It is with pleasure we present this Special Issue of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, which is devoted to the research being conducted by the Remote Education Systems (RES) project in a range of sites in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia. The RES project is a 5-year project and represents one theme within the larger research program of the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP). The AJIE welcomes the chance to circulate the progress of this important work to our readership, many of whom are committed to improving Indigenous schooling. We particularly welcome the chance to devote an entire edition to remote Indigenous education, for the challenges in this context are not well understood, but are often the subject of public comment and opinion from all quarters. The RES project is investigating and challenging the assumptions that underpin the current rationales of Indigenous remote education systems. The AJIE is also pleased to welcome John Guenther and Melodie Bat as our Guest Editors for this volume. We also thank Professor Jeannie Herbert, Foundation Chair of Indigenous Studies at Charles Sturt University, for her Introduction to the journal articles. Born in the remote Kimberley, Jeannie has been a classroom teacher and educational administrator. She is best known as an Indigenous academic who has been an active Indigenous education advocate, researcher, author and speaker for many years. We look forward to your engagement with the themes and issues contained in this special edition and in future editions of AJIE.

This Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Indigenous Education presents a unique collection of nine articles representing the initial outputs from the Remote Education Systems’ (RES) 5-year project to research and identify ways in which education systems might respond more effectively to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander expectations, aspirations and learning needs. The project is unique for two reasons: (1) its focus on one of the most critical and complex aspects of the Australian education landscape — the need for systemic change in improving the education outcomes of Indigenous students living in remote locations throughout the nation; and (2) there is sufficient time for researchers to meaningfully engage with the diversity of remote-based stakeholders — educators, parents, students and the wider community – in order to obtain their viewpoints concerning the value of the remote-based education service delivery provided in their schools.

This article sets the scene for the series of five articles on ‘red dirt thinking’. It first introduces the idea behind red dirt thinking as opposed to ‘blue sky thinking’. Both accept that there are any number of creative and expansive solutions and possibilities to identified challenges — in this case, the challenge of improving education in very remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island schools. However, the authors believe that creative thinking needs to be grounded in the reality of the local community context in order to be relevant. This article draws on emerging data from the Remote Education Systems project (a project within the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation — CRC-REP) and highlights further questions and challenges we wish to address across the life of the project. It is part of a collection of papers presented on the theme ‘Red Dirt Thinking’. The red dirt of remote Australia is where thinking for the CRC-REP's Remote Education Systems research project emerged. This article will examine the various public positions that exist in regard to the aspirations of young remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, and consider the wider views that are held in terms of what constitutes educational ‘success’. We explore the models of thinking and assumptions that underpin this public dialogue and contrast these ideas to the ideas that are being shared by remote Aboriginal educators and local community members through the work of the Remote Education Systems project. We will consider the implications and relevance of the aspiration and success debate for the remote Australian context and propose approaches and key questions for improved practice and innovation in relation to delivering a more ‘successful’ education for remote students. The authors begin by posing the simple question: How would, and can remote educators build aspiration and success? The wisdom of several commentators on remote education in Australia is presented in terms of a set of simple solutions to a straightforward problem. The assumptions behind these simple solutions are often unstated, and part of this article's role is to highlight the assumptions that common arguments for solutions are premised on. Further to the above question, we will also consider the question: In remote communities where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students live and learn, how is success defined? Is there language that corresponds to the western philosophical meanings of success? Having considered some possible alternatives, based on the early findings of the Remote Education Systems project research, the authors then pose the question: How would educators teach for these alternative measures of success? The answers to these questions are still forthcoming. However, as the research process reveals further insights in relation to these questions, it may be possible for all those involved in remote education to approach the ‘problem’ of remote education using a different lens. The lens may be smeared with red dirt, but it will enable people involved in the system to develop creative solutions in a challenging and rich environment.

When people talk about education of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, the language used is often replete with messages of failure and deficit, of disparity and problems. This language is reflected in statistics that on the surface seem unambiguous in their demonstration of poor outcomes for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. A range of data support this view, including the National Action Plan—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) achievement data, school attendance data, Australian Bureau of Statistics Census data and other compilations such as the Productivity Commission's biennial Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report. These data, briefly summarised in this article, paint a bleak picture of the state of education in remote Australia and are at least in part responsible for a number of government initiatives (state, territory and Commonwealth) designed to ‘close the gap’. For all the programs, policies and initiatives designed to address disadvantage, the results seem to suggest that the progress, as measured in the data, is too slow to make any significant difference to the apparent difference between remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools and those in the broader community. We are left with a discourse that is replete with illustrations of poor outcomes and failures and does little to acknowledge the richness, diversity and achievement of those living in remote Australia. The purpose of this article is to challenge the ideas of ‘disadvantage’ and ‘advantage’ as they are constructed in policy and consequently reported in data. It proposes alternative ways of thinking about remote educational disadvantage, based on a reading of relevant literature and the early observations of the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation's Remote Education Systems project. It is a formative work, designed to promote and frame a deeper discussion with remote education stakeholders. It asks how relative advantage might be defined if the ontologies, axiologies, epistemologies and cosmologies of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families were more fully taken into account in the education system's discourse within/of remote schooling. Based on what we have termed ‘red dirt thinking’ it goes on to ask if and what alternative measures of success could be applied in remote contexts where ways of knowing, being, doing, believing and valuing often differ considerably from what the educational system imposes.

