Browsing by Subject "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education"

In 2012, the remote Aboriginal community of Wilcannia agreed to pilot for the first time in Australia the mass adult literacy campaign model using the internationally renowned Cuban developed Yes I Can method for teaching adult literacy. The pilot was supported by a Cuban academic who came to Australia for this purpose, and included a participatory action research evaluation led by the University of New England Project Manager. In this symposium, the Aboriginal leaders of the project will join with the two education academics, one from Australia and one from Cuba, to describe the pilot project and reflect on its outcomes.

In 2012, the remote Aboriginal community of Wilcannia in western NSW hosted the first Australian pilot of a Cuban mass adult literacy campaign model known as 'Yes I Can'. The aim was to investigate the appropriateness of this model in Aboriginal Australia. Building on an intensive community development process of 'socialisation and mobilisation', sixteen community members with very low literacy graduated from the basic literacy course, with the majority continuing on into post-literacy activities, further training and/or employment. The pilot was initiated by the National Aboriginal Adult Literacy Campaign Steering Committee (NAALCSC) consisting of Aboriginal leaders from the education and health sectors, and managed by the University of New England (UNE), working in partnership with the Wilcannia Local Aboriginal Land Council as the local lead agency. The pilot was supported by a Cuban academic who came to Australia for this purpose, and included a Participatory Action Research (PAR) evaluation led by the UNE Project Manager. In this paper, members of the project team and the NAALCSC describe the pilot and reflect on its outcomes.

For Indigenous scholars in health sciences, finding "ways of doing" research that value Indigenist knowledge is an important consideration. Indigenist research methodology offers a useful alternative to mainstream research approaches that draw upon orthodox Western knowledge systems. However, as Indigenous research approaches have only recently entered the academic discourses of health science, few courses currently exist to support Indigenous students and their supervisors who work in this area. While negotiating Indigenist methodologies is challenging, more Indigenous scholars are recognising the importance of doing so. This paper will outline some of the issues experienced by two Indigenist research students coming to terms with the relevance of an Indigenist research approach to their study, as well of those of their supervisor, the third author of the paper

The aim of this chapter is to provide an overall scaffold for the portfolio. Initially, the personal background of the author is discussed to give the reader an understanding of the perspective from which the writing emerges. This encompasses personal history and professional experience. The rationale for the research project presents the statistics which support my personal observations of disadvantage. It also outlines the focus of my work and some of my perspectives on interpreting the causes of Aboriginal marginalisation in Australian society. The structure of the portfolio and the relationship of the chapters are outlined. Research questions formulated to guide the research process are provided and the research paradigm and methods adopted are discussed.

The five years since the National Centre for Vocational Education Research's (NCVER) last consolidation study on Indigenous vocational education and training (VET) have seen significant system-level changes, and the VET system can legitimately take pride in theextent to which, alone among the major sectors of the Australian education system, it appears to have solved the problem of access in relation to Indigenous people. In every other sector—school, higher education and adult community education—Indigenous people participate at levels significantly lower than non-Indigenous people. In the VETsector, however, the situation is reversed. Indigenous people participate in VET programs and courses at significantly higher rates. Nevertheless, this chapter argues that this does not mean that the question of equity for Indigenous people in VET has been solved. On the contrary, it suggests that there are many significant unanswered questions about the way current equity policies interact with Indigenous people's own development aspirations and their preferred modes of participation in the Australian economy. It argues that there is a need for a more focused and co-ordinated Indigenous-driven research agenda to help answer some of the policy questions this raises. It also proposes that more attention be paid to the question of Indigenous employment within the sector, including its research arm.

This paper explores different ways of conceptualising Indigenous/non- Indigenous research collaboration and partnerships. It begins with a brief outline of the problem of current conceptualisations within the critical paradigm in qualitative research. It proposes the idea of the contact zone as a useful way to theorise the site, and border work as a way to understand the emotional and intellectual work, of intercultural collaboration. It applies these ideas to the analysis of a series of conversations between team members involved in a research partnership between an Australian Aboriginal corporation and a university. This analysis suggests that the way borders are conceived differently by different team members depends on their particular political investments. A range of border maintenance and border crossings is necessary for the task of achieving effective collaboration. The 'discomfort' zone of cultural contact is usefully conceived as an area of productive tension in which differences can generate hybrid outcomes such as team produced books for the organisation's ecotourism enterprise.

