There are many reasons why we should study and teach about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. An underlying factor is that Australia is our home, and we should have a thorough knowledge of the country’s history. As Joe Sambono says in Chapter 9, ‘If you don’t know about us, how can you have a respectful conversation with us?’ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies is about educating all Australians in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, histories, societies and cultures. That we are educating Australia in a climate of increasing racism is another important point.

Disability is an unspoken aspect that is overshadowed by larger issues in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education. Young Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people with a disability often fall through the cracks in the education system, with their disability not recognised or not supported. The presentation of their disability in the classroom is routinely mis-characterised as behavioural issues rather than a learning disability requiring specific support, an assumption that leads to excessively high rates of suspension and expulsion when disability is a factor in the education of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children and young people.

Indigenous boarding programs have long been framed as a response to the structural barriers faced by First Nations students from remote and regional communities in accessing secondary education. For many First Nations families, boarding schools represent a double-edged sword: an avenue for opportunity that also perpetuates colonial systems of dislocation and assimilation. This chapter critically examines the lived experiences of Indigenous students in boarding schools, foregrounding the voices of those most impacted – students, families and communities. It interrogates the systemic and cultural challenges faced by these students while celebrating the strength, adaptability and agency of First Nations peoples. Through an Indigenous lens, the chapter seeks to move beyond narratives of ‘success’ and ‘opportunity’, calling instead for culturally led and self-determined ways for boarding to support students who live away from home for schooling.

I have often been asked: How can mathematics be beautiful? This question is usually sparked by popular culture, such as the movie A Beautiful Mind or television shows that have popularised mathematics. For most of the inquirers, their experience with mathematics is so divorced from subjective statements such as ‘beautiful’ that they cannot fathom any connection between them. They have also been taught that mathematics is supposed to be objective – that is, transcending our own subjectivity (or bias) to find ‘the truth’. These are common perceptions of mathematics informed by our common experience with the teaching and learning of mathematics. This chapter explores such perceptions, questions notions such as objectivity and explores how these perceptions have positioned Indigenous people as mathematical learners. In essence, this chapter explores the connection between culture and mathematics – putting subjectivity back into mathematics and looking at how this can affect the teaching and learning of mathematics for Indigenous students. These new approaches also have implications for mathematics education in general, by allowing students to connect with mathematics through their own social and cultural backgrounds.

This chapter employs the timestamp of the World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Education (WIPCE), emphasising that elements of education relating to both First Nations communities and the teaching profession are central to transversing and bridging the two knowledge traditions of Indigenous and Western knowledges. Within this timestamp, we will look at the foundations we have created, the distance we have travelled and the new challenges we face for what remains as unfinished business.

This chapter explores how important it is for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in particular to have access to studying their own languages across all jurisdictions in Australian education. It also explores the increasing options available to teachers to provide these opportunities for students from Foundation to Year 12. The value is not limited to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students; all students in Australian schools can benefit from the deeper understanding of Indigenous peoples, cultures and histories that develops through the study of Indigenous languages. Language is the vehicle of cultural expression, and when a language is no longer spoken by its people all humanity is diminished by the loss of cultural transmission that occurs when a language ‘goes to sleep’. Teachers are very well positioned to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to help wake up the sleeping Australian languages and to maintain those that are still languages of everyday communication.

This chapter discusses the ways in which I implement Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing into my process as a First Nations performing arts practitioner, working to create resources for Australian schools to support all educators in approaching First Nations content in Indigenous ways. Examining the design of two projects as case studies, the Kings, Brothers and Heroes exploration (a verbatim performance ceremony intended as a resource for secondary school students and teachers) and the Totems program (an immersive creative arts program for students from Foundation to Year 6), I discuss the ways in which I related ways of Indigenous knowing, being and doing to the work. This includes connecting to First Nations oral traditions, creating a space of free creative expression, discussion and engagement for students around story, history and culture that maintains, supports and preserves community ownership while recognising the importance of the Outsider relationship into which practitioners enter when working with community.

