For thousands of years Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people nurtured their young, allowing natural skills to develop. Education using the powers of observation and listening was the most important process used with information being delivered to the child when they were ready to receive it. Most times this information was delivered by several members of the community. Prominent Australian Aboriginal scholar Kaye Price (2012) affirms that ‘right from the beginning there was a specialised education and for each child there was a teacher, a mentor and a peer with whom to learn … who ensured that history and the essentials of life were taught’ (p. 4). Aboriginal society was based on an egalitarian system that was holistic and emphasised belonging, spirituality, and relatedness. Learning was viewed as a natural holistic process where education was centred on the land and children learned alongside adults (Martin, 2005). The traditional epistemological system that maintained Aboriginal Nations in Australia for millennia was disrupted upon colonisation in 1788 resulting in discrimination towards Aboriginal culture and traditions (Morgan, 2019).

Chapter 8 provides insight into science learning that incorporates Indigenous Australian science knowledge and the roles of both culture and Indigenous Australian Ways of Doing. Social protocols, which underpin Indigenous Australian Knowledge, particularly in science, are discussed to provide background to non-Indigenous EC professionals. This chapter describes principles and strategies for EC professionals to embed Indigenous science into their settings. Cases of how practitioners have done this in various settings are presented.

A rich body of recent scholarship has commented on the depth of Ellison’s engagements with major developments in sociology and psychology, including direct engagements with the work of Robert Park, John Dollard, Gunnar Myrdal, and the Lafargue Clinic in Harlem. Ellison showed a sustained interest and concern with the new prominence of sociology and psychology in mid-century policy decisions in the U.S. Accordingly, his fiction and chapters consistently engaged with these disciplines’ claims to knowledge of African American culture as compared with other ways of knowing, such as naturalist fiction, Marxist analysis, music, and folklore.

This chapter investigates science learning from the stance of Indigenous Knowledge systems, acknowledging the role of cultural perspectives and Indigenous Ways of Doing. It introduces the importance of relationships, introduces relational pedagogy, culturally responsive pedagogy and the 8 Ways Aboriginal pedagogy framework and describes how these can be operationalised in early childhood science learning.