The challenge for any research journal today is how to continue to make the work we publish relevant, contemporary and innovative for the research groups, educational organisations, and Indigenous communities locally and globally that we serve. At the same time, we recognise it is important for us to continue our work in The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education within the critical pedagogical agenda in which it began; that is, the empowerment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through education, combined with a concern to critique and challenge the national and international colonial contexts in which Indigenous education is positioned today.

The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia emphasises that children's own identity is constructed within their given context of family and community. This article presents the findings of a multiple case study project undertaken within five remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, Australia. Community Elders were concerned that while their children had a positive sense of self during their prior-to-school years, on entry into formal schooling they experienced a disjuncture between those experiences and the expectations of a Western curriculum. The project involved partnering one university academic to work with each community, exploring ways of improving 4-year-old children's pre-reading and numeracy skills to enhance their capacity to engage with expectations on entry into formal schooling. Elders were determined to have the children be successful at school and saw success there as inextricably interwoven with their sense of efficacy to explore and to learn. Outcomes included positives such as children demonstrating increased pre-reading and numeracy skills and, importantly, the engagement of the whole community in the project. Foundational to the success was making Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing key components of learning opportunities provided to the children, supporting awareness of their social and cultural heritage.

Sustainable partnership formation in a remote Indigenous community involves social, cultural and political considerations. This article reports on the project, ‘Sharing Place, Learning Together: Supporting Sustainable Educational Partnerships to Advance Social Equity’, funded by the Melbourne Social Equity Institute (MSEI) at the University of Melbourne (UoM). The project's aims were to document insights into working with communities and educators in a remote community school in Western Arnhem Land, and to promote and raise Aboriginal students’ aspirations for engagement in further education through knowledge exchanges. Two project deliverables focus this paper: a participatory workshop conducted at UoM by educators and students from the school, and a qualitative research study that investigated the mutual partnership capacity building between the school community and UoM. The workshop provided an environment conducive to the participants sharing their cultural knowledge and perspectives on a two-way Learning on Country program with the wider UoM community. Extensive interview data collected from school and community-based participants identified the enabling and constraining factors impacting the formation of a sustainable partnership. The findings revealed the importance of prioritising relationship-building, the valuing of resource development, and the need for humility and openness to criticism when working with remote communities.

This study explored the experiences of 32 male Aboriginal students from regional and remote towns and communities while they attended a metropolitan boarding school away from home and family in Perth, Western Australia. Using narrative interviews it specifically investigated how these Aboriginal students construct meaning around the transition experience to boarding school. Three major themes emerged from the data: (1) Decision Making and the subthemes of Choice-less Choice and Opportunity; (2) Organisational Climate and the subthemes of School Environment and Belonging, Culture Shock, Homesickness, Identity, Code Switching, Teachers, Academic Expectations, Residential Life, and Friendships and Peer Relations; and (3) Relational Change and the subthemes of Family Dynamics, Friendships at Home, and Cultural Connectedness. This study emphasises the importance of conceptualising and understanding social phenomena from the perspective of those who actually undertake the experience, and the findings are discussed in terms of policy and practice relevant to Australian boarding schools.

This article will discuss some of the findings from a qualitative research project that explored the connections between alternative education and Indigenous learners. This study investigated how flexi school leaders reported they were supporting Indigenous young people to remain engaged in education. The results of the survey provide demographic data focusing on Indigenous participation in this sample of flexi schools. The results revealed that a high number of Indigenous young people are participating in flexi schools within this sample. Furthermore, a high number of Indigenous staff members are working in multiple roles within these schools. The implications of these findings are twofold. First, the current Indigenous education policy environment is focused heavily on ‘Closing the Gap’, emphasising the urgent need for significant improvement of educational outcomes for Indigenous young people. The findings from this study propose that flexi schools are playing a significant role in supporting Indigenous young people to remain engaged in education, yet there remains a limited focus on this within the literature and education policy. Second, the high participation rates of Indigenous young people and staff suggest an urgent need to explore this context through research. Further research will assist in understanding the culture of the flexi school context. Research should also explore why a high number of Indigenous young people and staff members participate in this educational context and how this could influence the approach to engagement of Indigenous young people in conventional school settings.

Effective mathematics teaching for Indigenous language speaking students needs to be based on fair expectations of both students and teachers. Concepts of ‘age-appropriate learning’ and ‘school readiness’ structure assessment expectations that entire cohorts of Indigenous language speaking students are unable to meet. This institutionalises both student and teacher failure, as both are exhorted to meet unachievable expectations. The voices of teachers teaching in a very remote school provide insight into teachers’ responses to the mismatch between the system expectations and the teaching context. Teacher interviews in a small Northern Territory school, conducted within an ethnographic study, showed that teachers’ decisions regarding the level of mathematics curriculum taught were informed by students’ prior learning and by the language dynamic in their classrooms. The need and pressure to teach Standard Australian English also affected how mathematics was taught. This leads to a reformulation of the concept of school readiness to ask how schools can be more ready for their Indigenous language speaking students in terms of preparing and supporting teachers.