Game worlds are steeped in depictions of different characters, settings, events and, in many cases, different cultures and cultural knowledges. In some cases, these in-game cultural depictions have been created by outsiders of the culture and, even with good intentions, these creators may misrepresent the culture or represent the community in superficial ways. My game design approach attempts to respond to this issue faced by digital game designers and developers and provides an approach that encourages close collaboration with communities, cultural immersion by developers and greater forms of rigorous research in constructing game worlds. While the intent of my approach is to help designers create more meaningful and deeper cultural representations in digital games, the design process itself is an educative experience and there may be opportunities to capitalise on this digital and cultural design approach in learning contexts.

There are many facets to the historical context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education in Australia, from the ways in which knowledge was transferred prior to invasion through to the deliberate withholding of information from all Australians. When we refer to Indigenous education in Australia, we must remember that this is both for and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This chapter therefore discusses the historical context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, beginning with how knowledge was transferred prior to invasion. Several ‘case studies’ – early evidence of First Nations children’s academic capabilities immediately following invasion – are cited in terms of the ‘grand experiment’, followed by reference to the inclusion/exclusion of Aboriginal children using the oft-quoted phrase ‘clean, clad and courteous’. The chapter then moves past the infamous exclusion of Aboriginal children to the formation of the National Aboriginal Education Committee, which so heavily influenced a change in the political landscape, to involvement in curriculum development, and discusses some of the strategies, plans and policies that have been put in place.

The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians identified that a world class curriculum in the twenty-first century required more than learning areas alone. It also required the interweaving of other aspects such as fundamental skills and capabilities as well as being able to respond to critical educational issues and future needs. These requirements were met by the Australian Curriculum through its three-dimensional structure of Learning Areas, General Capabilities and the Cross-Curriculum Priorities. The Melbourne Declaration noted that to meet its commitment of ensuring that all Australians could become active and informed citizens, each learning area would require all students to have the opportunity to access First Nations Australian content where relevant. Additionally, the Declaration highlighted the need to improve educational outcomes for First Nations Australians to ensure that, as a nation, we achieve not only equality of opportunity but also more equitable outcomes. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures Cross-Curriculum Priority provides a national opportunity to confront First Nations Australian educational disadvantage and break the cycle of non-First Nations Australians not knowing about or who this country’s diverse and vibrant First Nations peoples are.

This chapter is on the production of African literature at the intersection of colonialism, colonial institutions, and the African subjects conscripted into modernity. The key argument is that, irrespective of the languages used, the emergence of creative writing on the continent was determined by systems and processes of colonization and colonial institutions including the Christian missions and schools and European ideas about modernity. In addition to providing a critical account of the overdetermining power of colonial institutions in the invention of African literature, the chapter examines the self-fashioning of Africans as writers and intellectuals and how the task of writing and the forms that it generated changed as the desire to master colonial ideas and institutions was transcended by decolonial aspirations.

A central problem in the histories and theories of African literatures written in European languages revolves around the origins and identity of this literature: When, and in what circumstances, did aspiring African writers adopt written literature as the most important cultural tool in their self-fashioning? What was the relation between new forms of writing and existing systems of expression built on orality and oral genres? The argument of this chapter is that faced with the problem of producing a literature in the language of the colonizer, African writers and critics turned to orality and African oral traditions and their interface with writing to identify the uniqueness of Africa writing. Some critics asserted the identity of African literature by giving oral forms primacy over written ones; others focused on the interface between orality and writing but affirmed orality as the central dynamic of African literature. Another group acknowledged the centrality of orality to written forms but rejected the idea that it was sign of authenticity. This chapter explores these complex debates and then shifts attention to a group of writers for whom orality was inseparable from writing.

Chapter 6 outlines the ways different practitioners of peithō’s arts managed her ambiguity through expressions and performances of piety toward her divinity. The chapter examines diverse figures from ancient Greek comedy and oratory who used prayerful reverence toward Peithō to bolster their own ēthos and secure success for their rhetorical projects. The chapter surveys the persuasive work of characters from the Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Menander’s Epitrepontes as well as historical speeches from Demosthenes and Isocrates. Each of the orator-like figures examined reveals both the advantages and pitfalls of partnering with Peithō and the degrees to which the coercive or corrupting qualities of her influence might be deflected. These performances offered the ancient audience a variety of educational models for how one might productively harness Peithō’s assistance in rhetorical speech: by cultivating respectful deference toward her divinity and reconciling oneself to a lack of complete control before her power.