Project Explore what it means to create classroom dialogue in a context where the teacher and students begin with little shared understanding of the topic, or of the academic purposes implicit in the curriculum goals. Material for the enquiry was drawn from a series of four Mathematics lessons about telling the time, which took place in a remote Aboriginal school. Authors Matt Lotherington is a teacher and curriculum coordinator in the school, while Helen Harper and Bronwyn Parkin are researchers. All three were interested in studying teacherled classroom talk, and how this talk could be used to support students to appropriate new language and concepts. Setting The context for this study is a school in the town of Maningrida, in the Northern Territory. At least 11 Aboriginal languages are spoken in this town. The school has an enrolment of about 700 students from Preschool to Year 12, and almost all (95%) are Aboriginal. School attendance fluctuates greatly, averaging around half (50%), particularly during the dry season when many people in the town move back to traditional country. The official language of instruction is English, although many children have minimal English knowledge when they first come to school. Literacy and numeracy levels as measured by the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) are low. For example, in 2016, 94% of Maningrida Year 7 students scored in the lowest Band 4 for Reading, compared with 3% nationally (ACARA, 2016). For the past five years, the school has implemented a scaffolded approach to English instruction through the Accelerated Literacy (AL) program (Cowey, 2007; Gray, 2007). The AL approach is a source of Matt's experience in scaffolding pedagogy. Matt's class, at the time of this study, comprised 12 students across Years 5 and 6. All were Aboriginal, and all spoke English as an additional language or dialect. A high-attending class, they averaged strong (91%) attendance. However, their generally low levels of literacy and mathematics created some challenges for building age-appropriate content.

This thesis reports on an action research project that investigated whether the integration of computer-based homework with face-to-face delivery would enhance learning opportunities for a group of 36 Indigenous adult learners enrolled in Certificate III in Spoken and Written English at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, in the Northern Territory. The project took place in the 2008 academic year, during which 13 intensive residential workshop weeks were conducted. The impetus for the project was concern over learners' slow rate of progress through the course in the two years prior to the research. Historically, progress had been adversely affected by extended periods between workshops when students were not involved in formal study, as well as by low and irregular levels of attendance. The students' interest in using digital technologies in the classroom suggested the possibility of linking homework to computer-based activities which would provide opportunities for learning outside of the classroom. Four cycles of action research were conducted to investigate student levels of participation in, and responses to, computer-based homework. Three distinct approaches to computer-based homework were implemented during the project during which modifications were made to course and homework activities on the basis of data collected from reflective surveys, focus groups, individual interviews and document reviews. Results of the project showed that the use of computer technology did enhance opportunities for homework participation; however, these opportunities were mitigated by factors linked to three thematic areas: access to computer technology; lifestyle factors; and attitudes towards learning and homework. The research found that the interrelationship between these themes impacted on the students’ participation in computer-based homework. The findings of the research led to four recommendations for ongoing action, at course, institutional and government levels, to improve the educational opportunities for Indigenous adult learners in the Northern Territory. In addition, four recommendations have been made for additional research into ways in which formal education could be more closely aligned to the lives and realities of Indigenous Australians.

In the field of international adult education, mass literacy campaigns enjoyed wide support in the 20th century, when they were seen as a way to increase the participation of previously marginalised and excluded populations in national development. Cuba's 1961 campaign achieved iconic status, but was only one of many successful campaigns in Latin America, Africa and Asia. In the 1990s, while mass literacy campaigns continued in many countries, scholarly interest in them declined under the influence of World Bank empirical critiques of their effectiveness and increasing postmodern skepticism towards the socialist "grand narrative" of liberation which underpinned some of the more famous examples. Recently, the mass campaign model has gained new impetus through Cuba's international literacy missions, which use an approach known by its Spanish name, 'Yo, Si Puedo' [Yes, I Can]. This paper reports on the deployment of this model in two very different settings, one being a national literacy campaign in Timor-Leste, a newly-independent island nation in the Asia-Pacific; and the other a pilot campaign in an Aboriginal community in Australia. The authors have utilised participatory action research methods to evaluate the model in both countries, and locate their comparative analysis in the theoretical tradition of popular education.