Recent debates in Australia, largely led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island academics over the past 5 or so years, have focused on the need for non-Indigenous educators to understand how their practices not only demonstrate lack of understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, but even deny their presence. This debate has serious implications for the non-Indigenous remote educator who wishes to support remote students to achieve ‘success’ through their education. The debates on the one hand advocate the decolonising of knowledge, pedagogy and research methods in order to promote more just or equal approaches to research and education, while other voices continue to advocate the pursuit of mainstream dominant Western ‘outcomes’ as the preferred goal for Indigenous students across Australia. This dilemma frames the context for this study. The Remote Education Systems Project, in the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation, seeks to explore these and other questions as part of the broader research agenda being undertaken. This project is particularly focused on large-scale questions such as: ‘What is a remote education for and what would ‘success’ look like in the remote education context?’ We are approaching these research questions from community standpoints and perspectives as a critical starting point for these types of debates and discussions. In doing so, our findings indicate that remote Aboriginal community members have a strong sense of western education and its power to equip young people with critical skills, knowledge and understandings for the future, but also a strong sense of retaining of their ‘own’ knowledge, skills and understanding. This presents a complex challenge for educators who are new to this knowledge interface. Here, we offer the concept of ‘Red Dirt Thinking’ as a new way to position ourselves and engage in situated dialogue about what remote schooling might be if it took into account power issues around Indigenous knowledges in the current policy context. This article questions whether remote communities, schools and systems have, in fact, taken account of the knowledge/power debates that have taken place at an academic level and considers how remote education might consider the implications of stepping outside the ‘Western–Indigenous binary’. It seeks to propose new paradigms that non-Indigenous educators may need to engage in order to de-limit the repositioning of power-laden knowledge and pedagogies offered in remote classrooms.

In Australia, the ‘remote education system’ presents itself as a simple system where the right inputs, such as quality teachers and leaders will engender the outputs that have been set by the system, such as certain levels of English literacy and numeracy. The system has measures in place, including national testing, to report on its success. For the most part, this system seems to be working quite well. However, this modelling breaks down when the education system of remote Australia is presented. This remote system is presented in much of the literature and in the press, as disadvantaged, under-resourced and underperforming. Reported results indicate that current activities are not bringing the desired outcomes. The so-called mainstream system makes adjustments using its model of input to output, but without success. There is a clear need for change. Just what this change might look like is the focus of this article. Theorising in this space is considered from two positions; the first being the published work of a number of Indigenous Australian educators and leaders writing in this space; the second, a consideration of western theorising using complex adaptive systems. Throughout the article, a metaphor of ‘red dirt thinking’ is applied as a mechanism to ground the thinking in the lives and lands of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of remote Australia.

Supporting children in their early development and learning has long-term benefits for both them and the broader community. Yet in Australia we still have significant examples of inequality of opportunity (Allan, 2010) and other structural barriers to family wellbeing, particularly in Indigenous and rural and remote communities (Bourke, Humphreys, Wakerman, & Taylor, 2012). One of the structural barriers is the frequently siloed approach to addressing issues around child wellbeing and learning, when a collaborative effort results in more effective and sustainable outcomes. Red Dirt (Indigenous, rural and remote) communities are fertile ground for the emergence of partnership models that provide solutions to perennial, complex community issues and siloed service provision that impact on learning outcomes. The aim of this article is to provide a background and commentary to contribute to the discussion about what works to promote child wellbeing in Australia and put forward the SpICE Model as part of the solution. Drawing on a body of literature and experiences in the field, this article will introduce a model for collaboration that should contribute to child wellbeing: the Specialist Integrated Community Engagement (SpICE) Model. First, we give an overview of the context of adversity as it specifically relates to educational outcomes for children. The principles underpinning the SpICE Model, on how to harness opportunity from adversity, are also described as they provide insight into how to achieve sustainable change in this context. In conclusion, some of the potential challenges of embedding SpICE into practice are discussed. The argument developed throughout this article is that the SpICE Model has currency for a wide range of education, health, disability and welfare collaborations and how they impact on child, family and community wellbeing.

The education system, as it relates to very remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia, faces challenges. While considerable resources have been applied to very remote schools, results in terms of enrolments, attendance and learning outcomes have changed little, despite the effort applied. The Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP) in its Remote Education Systems (RES) project is trying to understand why this might be the case, and also attempting to identify local solutions to the ‘problem’ of very remote education. The RES project is in the process of building its research program across five remote sites in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia. As the project begins, the researchers involved have begun to consider what are the assumptions behind the ‘system’ in its current form(s). The article begins with an outline of the context of remote education in Australia within a rapidly changing global environment. However, the purpose of the article is to outline many of the assumptions built into remote education and to ask what the alternatives to these assumptions might be. The authors go on to ask questions about how a remote education system would approach some of the assumptions presented. The assumptions presented are based on a reading of the philosophical bases of education. The questions are designed to prompt a deeper discussion about how the values and worldviews of those living in very remote communities might be taken into consideration and acted upon.