This chapter challenges the claim that the first decade of the nineteenth century was a disciplinary moment in which the arts and sciences were separated. It analyzes a publishing phenomenon of that decade: scientific publications for children, women, and artisans produced as conversations, dialogues, or catechisms. A wealth of such publications emerged in the years 1800 to 1810. They offer important insights into the competing scientific cultures of the turn of the century, in which professionalized disciplinarity had by no means eclipsed the amateur, even un disciplined, natural philosophy of the late eighteenth century. This essay focuses on Jeremiah Joyce, a scientific educator and author, analyzing the development of his educational writings and those of his interlocutors in this decade. Though these years produce new models of scientific instruction, experiment, and print communication, there are strong continuities with the natural philosophical and pedagogical practices of the previous century.

Young people are often excluded from placemaking decisions, despite being among the most affected by changes to local environments. This chapter examines Design Your Neighborhood (DYN), a place-based action civics curriculum implemented in middle schools in Nashville, Tennessee. DYN introduces students to urban design and engages them in participatory community development and decision-making. Drawing on qualitative data from eight focus groups across seven schools, the chapter explores how young people perceive and relate to their communities. Guided by sense of place theory, the analysis highlights students’ values, including community connectedness, safety, inclusivity, accessibility, and housing security. Students also identified ideas for improving their neighbourhoods, reflecting their aspirations in the context of Nashville’s rapidly changing built environment. The findings suggest that incorporating young people’s perspectives not only strengthens their sense of place but also provides valuable insights for cities seeking more inclusive, resilient, and equitable approaches to urban development.

This chapter examines the career of Wei Liaoweng, a Southern Song official and Neo-Confucian scholar, to explore the multifaceted roles and responsibilities of local administrators during a period of political turbulence and social transformation. It investigates how he navigated overlapping identities while negotiating between ideological commitments and the practical demands of governance. Although Wei devoted significant effort to fortifying local defenses and securing revenue, his administration was far from purely extractive. He worked to alleviate the economic burdens of local residents, developed water management systems, promoted education by building academies and supporting government schools, and implemented social welfare and public health programs. Wei’s Neo-Confucian convictions informed an activist vision of governance that emphasized community building and collaboration between local officials and literati. His career illustrates the dynamic interplay between intellectual and political life, the integration of state and local initiatives, and the critical role of personal networks in sustaining effective local administration.

Chapter 5 assesses the patronage and use of books in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. The following case studies are discussed: two earlier Anglo-Saxon prayerbooks (the Book of Cerne and Book of Nunnaminster) to which new material was added, a new volume of Latin hagiographies (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 5574), and a Carolingian manuscript to which several additions were made by English-trained scribes (London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D. xiv, fols. 170–224). Engagement with these books took place in diverse settings, some of which were more informal than one might expect. The motivations for such activity are assessed too. These case studies pave the way for a holistic assessment of the contemporary manuscript corpus. Physical qualities, texts and languages are considered, as are the possible settings in which books were produced and used. Attention is drawn to the evidence for female book use, and to the importance of international networks. Continuities with earlier decades are acknowledged, as are new developments, including a more pronounced association between books and bishops. The chapter closes with a call to remain open-minded about this book culture’s range of social contexts and participants.

The Introduction defines the paradigm of anticolonial development, acquaints the reader with the scope of the book, and situates its main contributions in the literatures on education, decolonization, race, and development in Africa. It argues that a Black Atlantic perspective changes how we see decolonization and development in West Africa, by revealing schooling’s essential role in aspirations of African emancipation. The second part of the Introduction details the book’s unique methodological approach of comparison in global perspective. Such comparison allows for dialogue across two different colonial and postcolonial histories (Ghana/British empire and Côte d’Ivoire/French empire), in the process offering a regional history of the global spread of public schooling during the twentieth century.