Since it was first trialled in Haiti in 2000, Cuba's 'Yo, Si Puedo' model for mounting mass adult literacy campaigns has mobilised over six million people in twenty-nine countries to acquire basic literacy. Despite this global reach, the model has attracted almost no close study from adult education and literacy researchers in the English-speaking world. Cuba's unique south-south approach to international aid and cooperation and its extensive experience with mass literacy campaigns over more than five decades makes this model a classic case study for post-colonial education theory and practice. This paper begins this analysis, by identifying some of the key elements of the Yo Si Puedo model and its emancipatory potential. It is based on evidence collected in an extended participatory action research project during 'Yo, Si Puedo's deployment in Timor-Leste's national literacy campaign (2007-2011) and in a recent pilot study of the model in three Indigenous communities in Australia (2012-2014).

In twenty six countries around the world, Cuba's 'Yo Si Puedo' ('Yes I Can') mass literacy campaign model has provided basic literacy instruction to over six million people. The model was developed by the Institute of Pedagogy for Latin America and the Caribbean (IPLAC) in 2000, at a time when international donors and New Literacy Studies scholars had turned away from such mass approaches in favour of small-scale localised literacy programs. In 2012, a pilot of this model began in the western NSW Aboriginal community of Wilcannia, funded by the Commonwealth WELL program. In 2013-14, the pilot was extended to two more communities in the same region, with funding support from the Commonwealth and NSW governments. The authors of this paper have been involved in an extended participatory action research evaluation of the pilot phase, a process which has provided valuable practical learning about the Cuban model and how best it can be adapted to the circumstances of Aboriginal communities. This paper presents some findings from the research, including an analysis of the teaching theory and practice embodied in the Cuban-produced resources, and some quantitative and qualitative evidence of the individual and collective impact of the campaign in the host communities. The findings and analysis from the pilot lead to some critical reflections on the value of mass campaigns and the relationship of 'Yes I Can' to the Freirian tradition of popular education for social transformation.

Strong relationships between education and health outcomes have been identified in most countries of the world, with children of more educated parents having more favourable health and a better chance of survival. However, there has been little research on this relationship among Indigenous peoples living as minorities in First World countries. This paper reports on an analysis of data from the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey of 15,700 people conducted in Australia in 1994. The analysis focused on the actions that the respondents reported they had taken concerning their children's health. After controlling for the effects of reported health conditions and health status on people's health behaviour, we examined whether any significant relationship remains between education and health behaviour.

Indigenous students in the middle-school years who experience difficulties in basic mathematics are a particularly vulnerable group. During these years gaps in performance between educationally disadvantaged students and their peers widen, potentially leading to ongoing economic and social disadvantage. This proposal reports on a teaching intervention referred to as QuickSmart, which has been particularly successful with Indigenous students from rural communities who perform in the bottom 30% of the achievement spectrum in Australia-wide tests. Evidence is drawn from the learning progress of Indigenous middle-school students who completed the QuickSmart numeracy program. These data show, based on effect-size statistics, academic growth for students of up to two years over the course of a 30-week program.

For some time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have been readily participating in [vocational education and training] VET certificate programs, above rates for non-Indigenous Australians (albeit at lower levels of attainment than non-Indigenous Australians). Relatively high participation rates are not however translating into higher levels of employment. Successive 'Closing the Gap' reports point to a widening gap in employment participation, particularly in remote areas. This suggests that the role of VET certificate courses in improving employability of participants is problematic. Compounding the problem of transition to employment is the problem of attrition. In remote parts of Australia, attrition rates for VET courses are very high, for example certificate I courses have attrition rates of more than 90 per cent. It would appear that on the whole, participants are not getting what is needed from their courses and they are dropping out as a result. However, this is not the case for all courses. To address these concerns a research project titled Enhancing Training Advantage for Remote Learners funded by [National Centre for Vocational Education Research] NCVER, is examining what makes programs more successful. The project, auspiced by Ninti One Limited with research partners from around Australia, will be conducting five case studies on successful programs in a variety of remote Australian contexts to determine what factors make them work well to achieve better retention and employability for participants. This paper and presentation will report on initial findings of the five case studies. It will also present an analysis of quantitative data from VOCSTATS and the five programs to illustrate the kinds of achievements that are possible in an efficient, and effective VET program for remote learners. Some formative implications from the findings will also be discussed.

