This paper explores the unique challenges, experiences and circumstances that enable and/or constrain non-Aboriginal teachers involved in teaching the Stage 6 Aboriginal Studies syllabus in the New South Wales (NSW) curriculum (2010). Drawing on the yarning inquiry methodology of Bessarab and Ng'andu, seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Aboriginal Studies teachers to open a powerful and insightful dialogue pertaining to the complexities and challenges for non-Aboriginal teachers teaching in the Aboriginal Studies space. Interview data identified key issues, strategies and themes relating to how non-Aboriginal teachers of Aboriginal Studies negotiate and operate in highly contested knowledge spaces, their roles and responsibilities as social justice educators and their capacity to enact substantive change within and beyond the Aboriginal Studies classroom. Nakata's cultural interface theory provides a useful tool for data analysis as Aboriginal Studies sits squarely at the centre of this interface. The findings provide valuable insights and practical recommendations for aspiring and current non-Aboriginal Aboriginal Studies teachers seeking to develop a clearer understanding of their, thus far under-researched, roles within the classroom, whilst opening an intriguing dialogue pertaining to the future of Aboriginal Studies in schools and its place within Australia's broader movement for conciliation.

Transformative learning theory articulates a process whereby students experience a change in perspectives that expands and transforms their worldview. Despite being well established and regarded within the literature relating to adult and continuing education, Mezirow's (1978) seminal education theory remains largely absent in the research relating to Indigenous higher education. This study explores the transformative impact of university learning on the student journeys of three Aboriginal graduates from a Western Australian university. Applying a collaborative auto-ethnographic approach, each author-participant's personal narrative of their student experience was exposed to comparative, thematic and critical analysis. It was found that each author had faced similar cognitive and emotional challenges at university. Significantly, it emerged that university had changed the author-participants’ identities in ways that aligned with Mezirow's transformative learning construct. The narrative data also revealed elements that appeared related to the students’ negotiation of Nakata's cultural interface. A dominant theme in the data referred to the relationships formed during university, as being integral to transformation. Furthermore, family was understood to have a paradoxical influence on their educational journey. The insights garnered from this study prompt further consideration as to how transformative learning theory might be mobilised at the cultural interface.

The work of Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs) in Australian schools is complex and multifaceted, and yet it is often misunderstood, or worse, devalued. Added to this, the conditions of employment for many AEWs is often insecure, with minimal pay, few opportunities for career progression or meaningful professional development. Despite this there continues to be, as there have been for decades, research findings, policies and reports attesting to the invaluable role of AEWs in schools and communities. The theoretical standpoint of Nakata's (2007) ‘cultural interface’ is used in this paper to critically (re) examine the role of AEWs in Australian schools. Drawing from relevant past and contemporary literature, this paper draws attention to past and contemporary theorising and policy concerning the roles of AEWs. It asserts that if the work of AEWs is to be better understood and valued then it must be reconsidered in a more transformative way that benefits both the students and schools which they support.

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.

Photovoice, the most prevalent participatory visual research methodology utilised within social science research, has begun making its way into Indigenous contexts in light of its critical and pedagogical potential. However, this potential is not always actualised as the assumptions that undergird photovoice are often the same ones that (re)produce inequalities. Working from the notion that methodologies are the space in between theory, methods, and ethics, this manuscript works with/in the cultural interface between the Western theories that shape photovoice (i.e., standpoint theory, praxis) and Indigenous analogues (i.e., Nakata's [2007a, 2007b] Indigenous standpoint theory, Grande's [2004, 2008] Red pedagogy) in order to differentially (re)braid photovoice. Following a thumbnail description of these four bodies of scholarship, a concept key to photovoice (i.e., voice) is differentially configured with, in, and for the cultural interface to provide research considerations for various stages of participatory visual research projects (i.e., fieldwork, analysis, dissemination).