The 16 minute YouTube video below Chris Garner – Transforming the Teacher in Indigenous Education was recorded at the 2014 inaugural TEDxDarwin event. Chris Garner discusses his experiences and views on Indigenous education in Australia. Garner is a senior secondary school teacher for Indigenous Education at the Marrara Christian College in Darwin, a Preschool to Year-12 college offering a boarding program for Indigenous students. Garner also owns the online training provider Cross Cultural Training Australia and has developed courses including Aboriginal culture for early years educators (Cross Cultural Training Australia, 2016).

Garner’s presentation addresses Australia’s failure to improve educational outcomes for many Indigenous Australians. Improving Indigenous education has been highlighted in the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians as a key priority to be addressed in this decade (Barr et al., 2008). The Australian Government is committed towards closing the gap between Indigenous and mainstream students’ education, with policy strategies aimed at increasing Indigenous school attendance rates and transitioning young Indigenous adults into workplaces (The Education Council, 2015). However, since the declaration only few improvements in school educational outcomes have been achieved for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. While the gap in literacy and numeracy skills between Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous students is narrowing in primary school years, more than three quarters of Indigenous students still achieved at or below the National Minimum Standard in 2013. Year-12 attainment increased from 45 to 59 percent from 2008 to 2013, but remains well below the the non-Indigenous rates of 86 and 88 percent (Australian Government Productivity Commission, 2014).

Presentation summary

Garner is presenting a pedagogical approach towards closing the educational gap. In his initial analysis, he equates success in the western educational system with helping students to discover their potential and encourage their effort. Garner next suggests that what is lacking in Indigenous education in Australia is relevance; the link between the curriculum and student’s lives and expected roles in their home communities, as well as realistic job prospects. Garner suggests that real-life relevance of the curriculum is what can motivate Indigenous students to study and graduate. His hypothesis is supported by data on Indigenous retention and graduation rates from Marrara College collected over six years. Accordingly, Indigenous Year-12 graduation rates increased at Marrara College from 2.2% in 2008 to to 96% in 2014. (compared to Northern Territories rates of  32% for Indigenous students versus 71% for Non-Indigenous students). In addition, the rate of Indigenous students in employment following graduation was raised to 98% (compared to the national average of 33% for Indigenous, and 71% non-Indigenous Australians).

The Indigenous program at Marrara School is following a student-centric pedagogy and combining it with comprehensive case management and culturally-adapted teaching strategies. The teacher spends the first three weeks with new boarding school students to learn more about their background, the framework of traditional obligations, expectations and social norms in which they operate, regional job opportunities, personal interests and anything else that will inform the student’s outlook on their education. This information is used to contextualise numeracy and literacy content knowledge and to align learning objectives with the desired outcomes and visions of their students (e.g. becoming a healthcare worker, mechanic, finance officer). The teacher is developing connections between school learning and the roles students want to play back in their community, thereby demonstrating how curriculum content will help them to achieve these. This requires modified learning and assessment activities. For example, traditional activities of everyday life are performed with the students first, to consequently relate these to literacy and numeracy aspects back in the classroom. Educational success is reframed as success towards the individual’s desired outcomes, as opposed to performance in standardised tests often geared towards tertiary education. The school also develops partnerships with potential employers in their communities to offer final-year students opportunities for work placements and apprenticeships, at a time when traditional expectations and community pressure on students increase, often resulting in school dropout. Students are further explicitly educated in how to navigate the Australian system, including how to sign up for vocational courses and apply for scholarships.

Discussion

Bourdieu’s theory of social practice can serve as a framework to better understanding the underlying challenges of Indigenous education resulting in the observed low school attendance, retention and graduation rates (Bourdieu, 1983, 1986). A key concept of the theory is ‘social capital’, a resource of social networks, norms and values such as trust, and actual and potential assets shared within a network of relationships defined by mutual acquaintance and recognition (Mignone, 2009). These networks are expressed as privileged or marginalised groups within society that collectively support their members. Social capital is unequally distributed and reflect the wider social standing of individuals and groups in terms of other capitals, including economic, cultural, and symbolic standing. Social capital is the product of history. For Indigenous Australians, historical experience is one of dispossession, cultural, political and economic marginalisation, and restricted access to influence, resources and information (Browne-Yung et al., 2013). This cultural experience can be passed on by social reproduction, a process where aspects of society such as privilege and marginalisation are transferred from generation to generation. In Australia, the curriculum is largely developed by privileged urban academics and professionals, which is then taught by middle class teachers with a dominantly ‘western’ cultural background including English as first – and often only – language. According to Bourdieu (1983; 1986, p. 248-9), the economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital by the dominant actors are related to positions of social space – the professional and personal network of actors – who will use all forms of capitals to reproduce and entrench their positions and perpetuate structured inequality (Tzanakis, 2013). Indigenous students from remote, low socio-economic and culturally different backgrounds are disadvantaged and underrepresented in terms of the economic, socio-cultural, and political participation and control over influencing educational standards and the curriculum. It is against this backdrop, that the Indigenous program at Marrara College has developed a supportive learning environment for Indigenous students, to enhance their confidence, self-esteem and cultural identity, and improve learning outcomes through the provision of culturally-relevant curriculum choices (Wadham, Pudsey, & Boyd, 2007).

