This lecture discusses the historical and ongoing social injustices faced by Aboriginal students in Australia's education system. It outlines how schooling has been used as a tool of assimilation that denied Indigenous children their cultural identities and heritage. As a result, Aboriginal students experience health, social, and economic disadvantages linked to lower rates of education participation and achievement. The lecture argues that educators must address systemic racism in schools and incorporate Indigenous cultures and knowledges in order to improve outcomes for Aboriginal youth.

1. EEP442
EEP418
Lecture 9
Indigeneity and Social Justice in
Education

2. Lecture Overview
• Who are the Aboriginal people?
• How are Aboriginal students situated in
Australia’s education system?
• How have Aboriginal students been
positioned due to education policy?

3. Sociological Imagination
A term coined by Charles Wright Mills to describe the sociological approach to
analysing issues. We see the world through a sociological imagination, or think
sociologically, when we make a link between personal troubles and public issues.

4. Acknowledgement of Country

5. Indigeneity and Social Justice
If schools are powerful sites that transmit the dominant culture –
that is ‘white’ culture – what happens to Indigenous students in
this system?
What messages are sent to Indigenous students about their
cultures, their identities, their communities?

6. School Involvement
Education is the key factor in improving levels of
health, employment and opportunity for
Aboriginal people
BUT
Although levels of participation and retention in
school are increasing for Aboriginal students
although it is still well below that of non-
indigenous students

7. Aboriginal Student Retention Rates

8. Textbook
Cultural background shouldn’t have anything to do with the
educational outcomes or opportunities of any Australian
student – but unfortunately it still does….
1. Due to systematic discrimination, Indigenous students
suffer social injustices far greater than their non-Indigenous
counterparts.
2. Health and socio-economic status is directly linked to
education participation and achievement.

9. We know that….
• Teachers have sought to identify Indigenous students
by applying racist stereotypes
• Discriminatory stereotypes deny Aboriginal children
their cultural identity and heritage
• As teachers we must challenge our assumptions and
world views
• There is an ongoing presence of racism in schools
• For Indigenous youth, ‘identity’ is a complex process
• There is no one definition of ‘how to be indigenous’

10. Before the Invasion…
• Before 1770 the Australian continent
comprised of over 500 different peoples, each
with their own language and stories
• Education occurred through a process of
kinships structures and social organisation
• People were non-literate as opposed to
illiterate

11. Education and the dominant culture…
• The knowledge and skills which are presented within the
schooling experience are those which society considers to
be important
• Education is therefore a social resource that should never
be limited or denied to any members of society
• HOWEVER, Australian schools typically empower those
with western or European heritage, leaving minority
students severely disadvantaged
• Many Aboriginal people were excluded from the education
process as they were not even considered to be citizens of
their own country until 1967
(Heitmeyer, 2006)

12. History of Aboriginal Education in NSW
• 1880: Public Instruction Act
• 1884: Clean, Clad and Courteous
• 1902: Exclusion on Demand
• 1930’s: Assimilation or Absorption policy

13. Removal of Aboriginal Children
resulted in…
• Imparting of Christian doctrine rather than formal
education
• Physical, sexual and psychological abuse
• Poor living standards
• Physical labour for children rather than an education
• Low expectations that destroyed any possibility of the
attainment of self-esteem
• Low levels of knowledge of and respect for Indigenous
culture
• (Foley, 2010, p.184)

14. Stolen Generation
“The 1997 report on the Stolen Generations by the
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
recognised the adverse psychological effects of the
assimilation policy on both the children as individuals and
as future parents” (Foley, 2010. p.184).
Poor attendance, retention and performance of
Aboriginal students in schools is a direct result of policies
of segregation, protection and assimilation, many of
which still remain today in contemporary approaches to
education (Foley, 2010).