A culturally inclusive curriculum has long been considered beneficial to all students. The national Australian Curriculum set out to be so, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures as a cross-curriculum priority. There is an assumption however that inclusion is an unproblematic good, and is a true representation of the 'reality' of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples' lived experiences and aspirations. Drawing on a Critical Discourse Analysis of the Australian Curriculum policy corpus and key informant interviews with members of an Aboriginal community, this dissertation explores how the aspirations of Aboriginal people are supported in dominant education discourses mobilised within the Australian Curriculum. The study identified a critical gap between the Australian Curriculum's positioning of Aboriginal knowledges, histories and cultures and the Aboriginal community's aspirations for their children's education. Within the Australian Curriculum policy corpus, 'Liberal Multicultural' and 'Inclusive' Discourses were dominant. Such discourses framed Aboriginal students as being vulnerable to marginalisation and in need of support to ensure equality in education. In contrast, community informants advocated for more critical discourses whereby Aboriginal students are seen as empowered, able to actively participate in mainstream society to engage in a process of community revitalisation. In drawing upon different and at times contradictory discourses to articulate their aspirations within a broader 'Community Revitalisation' Discourse, community members engaged in a creative act of bricolage in a highly contextually-dependent way.

This project aimed to enhance the numeracy performance of low-achieving Indigenous students in terms of their basic mathematics competencies. Teachers and teacher aides involved in the project created a rich learning environment which included the use of targeted technology and focused learning activities to improve the automaticity of students' component academic skills in numeracy. The project continued the development of a research-based intervention program and built on successes already experienced with Indigenous students in Northern New South Wales and the Northern Territory. The schools involved were Minimbah Primary School in Armidale, New South Wales and Mirriwinni Gardens Aboriginal Academy via Kempsey, New South Wales.

The Closing the Gap in NSW Independent Schools Project (2011-2012) was conceptualised and conducted by the NSW Association of Independent Schools (NSWAIS). This Project focused on improving outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students attending four independent NSW schools. Specifically, it aimed to increase the literacy skills of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, develop these students' positive attitudes to learning, and encourage home and school engagement. The Project also sought to strengthen the capabilities and leadership competencies of school staff members by providing professional development in the strategic use of data and the development of whole school approaches to literacy learning.

The under-representation of children from cultural minority and/or low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds in programmes for the gifted in Australia is emerging as an issue of national concern(Braggett 1985; Chaffey 2002; Taylor 1998). Indigenous Australians constitute the most under-represented group of all. Conflicting definitions and terms used in gifted education as well as the absence of effective identification methods are key factors implicated in this under-representation. Coolabah Dynamic Assessment (CDA) (Chaffey 2002) is a promising identification tool for children from cultural minority and/or low SES backgrounds which has created the need for an appropriate provision model to cater for those identified.

Harmony Day (21st March) coincides with the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It is nationally promoted and supported by the Department of Immigration and the Council for Multicultural Australia. The Council for Multicultural Australia was established in July 2000. The fundamental objective of this Council is to facilitate Australian multiculturalism. The promotion and formation of a Harmony Day Organising Committee and the organisation of the Harmony Day Conference in Armidale, held on Saturday, March 23rd, is an indication of the cultural awareness of our community. I feel privileged to have been a part of these activities that have provided us with a unique opportunity to participate and contribute to the evolution of a future 'global civilisation' - one referred to by all traditional cultures and philosophers.