While Indigenous students may be poorly equipped with the cultural capital required to perform well in mainstream Australian educational systems, there is also the related concept of different ‘funds of knowledge’ (Klenowski, 2009). The funds of knowledge can be understood as a “virtual schoolbag full of things they have already learned at home, with their friends, and in and from the world in which they live” (Thomson, 2002, p.1). For Indigenous students, the virtual schoolbag may include local knowledge about nature, oral languages, dreamtime stories, how to collect and hunt for food, cook and care for siblings and elders. All of these are unrelated and may even be in conflict to school rules and behaviour expectations, book knowledge and arithmetic skills that are valued by the school institution and curriculum. In contrast to other Australian schools, Marrara College is actively engaging with the virtual schoolbag of their Indigenous students, by incorporating their funds of knowledge as starting points to make mainstream curriculum knowledge more relevant and applied. In many respects, this approach is following the framework of productive pedagogies (Hayes, Lingard, & Mills, 2000). Productive pedagogies emerged out of the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study conducted in the years 1998 to 2001, and was distilled into four common elements (Mills et al., 2009):

1. intellectual quality
2. relevance – subsequently redefined as connectedness
3. supportive classroom environment
4. recognition of difference – subsequently redefined as ‘valuing and working with difference’

The pedagogy described by Garner fosters the development of deep and applied understanding and knowledge through inquiry-based learning from experiences relevant to his students’ lives, encourages a supportive learning environment with good teacher-student and school-community relationships, and applies a high degree of differentiation by identifying, recognising and incorporating the cultural funds of knowledge of Indigenous students.

In addition to the expected curricular learning outcomes and pedagogy, schools operate in ways that can disadvantage certain students which can be summarised as the hidden curriculum. A hidden curriculum is the often implicit ways in which different school systems and teachers allocate responsibilities and resources, thereby privileging one group of students over another (Gale & Densmore, 2000; Thomson, 2002). The concept of hidden curriculum was first developed by Snyder to describes the socialisation process in the classroom as one of two curricula, with the hidden curriculum comprising the unstated academic and social norms that places limits on independent development in students (Snyder, 1970). A supportive school system is based on supportive and unbiased teacher-student relationships (Frymier & Houser, 2000), a dimension particularly important in the boarding school environments that Indigenous students from remote communities are sent to for their education. From this perspective, the policy of Marrara College to award Indigenous students responsibilities and roles as student leaders or teacher aides, is a constructive approach to use the hidden curriculum to positive effect.

Aboriginal lawyer and policy maker Noel Pearson has been mentioned in Garner’s presentation to take a different view. Pearson has been influential in designing Indigenous education policies in North Queensland (Ford, 2012). In a public policy paper, Pearson states: “Too many of the programs and strategies that have failed have done so because they have not maintained high standards or high expectations. Instead, in attempting to ‘understand’ the problems, they end up accommodating or acquiescing to the problems. Indeed, they end up perpetuating the problems” (Pearson, 2004). Pearson’s criticism reflects a sociological concept exemplified in Bourdieu’s approach to habitus, in which social structure, including marginalisation of certain groups, is reproduced by the affected individuals themselves, responding to the expectations of society by internalising and embodying their perceived ‘acceptable’ and ‘legitimate’ place, roles and aspirations (Bourdieu, 1986; Tzanakis, 2013). However, while it is more difficult for marginalised students to overcome their habitus (Thomson, 2002), the theoretical concept is epistemologically not deterministic (Hilgers, 2009) and therefore allows for social mobility.