The aim of this article is to critically review and analyse the public representations of mature-age university students in developed and some developing nations and how they compare to the public representations of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students in Australia (‘students’ also refers to graduates unless the context requires specificity). Relevant texts were identified by reviewing education-related academic and policy literature, media opinion and reportage pieces, conference proceedings, and private sector and higher education reviews, reports and submissions. What this review reveals is striking: very few commentators are publicly and unambiguously encouraging, supporting and celebrating mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students. This strongly contrasts with the discussions around mature-age university students in general, where continuous or lifelong learning is acclaimed and endorsed, particularly as our populations grow older and remain healthier and there are relatively lower numbers of working-age people. While scholars, social commentators, bureaucrats and politicians enthusiastically highlight the intrinsic and extrinsic value of the mature-age student's social and economic contributions, the overarching narrative of the mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student is one of ‘the horse has bolted’, meaning that it is too late for this cohort and therefore society to benefit from their university education. In this article we examine these conflicting positions, investigate why this dichotomy exists, present an alternative view for consideration, and make recommendations for further research into this area.

The article describes the teaching and learning framework that underpins a Kinship Online Module aimed at delivering online cross-cultural training at the university level. It is based on an existing workshop designed and presented to non-Aboriginal staff and students by Lynette Riley, a Wiradjuri and Gamilaroi woman from Dubbo and Moree. In doing so, this article reflects on the pedagogical framework and adopted learning environment, and describes how the project adopts a ‘cultural praxis’ approach that combines a social constructivist, problem-based immersive learning approach with five complementary pedagogical approaches. These principles underpin the designing of a program that embeds diverse Aboriginal knowledge into this online teaching resource.

This article reflects on issues of Indigenous creativity in Māori arts education, along with what we see as problematic tensions of the assessment of intangible elements. Our writing is motivated by a desire to start a global dialogue on Indigenous/Māori epistemologies, pedagogies and ontologies, and the contradictions and tensions that threaten these through global assessment drives within schools. We argue that current student assessment regimes are being increasingly influenced by international neoliberal agendas, which focus on universal, measurable outcomes. By critically exploring the assessment of creativity in the arts from a Māori perspective, we reflect on several contradictions and tensions in current assessment drives within schools. In particular, the intangible dimensions of being and flow and their connection to creativity are examined, and we conclude with recommendations for further work in this area.

The Australian National Program Standards for Teacher Education prioritises knowledge of culturally inclusive practices and challenges the educational community to present research on well-structured, inclusive, cross-curricula education partnerships. This article meets this challenge as it explores a core unit of work for undergraduate teachers with Indigenous education as its foundation. Most importantly, the paper presented here provides an overview of how to develop culturally appropriate pedagogical practice through culturally inclusive curriculum. Both the unit of work and the paper are built on the principles of Constructive Alignment. In engaging with the article, the reader will use the 4Rs of reflection, as used by the pre-service teachers within the unit of work, to personally engage with curriculum conversations. This engagement demonstrates excellence in education design and offers clear alignment with the Australian Curriculum Studies Association's (ACSA’s) principles for Australian curriculum.

This article describes a review undertaken in 2012–2013 by Nutrition and Dietetics, Flinders University, to assess the Indigenous health curriculum of the Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics (BND) and Masters of Nutrition and Dietetics (MND). An action research framework was used to guide and inform inquiry. This involved four stages, each of which provided information to reach a final decision about how to progress forward. First, relevant information was collected to present to stakeholders. This included identification of acknowledged curriculum frameworks, a review of other accredited nutrition and dietetics courses in Australia, a review of Indigenous health topics at Flinders University, including liaison with the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health and Well-Being (Indigenous health teaching and research unit), and a review of BND and MND current curriculum related to Indigenous health. Second, input was sought from stakeholders. This involved a workshop with practising dietitians and nutritionists from South Australia and the Northern Territory and discussions with Flinders University Nutrition and Dietetics academic staff. Third, a new curriculum was developed. Nine areas were identified for this curriculum, including reflexivity, approach and role, history and health status, worldview, beliefs and values, systems and structures, relationship building and communication, food and food choice, appreciating and understanding diversity, and nutrition issues and health status. Fourth, a final outcome was achieved, which was the decision to introduce a core, semester-long Indigenous health topic for BND students. A secondary outcome was strengthening of Indigenous health teaching across the BND and MND. The process and findings will be useful to other university courses looking to assess and expand their Indigenous health curriculum.