This paper reports on the role of computer technology in providing ongoing learning opportunities outside of the classroom for adult Indigenous students. It presents the preliminary findings of a twelve month action research project which aimed to monitor and enhance student participation in out of class learning. The research participants were 37 adult Indigenous students enrolled in Certificate III in Spoken and Written English at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education in the Northern Territory. Participation in out of class learning activities, commonly referred to by the students as 'homework', was heavily reliant on the use of computer technology. The homework activities incorporated reading, writing and listening tasks, designed to support and enhance ongoing learning skills through the use of an online interactive teaching space. Students' participation in homework activities was monitored through data collected from reflective surveys, focus groups, individual interviews and review of reports on computer access and usage. Computer access, lifestyle issues and individuals' attitudes were found to be the key factors influencing student participation in homework. The outcomes of the research will inform the development of course delivery models and modes of homework delivery for adult Indigenous students. Furthermore, the findings of the research will inform the development of innovative mixed mode and online course models.

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of dynamic testing as a method for identifying high academic potential in Australian Aboriginal children. The 79 participating Aboriginal children were drawn from Years 3-5 in rural schools in northern New South Wales. The dynamic testing method used in this study involved a test-intervention-retest format where the intervention was designed to address predicted causes of underachievement. The dynamic testing method used in the present study proved to be an effective identification tool, revealing high academic potential in similar proportions to those in the instrument normative population. The present study has implications for both gifted education and Aboriginal education generally. These implications arise from the findings of this study that many of the children were 'invisible' underachievers and that it is possible to identify this underachievement in the dynamic testing process.

This chapter introduces the first UNE study on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' experiences in our teacher education degrees. It acknowledges that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have historically been marginalised in Australian education in various ways. It argues that training more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to become teachers is one of many ways that this history can be redressed so that schools can become more proactive and inclusive contexts, amongst other pathways such as greater cultural inclusion across school curricula, greater consultation with communities and greater investment into other kinds of support. It outlines key research on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in relation to education, and the lack of information about what leads to various types of outcomes (successes, withdrawals and so on) in teacher education for this group. The chapter outlines the theoretical frames used in such research, and explains the researchers' preference for a more postmodern framing that foregrounds the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in their own understandings.

We believe that the Australian early childhood sector is not performing well. The incidence of poor outcomes for children is increasing, and we believe that current service delivery is not capable of addressing this. We argue that, as a sector, there is an abundance of evidence of the kinds of programs and initiatives that could address our national concerns, and review some of that evidence. We also point out that there is considerable knowledge in Australia, based on Australian programmes and experience, that can be used to build a different early childhood sector with the potential to significantly impact on growing disadvantage. We conclude with the principles or themes around which such initiatives should be developed and a call to advocate for the development of such services. Appropriate services supporting all of our young children, their families and their communities, have the potential to make a huge impact on our society, and we can no longer hide from our responsibilities and avoid providing such services.

Postgraduate participation and completion rates for Indigenous Australians are considerably lower than those of non-Indigenous people in Australia. This inquiry examines the support provided to Indigenous postgraduate students. Fifty-five Indigenous postgraduate students located throughout Australia participated in this research. A qualitative study using the interpretivist paradigm was conducted – enabling an exploration of the support mechanisms that Indigenous postgraduate students currently have, or desire but do not have. The support provided to Indigenous postgraduate students was shown to be inadequate. Indigenous Support Units have played a key role in supporting Indigenous postgraduate students; however, they are reaching only half of their potential clientele. Universities have otherwise failed to consider Indigenous postgraduate students as a group that require culturally appropriate support mechanisms. Indigenous Australians must be better supported in order to address the disparity in participation and completion rates compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts.

The announcement of S. Kidman & Co's intention to sell their pastoral business and 11 leases marks a new waypoint in South Australia's progress towards a post-colonial world. From the time when Sidney Kidman first cohabitated the bush with Billy the Aboriginal to the agistment of stock in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara-Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in 2014, Kidman's history has been interwoven with Indigenous Australia. Not surprisingly the announcement has sparked interest across Indigenous social networks. The company's success has generated spectacular interest ever since Kidman's first Kapunda horse sale in 1900. Kidman's biographers Idriess (1936) and Bowen (1987) provide fairly romantic pictures of the man and his early colonial success, which can be corroborated in Aboriginal accounts. Kidman relied on good judgement of people, animals and land. At a time when others in industry were struggling to affirm terra nullius and Social Darwinism as necessities in the settler legal fiction, Kidman was recruiting indigenous "boundary riders" in places with no boundaries, branding cleanskin cattle and ensuring flows of cattle were heading to market.