In contrast to the constructivist pedagogy deployed at Garner’s school, the education program devised by Pearson applies a proprietary Direct Instruction syllabus developed in Oregon, United States. Direct instruction (DI) is a pedagogy that teaches by explicit, guided teacher instructions and strict lesson plans. Initially developed in the mid 1980s to address the problems of inner-city Baltimore schools, it has been commercialised by SRA/McGraw-Hill (McGraw-Hill Education, 2016).Direct instruction pedagogy has been a critical component of Project Follow Through, the largest historical education experiment to improve education of disadvantaged students in the Unites States (1986-1995), as a continuation and extension of the Head Start program, which delivered education and other services to disadvantaged preschool children (Watkins, 1997). The effectiveness of DI has been demonstrated to accelerate academic outcomes in at-risk students (Engelmann, 1999). In contrast to the productive pedagogies, DI does not encourage the engagement with student’s cultural resources, background knowledge and community context. It applies strict tracking of student progress and places students and teachers into a rigid relationship that makes it difficult to develop mutual trust (Luke, 2014). Haberman (1991) has delivered a scathing critique of DI pedagogies as delivered by ‘Head Start’. In his opinion the program forces students into compliance and results in resentment and resistance rather than learning of life skills and academic knowledge, referring to DI as “pedagogy of poverty”. A pedagogy of poverty is emphasising the compliance with rules and following scripted directions at the expense of student-directed learning and critical thinking. This is often encouraged by students’ dysfunctional behaviour and low SES parents’ expectations of classroom practice. (Groundwater-Smith, 2009).

Direct instruction pedagogies have become more widespread in public schools in The United States in recent years (Haberman, 2010), and are internationally tested in at-risk schools including in North Queensland (Dow, 2011). Introduced in 2010 in Aurukun in combination with punitive welfare reforms coercing parents into ‘income management’, DI pedagogy has recently been discussed as one potential factor leading to the ongoing schooling crises in Aurukun resulting in the temporarily closure of its primary school and evacuation of its staff (Robertson, 2016). In light of these news and prior experience with DI, a culturally-based, community-focused, and individually scaffolded pedagogy like the one Garner promotes in his TED talk, receives the support from Indigenous educationalist Chris Sarra, founder and chairman of the Stronger Smarter Institute for improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Australian schoolchildren (Sarra, 2011). Sarra, an outspoken opponent to the commercial DI curriculum for years, suggests remedial approaches that have been successfully implemented at Marrara College in his response to the unfolding crisis “If the government was serious about providing quality education they could […] have a specialist curriculum writer go to Aurukun, live in Aurukun, sit down with people and design a local school curriculum” (Robertson, 2016). Other researchers on Indigenous education in Australia concur that successful pedagogies require building supportive links between schools and Indigenous communities that inform curriculum development and teaching practice (Luke, 2008, 2009).

Conclusion

Quality education is important on an individual level, by improving socio-economic prospects, social standing, and the ability to make informed choices in life (Helliwell & Putnam, 1999).Quality education is also important on a national level, by improving public health and safety, social mobility, and overall performance in a global knowledge and innovation-based economy (Barr et al., 2008; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2012). While it is easy to agree on equal entitlement to education, applying equality into practice in terms of equitable teaching and needs-based school programs are more contested across political lines (Connors & McMorrow, 2015). It is against this backdrop that different school policies and pedagogies as those discussed at Marrara College and Aurukun State School are developed, funded and implemented.

Garner’s presentation highlights that equitable teaching needs to accommodate individual needs. The Indigenous education program at Marrara College is an inspiring example of curriculum modifications, productive pedagogy and teaching strategies that can motivate and empower disadvantaged young people to obtain an education that can positively transform their lives and that of their communities. In light of the political dimension of the debate on making Australia’s education more equitable, Garner’s conclusion that it does not require a “revolution of the [educational] system but evolution of the teacher” can provide both hope and direction. Garner has demonstrated all the skills that according to Groundwater-Smith (2009) make effective teachers; mainly the ability to motivate and engage students, choosing meaningful instructional methods, and demonstrate good interpersonal skills. Groundwater-Smith also highlights the importance of having high expectations of students irrespective of their ethnicity or socio-cultural background, an aspect of major concern to Noel Pearson (2004). Consequently, it takes knowledgeable teachers and a culturally-responsive pedagogy to unpack the curriculum and develop assessment practices that make education equally accessible to Indigenous students and acknowledge different ways of knowing, learning and being. Marginalised identities can be overcome and recast in the process of reshaping education. Recently documented Indigenous academic success in Australian tertiary education (Klenowski, 2009) is aligned with Coleman’s definition of social capital as a bonding mechanism towards achieving a common goal, and as a “resource for action” (1988). By empowering Indigenous students to persevere and become their own agents of change, they can create a new form of cultural capital (Pechenkina, 2014; Browne-Yung et al., 2013). At Marrara College, this is achieved by providing Indigenous students with an education that improves social and economic standing in their remote communities on the basis of shared values and trust.

References

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Martin Nakata’s seminal research on the cultural interface, initially applied to Torres Strait Islanders’ perspectives and experiences (1997) and consequently discussed more broadly in the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies and education (Nakata, 2007), can inform Indigenous education in Australia. The theoretical concepts of the cultural interface have been applied to the Australian school context, working on the interface of local Indigenous ways of knowing, being and learning and the demands of mainstream curricula (Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009; Lowe & Yunkaporta, 2013). Further, the cultural interface informed research and development of Indigenous pedagogies (Yunkaporta, 2009; Yunkaporta & Kirby, 2011).

