programs can significantly improve the success of dog health programs.

Indigenous Australians are underrepresented and considerably disadvantaged within the Australian system of higher education. The various measures taken by Australian universities over the past decades have produced varying levels of success in increasing Indigenous participation and completion rates. In order to continue improving Indigenous Australian participation in higher education, it is important to understand the current patterns of participation and factors within universities that are associated with participation and success. In this article we analyse higher education student and staff statistics available from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and information sourced from the web sites of 40 Australian universities to examine correlations between various Indigenous student support mechanisms and Indigenous students' higher education participation rates. Our results indicate that there is a dual system of Indigenous higher education, with one group of universities excelling at attracting Indigenous students, and a different group of universities demonstrating high Indigenous student completion rates. We argue that challenges remain in determining how to increase commencements at universities with high Indigenous completion rates without compromising entrance requirements or further diluting the level of student support, and how to increase completion rates at universities with higher numbers of Indigenous students.

Currently in Australia there is much activity and expenditure in a field broadly defined as ‘Indigenous education’. However, there is little by way of rigorous research that has compared and evaluated different approaches. This article draws together the existing international evidence to develop a set of best-practice components for Indigenous education. The author intends for these components to provide practical guidance for program developers who may currently be developing programs without the benefit of an existing evidence base, while also acknowledging the need to expand the evidence base and continue to refine this set of components to maximise their utility.

Māori and other Indigenous scholars have been calling for the Indigenisation of academic space for decades. But what is the day-to-day experience of Māori academics within Aotearoa–New Zealand universities, and how does this experience reveal or enact the commitments to claim space? We interviewed 12 Māori academics and analysed and organised their experiences in the following way: the university can be understood as a site of (1) mobilisation of Māori staff and students; (2) sit-in, or infusing the institutional system with Indigenous values; (3) speaking out, thereby educating not only students, but staff and the public about Indigenous issues; and (4) at which confrontation is part of the academic terrain. The most common outcome of confrontation was negotiation and reclamation of space for Māori people, norms and values. In spite of this apparent willingness of the university to compromise, we find that capitulation (being moulded to the norms of the academy) and (self-)eviction (reconciling difference by leaving the university) are ever-present possibilities for Māori academics. In shaping and presenting the Māori academic occupation as a 4-stage commitment to affirm Māori identity, norms and scholarship, we present a framework within which Indigenous and minority academic work may be understood.

This article draws upon a Māori metaphor to describe the theoretical framework underpinning the methodology and findings of a research project completed by researchers from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2010. It explains how and why the project required the research team to synthesise key information from four New Zealand Ministry of Education Best Evidence Synthesis (BES) reports as well as kaupapa Māori research associated with the Ministry's Ka Hikitia Māori Education Strategy. The key messages outlined in this article were designed by the research team to serve as a new tool to assist whānau (family) and iwi (tribe) to actively engage in the New Zealand schooling system and assert their rights in accordance with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840). Given the large number of Māori children attending Australian schools, the findings of this research may be of interest to Australian educationalists.

This article describes the objectives and methodology of a doctoral research project (Manning, 2008). It then draws upon the key findings of that project to briefly describe how an envisioned critical pedagogy of place partnership model, involving nominated members of the Te Ātiawa iwi (tribe) and local history teachers, might enhance the quality of history teaching in the Port Nicholson Block area. This area is located in the Wellington district (south-western corner) of New Zealand's North Island. The discussion then explains, in more detail, why obstacles are likely to be encountered by any attempt by Te Ātiawa and/or the teacher participants to develop such a partnership model. Two related place-based metaphors help draw brief conclusions about how these obstacles relate to the New Zealand government's own (1989) principles for action on the Treaty of Waitangi and recount its obligations to uphold the Articles of the United Nations' (2007) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

This article dissects instruction in the Norwegian Sámi School and its cultural sensitivity. The focus is on the classroom culture of Sámi education: how Sámi education is arranged in practice. The core of the research is intertwined with issues concerning the status, language, and culture of Indigenous people in education. The research was ethnographic and the research data consists of questionnaires (N = 108), teachers' (N = 15) interviews, and the researcher's field diaries. The research showed that the Sámi culture and school culture do not meet: the western school culture dominates teaching at the Sámi School and socialises the Sámi School into mainstream society. The Sámi people's conception of time, place, and information should be emphasised in the teaching arrangements.