Using funding from a 'Closing the Gap' grant (2011/2012), students from Minimbah Primary School were given a disposable camera and asked to take photos of "reading in their lives". This was a rich way of starting a discussion about the importance of reading and of exploring the reading experiences enjoyed by students and their families. This book brings together photos selected by the students and their stories about reading. Inside are all kinds of wonderful illustrations of READING: Reading alone; with a family member; to a younger brother or sister. This collection also shows students and their family members reading books; newspapers; recipes; magazines; on the computer screen. Reading everywhere and anytime!

Using funding from a 'Closing the Gap' grant (2011/2012), students from Minimbah Primary School were given a disposable camera and asked to take photos of "reading in their lives". This was a rich way of starting a discussion about the importance of reading and of exploring the reading experiences enjoyed by students and their families. This book brings together photos selected by the students and their stories about reading.

This chapter reports on part of the evaluation of an Australian government grant (2011-2013) that focused on improving literacy outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students attending four independent schools in New South Wales, Australia. Specifically, the project aimed to increase students' literacy skills, develop positive attitudes to learning, and encourage families and community members to engage more actively with their children's school lives. Of interest in the context of this book is the use of a photovoice activity, Literacy Snapshots, to access authentic voices of the participant children, to see what they thought about their own literacy learning and literacy in their lives. Funding for the overall project was obtained through the Australian Government's Closing the Gap (CTG)- Expansion of Intensive Literacy and Numeracy Programs for Underachieving Indigenous Students Scheme. The original Request for Funding set four objectives related to the three priority reform areas relevant to Closing the Gap literacy and numeracy initiatives.

I acknowledge the Aboriginal leaders and community activists who I have been working with for many years now, who have supported the work that I will discuss here. This includes Chairperson, Pat Anderson, and the board of directors of the Lowitja Aboriginal Health Research Institute, who seed-funded this; the chairperson of our Aboriginal Adult Literacy Campaign steering committee, Donna Ah Chee, who is the CEO of the Aboriginal Medical Service in Alice Springs, the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress; and Jack Beetson, a Ngemba man from NSW who is our campaign coordinator. I also acknowledge Deborah Durnan, my wife and my colleague, who is here today, and who is the senior technical adviser on the literacy campaign. First, although I have a PhD in adult education - which I did by distance learning in the 1990s through Latrobe University in Melbourne - I do not refer to myself as an LLN practitioner, or a literacy studies expert. My field is popular education. This is the term used within the field of adult education to refer to the adult education work which is done in connection with left-wing, socially progressive political and social movements. This term, popular education, while still not widely used in Australia, is common in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and it comes originally from the idea of 'the people'. Popular education is 'peoples' education', and it has a long and proud history, though at different times it has been known by different names.

International research has established that education, and particularly maternal education, is a strong determinant of child health and survival. In the setting of Australian Aboriginal health, the little research that has been done suggests the association is not so straightforward. This paper reports on an opportunistic exploratory project utilising child health and adult education data obtained from an evaluation of health outcomes associated with a housing and sewerage project in a large Central Australian community. Our aim was to explore the association between ‘carer-mothers’ (not always the biological mother) education and their children’s health, using combined qualitative action research and quantitative methods. Health markers for 183 children included trachoma, scabies, growth indices and purulent skin sores, nose or ears. Education markers for 123 ‘carer-mothers’ included years of schooling, qualifications, literacy, having attended a boarding college and employment. Most data fields were incomplete. The data were examined for statistical associations between education, employment and health. We sought both to gather an understanding of community beliefs about the association between education and health and to provide information on the international research experience in this field. The quantitative data gathering process, which involved a range of people, was combined with and used as a vehicle for qualitative discussions and workshops, assisting people to become more active in health and education debates. We found a trend for better health among children whose ‘carer-mothers’ were employed, but not for those whose mothers had more education. Our community informants generally held the view that education was linked with better health, but describing the pathway(s) proved difficult. There was a high level of concern about the state of physical and social health of young people in the community. We discuss lessons learnt from conducting this type of work in Central Australia and highlight some aspects of the possible associations between education, employment and health for future research.