15. Cycle of Disadvantage relating directly
to Institutional Racism…
Disadvantage
Poor
education
Poor
employment
prospects
Dependence
on welfare
Poverty

16. Critical Theory
Hegemony: a groups resignation to the authority and dominance of
another group
Critical theorists argued that student resistance is a response to the
hegemonic attributes of schooling as a white, middle-class institution.
In this way, students’ alienation from school is something done to
students by external structures and norms as well as something done
by students as an explicit rejection of these external structures and
norms. Such an articulation highlights the mismatch between the
cultural capital of lower-class and non-white youth and the dominant
cultural capital of the school.
Lower class and minority groups use resistances strategically to free
themselves from domination

17. Racism in everyday schooling practices
Racism occurs in schools everyday on two levels:
Systemic racial discrimination
School power hierarchies; the white European dominance in
our curriculums and pedagogies; white middle-class schooling
practices
Everyday practices of individuals
the dilemma of the fair-skinned Koori - p.172
lack of teacher awareness – p.198

18. Resistance Theory
Resistance theory helps define the relationship between the school and dominant society by
questioning the role of schools in sustaining dominant social practices and structures which are found in
societies divided along class, race and gender lines
(Beresford & Partington, 2003, p.32).
We see resistance in schools everyday when a student’s response simply says “I don’t buy it”
Student resistance to classroom instruction is often thought of as a student’s critical rejection of formal
and impositional academic content knowledge. But there is more to it than that.
SO RESISTANCE AS
Rejection of academic content
Rejection of the educational context
In this way we can consider the idea of student resistance as the WILFUL (be it active or passive)
rejection of academic content as well as the strategic rejection of the academic context

19. Resistance Theory in relation to
Indigenous Education
Resistance theory explains some Aboriginal
students’ rejection of schooling
Minority groups come to actively oppose
intellectual activity because it is seen as the
domain of the dominant group
Schooling is seen as white man’s business

20. Alienation
Alienation has been described as a state of
oppression
Alienation from school can lead to a negative
self concept
Relationships with teachers can help break
down resistance

21. Special Schooling….
A disproportionate number of Indigenous students are placed in
special classes for intellectual disability or behavior disorders (should
be 3.5% in Junior school as per capita – but it is actually more like
34%!)
WHY?
Systematic racism in our institutions
Failure of schooling to recognise cultural differences between the
schooling system and Indigenous students’ backgrounds, knowledges
and experiences including cultural and linguistic bias of schooling
(curriculums, pedagogies, testing, social/schooling hierarchies)

22. Thinking through the ‘Indigenous
Problem’ in Education
1. Us versus them
2. Deficit model of Indigenous education
3. White race privilege

23. Where to now….
Barriers of segregation and institutional racism
can be broken down by incorporating
Indigenous culture into lesson plans and
teaching methods
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u_qsSl5rik
&feature=relmfu

24. Indigenous Community Schools
• Elders have positions of respect in the school and
wider community
• Success with primary student Literacy and
Numeracy in primary
• Developing community bridging strategies to
connect with the wider community
• Reputation for educational excellence
• School as community hub
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwpIl4TShcc

25. Summing up…….
Educators must find ways to close the cultural
gap in teaching and learning
The voice of Indigenous people must be heard in
Australian schools
Let’s expand our national view of ‘worthwhile
knowledge’

26. References
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, (1998). As a matter of fact.
Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.
Allen, J. (2006). Sociology of Education: Possibilities and Practices
Beresford, Q., & Partington,G. (2003). Reform and resistance in Aboriginal
education: the Australian experience. Crawley, Western Australia: University
of Western Australia Press.
Connell, R., Campbell, C., Vickers, M., Welch,A., Foley, D., Bagnall, N., & Hayes,
D. (2010). Education, change and society (2nd ed). South Melbourne,
Victoria: Oxford University Press.
Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. Boston: D.C. Heath & Co.
Generation One AU. (2010). Hands across Australia: Murri School QLD.
Retrieved from Youtube 25 September, 2011,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B1w95EBFck
Stronger Smarter Institute. (2010). East Kalgoorlie Primary School, Retrieved
from Youtube 25 September, 2011,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B1w95EBFck