For quite some time the achievements of students in remote Australian schools have been lamented. There is not necessarily anything new about the relative difference between the results of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote communities and their counterparts in urban, regional and rural schools across Australia. However, in the last decade a number of changes in the education system have led to the difference being highlighted — to such an extent that what had been an ‘othering’ of remote students (and their families) has turned into marginalisation that is described in terms of disadvantage, deficit and failure. One of the primary instruments used to reinforce this discourse has been the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) testing. This instrument has also been used as part of the justification for a policy response that sees governments attempting to close the educational gap, sometimes through punitive measures, and sometimes with incentives. At a strategic level, this is reflected in a focus on attendance, responding to the perceived disadvantage, and demanding higher standards of performance (of students, teachers and schools more generally). Accountability has resulted in lots of counting in education — counts of attendance, enrolments, dollars spent and test scores. These measures lead one to conclude that remote education is failing, that teachers need to improve their professional standards and that students need to perform better. But in the process, have we who are part of the system lost sight of the need to make education count? And if it is to count, what should it count for in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities? These are questions that the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation is attempting to find answers to as part of its Remote Education Systems project. This article questions the assumptions behind the policy responses using publicly available NAPLAN data from very remote schools. It argues that the assumptions about what works in schools generally do not work in very remote schools with high proportions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. It therefore questions whether we in the system are counting the right things (for example attendance, enrolments and measures of disadvantage).

In the remote schooling context, much recent media attention has been directed to issues of poor attendance, low attainment rates of minimal benchmarks in literacy and numeracy, poor retention and the virtual absence of transitions from school to work. The Australian government's recent ‘Gonski review’ (Review of Funding for Schooling – Final Report 2011) also strongly advocates the need to increase investment and effort into remote education across Australia in order to address the concerns of under-achievement, particularly of Indigenous students. Large-scale policies designed to improve access to services have caused a significant increase in services delivered from external sources, policy development at all levels of government, and tight accountability measures that affect remote communities and in turn, schools in various ways. Remote educators find themselves caught in the middle of this systemic discourse and the voices and values that exist in the remote communities where they live. Within this complex environment, the purpose of this article is to amplify Indigenous community voices and values in the discourse and by doing so, challenge ourselves as educators and educational leaders to examine the question: ‘While we're busy delivering education, is anybody learning anything?’ This article focuses on the Anangu (Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara) context of the North-West of South Australia, southern regions of the Northern Territory and into Western Australia. This region is referred to as the ‘tri-state’ region. Using a qualitative methodology, this article examines three Pitjantjatjara language oral narrative transcripts where Anangu reflect on their experiences of growing up and learning. By privileging these Anangu voices in the dialogue about learning in the remote Aboriginal community context, key themes are identified and analysed, highlighting important considerations for remote educators in understanding the values and cultural elements that inform Anangu students in their engagement with a formal education context.

MindMatters, implemented by Principals Australia Institute, is a resource and professional development initiative supporting Australian secondary schools in promoting and protecting the mental health and social and emotional wellbeing of members of school communities, preferring a proactive paradigm (Covey, 1989) to the position of ‘disaster response’. While the MindMatters national focus has continued, grown and become embedded in schools since its beginning in 2000, MindMatters staff have also specifically sought to establish localised mental health and wellbeing (MHWB) promotion in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities that empowers local school and community groups to build on community values and intergenerational capacities for supporting the MHWB of young people. This article outlines the processes for successful practice that have been developed in a very remote Aboriginal school context, and highlights the strengths and benefits of this approach from the perspectives of Anangu (Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara people of Central Australia) educators. Using a community development approach, Anangu educators, skilled linguists, community members and MindMatters trained staff formed learning communities that recontextualised MHWB curriculum to be taught in Anangu schools. While critically reflecting on the process MindMatters has adopted, this article draws on the voices of Anangu to privilege the cultural philosophical positions in the discourse. In so doing, important principles for translating what is fundamentally a western knowledge system's construct into corresponding Anangu knowledge systems is highlighted. Through building on the knowledge base that exists in the community context, Anangu educators, school staff and community members develop confidence, shared language and capacity to become the expert educators, taking their knowledge and resources to other Anangu school communities to begin their MindMatters journey ‘Anangu way’. This process supports students as they engage in the school-based activities and build a language for reflecting on MHWB concerns, leading them to learn and practice ‘better ways of thinking and acting’ (Kulintja Palyantja Palya —the Pitjantjatjara language title for the MindMatters, ‘Anangu Way’ program).