This qualitative inquiry explores the content, processes, and social functions of personal meanings of specific pieces of music. The inquiry analyses the personal meanings adhering to 390 pieces of music selected by 79 adults aged between 30 and 78 years. An innovative aspect of the inquiry is that its data sample was not collected by the researcher but drawn from an archive of radio interviews conducted by a previous interviewer. Analysis and interpretation of these data was guided by the systematic methods of constructivist, grounded theory methodology. The inquiry reveals that the content of personal meanings of specific pieces of music aligns with meanings described in previous research. However, probing beneath the surface of such descriptions, this inquiry reveals a number of distinguishing characteristics of personal meanings. Firstly, personal meanings adhere to specific pieces of music. In this case, the sounds of a piece of music, its sonic materiality, matter. Secondly, personal meanings are not fixed but are dynamic, cumulative admixtures of multiple meanings. Thirdly, personal meanings adhere to pieces of music via a number of pathways which integrate aesthetic responses to the music, acquired knowledge about the music or its performance, and biographical associations into the ongoing story of informants' lives. Fourthly, personal meanings constitute social action simultaneously engaged in the reflexive project of self and ongoing reproduction of expectations and assumptions about the role of music in social life. The inquiry suggests that previously collected qualitative data can provide trustworthy samples for later research. It also highlights the need for scholars of music to reconsider the potential of subjective meanings as sites for investigating the human experience of music.

In March, 1960, more than 50 years ago, I was delivered to the UNE by my nervous and overawed parents. Of course, I was wearing my best outfit: a pink linen dress, a pink straw hat and a pair of white gloves, and clutching a handbag. This was the outfit I had worn to hand out how-to-vote cards with my father for the Country Party at the last federal election. I was 16 years old, and the first member of my extended family ever to go to university.

Purpose: An embryonic empirical literature on Australian policing has established that commitment levels of police officers are comparatively low. This paper seeks to add to this literature. Design/methodology/approach: The paper applies Allen and Meyer's three-component model of organizational commitment, in conjunction with the Eisenberger et al.'s model of perceived organizational support, to a sample of 351 sworn police officers and student officers. Findings: The results seem to confirm earlier Australian findings since organizational commitment among the sample of respondents was also found to be low. It is suggested that additional skills training and tuition subsidies for officers could enhance organizational commitment. Originality/value: The paper provides useful information on levels of commitment among Australian police officers and suggestions on how organizational commitment can be enhanced

The focus of this paper is adult literacy, and the impact this has on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individual and community health. It directs attention to those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and adults who have not benefited from the formal school education system, and who, as a consequence, have very low levels of basic English language literacy. Analysing data from a range of sources, I suggest that these people comprise as much as 35% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adult population nationally, and a much bigger proportion in some communities and regions. Moreover, they are key to improving overall health outcomes in the population as a whole, because they are among the people most at risk. Drawing on research in countries of the global South over recent decades, the paper then suggests that one of the most effective ways to improve health outcomes and foster health development is through a popular mass adult literacy campaign. Popular education is not formal education, of the kind provided by schools, TAFEs and universities. It is "non-formal" education, provided on a mass scale, to people in marginalised and disadvantaged communities, as part of wider social and political movements for equality. The paper concludes that this is the most appropriate form of education to deal with the massive social and economic inequality at the heart of the social determinants of Indigenous health.

In the 1980s academic research was very unpopular with Central Australian Aboriginal organisations, and they regularly turned researchers away. ...By a circuitous route, one eventual outcome of this history was the establishment in July 1997 of the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal and Tropical Health (CRCATH).¹ The CRCATH represents an unusual partnership between old enemies. It brings together three academic research institutions with three direct service providers, of which one is the Northern Territory Government health service and two are Aboriginal community-controlled health services. Thus, it seeks to bridge the gulf that once separateduniversities and governments on the one hand, and Aboriginal community-controlled organisations on the other. ...However, this reframing of old disputes is by no means as straightforward as simply saying it suggests, and somehistorical questions remain to be answered before we can 'move on'. Of these, the most important is this: Why havedecades of academic research into the conditions of Aboriginal life not yet substantially reduced the socio-economicand health inequality between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people? ... How might the CRCATH break with this pattern? A commonly held view is that, as Aboriginal people become 'better educated' they will be better equipped to take control of the research process themselves. This, in fact, is an assumption of the CRCATH's Indigenous Health and Education Research program. But this begs the question of how people become better educated, and who will judge that they have become so, when currently in Australian society the same academic institutions that control research also sit at the summit of the education system that judges who are sufficiently educated to undertake research.

The complexity associated with reducing inequality in Indigenous education incorporates a multitude of causal factors. Issues associated with education delivery and outcomes in remote Indigenous communities are endemic nationally, yet the communities of the Northern Territory are uniquely disadvantaged due to their geographical and cultural isolation. By looking at the factors affecting the quality and continuity of teachers in remote Indigenous communities, as well as the need for institutional collaboration, targeted recruitment strategies and a reorientation of expectations, this article will consider one strategy developed in order to recruit and retain effective teachers in these communities.

This paper is based on findings following more than one hundred interviews with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students from remote, provincial and metropolitan areas about their strategies for reading multi-semiotic texts (texts containing both visual and verbal semiotic resources). These student groupings are being investigated because Aboriginal males in remote schools have lower mean scores on state-wide reading tests. The research is part of an Australian Research Council Linkage project, between the University of New England and the NSW Department of Education and Training, which aims to develop a model of 'image-language' relations. Strategies used by the students to answer questions about multi-semiotic texts appearing in the reading sections of the NSW 2005 Basic Skills Tests for Year 3 and Year 5 students have been analysed and then compared with the students' reading comprehension. Some students, who were unable to connect the visual and verbal meanings, experienced difficulty comprehending complex sentences used in the texts. It was also noted that many of these students' interview transcripts lacked complex syntactic (grammatical) structure. Academic or specialist written language often differs in both vocabulary and syntactic structure from vernacular or spoken language (Gee 2008:96) and may not resonate with or be able to bridge to a child's vernacular (Gee 2008:101). Much research has concerned the relationship between spoken vocabulary and reading comprehension but there has been little research into how oral syntactic structure (grammatical complexity) might relate to reading comprehension. To see if there is any relationship between these two factors, students' oral language was analysed to determine its level of complexity and then compared with their reading comprehension. Findings from correlations are presented together with a few examples from case studies.

This paper examines how the education of children as literate subjects in schools and community settings is implicated in the politics of securing civil society. Foucault's concept of biopolitics is used to consider how young people are produced as securitised subjects. The emergence of the concept of human security as a technology for measuring human development is problematised using Bacchi's methodology. The analysis uses the Northern Territory intervention to question representations of young people as subjects of danger and as potentially dangerous subjects. This paper argues that the use of literacy by the apparatus of state and non-state governmentalities functions as a technology of risk mitigation and biopolitical government: a way of contingently positioning the freedoms of children as subjects to forms of rule. The paper concludes by suggesting that literacy has been deployed as a techne of an authoritarian form of liberalism in which the power to delimit entangles children in biopolitical strategies and sovereign intervention.

A federal report released by the Department of Families and Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA, 2009), entitled 'Closing the Gap on Indigenous Disadvantage: The Challenge for Australia', highlighted the inequality that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students based on a restricted access to resources, issues of isolation, staff and student retention, and cultural differences and challenges. In New South Wales (NSW), the Department of Education and Training (DET) and the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) in 2003/2004 undertook their own review of Aboriginal education in NSW Government schools that revealed significant concerns about the outcomes being achieved by Aboriginal students in NSW DET schools, confirming the more recent FaHCSIA (2009) findings. In 2006 the NSW DET implemented the Enhanced Teacher Training Scholarship Program (ETTSP) to empower 20 final-year education students to successfully engage with Indigenous students in schools and their wider community during their internship period. Using themes, this article explores the experiences of 10 University of New England scholarship holders at the end of their final year of teacher training and immersion/internship experience in 2010. The article puts forward useful recommendations for both teacher universities and students intending to teach in schools with high Indigenous student populations.