Professor Martin Nakata is the Director of Nura Gili at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and holds the title of Chair of Australian Indigenous Education.

In this post, the cultural interface and related concepts are used to inform a culturally-responsive teaching practice in relationship to both non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australian school students. Such practice includes the development of culturally safe classrooms, the selection and presentation of culturally-appropriate curriculum content and the application of inclusive pedagogies. The post starts with introducing the theoretical foundations and concepts of the cultural interface, in particular the ‘corpus’ of Indigenous studies, ‘contested knowledge spaces’ and the ‘Indigenous standpoint theory’. Next, the cultural interface is applied to the classroom context, discussing implications for teaching Indigenous students, making curriculum choices and developing a culturally-safe teaching and learning space.

Next, the cultural interface is reviewed in terms of how it can inform the teaching of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, highlighting potential issues around representation of Indigenous content and knowledge. This is followed by investigating the 8 ways of Aboriginal learning (Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009), a culturally-responsive pedagogical framework, as well as related Indigenous pedagogical concepts that draw upon the cultural interface to embed Indigenous perspectives (e.g. Grant, 1998; Graham, 1999; Carter, Cooper, & Anderson, 2016). The post concludes with a reflection on how the cultural interface can influence the teaching practice.

Summary of key concepts

Martin Nakata (2007) describes the dichotomy of non-Indigenous and Indigenous knowledge systems as a cultural interface of contested knowledge spaces. The disparate nature of western and Indigenous knowledge systems include different cosmologies (what can be known and the role of belief in evidence), ontologies (what makes knowledge), and epistemologies (who can be the knower, how truth is established and tested and the nature of inferencing). The cultural interface is also the intersection between non-Indigenous and Indigenous ways of:

• knowing – including teaching and learning, making sense of the world,
• being –  including self perception and perception of realities, as well as the process of making meaning, and
• doing – what and how knowledge gets operationalised, including cultural and social practices.

Many aspects between western and Indigenous systems are different and on the surface can often appear contradictory and incompatible, such as a scientific geological description of landscape evolution versus its corresponding local dreamtime story. However, inherent in the cultural interface is the potential for a non-oppositional space of dialogue and reconciliation. Nakata and others (e.g. Green & Oppliger, 2007; Bala & Joseph, 2007; Yunkaporta, 2009) highlight opportunities for working at the cultural interface in a spirit of synergistic dialogue, mutual respect, reconciliation, and developing higher-order knowledge and innovation. In order to realise these opportunities, the recognition of institutionalised unequal power relationships between non-Indigenous and Indigenous participants in mainstream schooling, curricula content and pedagogies is essential. This recognition must come from a place of acknowledgment of the long and ongoing history of distorted representations of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in Australia.

Nakata (2007) introduces the Indigenous standpoint theory as a tool for Indigenous participants to navigate the cultural interface . The standpoint theory is a theoretical approach that originated out of the feminist movement and articulates the experience of marginalised social groups who have been assigned a place and voice in society by others (Hartsock, 1983; O’Brien Hallstein, 2000). Accordingly, the social position of the knower defines his/her starting point, scope and experience of and engagement with potential knowledge. The Indigenous standpoint is produced by Indigenous experience and is an intellectual device to construct and reconcile an experiential subjective truth with dominant non-Indigenous theoretical knowledge. It allows Indigenous peoples to speak from their own cultural standpoint, maintain their forms of knowledge and present their own epistemological truth (Foley, 2006). The standpoint theory elevates the fact that knowledge, truth and experiences are intersubjective between participants. It also provides a rationale that not all conflicting truths need to be resolved (Nakata, 2007). Therefore, the Indigenous standpoint theory provides a conceptual entry point to a more level discourse otherwise framed by dominant western ontologies, epistemologies and objectified knowledge about Indigenous cultures.

Corpus is a term used in linguistics to describe a collection of samples of ‘real world’ data or texts. Nakata (2007) adapted the term in his Indigenous standpoint theory to describe and criticise the corpus of objectified knowledge, a body of cumulative knowledge produced about Indigenous peoples by non-Indigenous researchers studying Indigenous people, cultures and beliefs. This corpus is generated across academic disciplines, legislative and administrative bodies, and is distorted by the perceptual limitations and social agendas of the non-Indigenous knowledge makers. The corpus has historical foundations in anthropology. A good part of the corpus of objectified knowledge about Indigenous people is construed to justify and rationalise views of social Darwinism and white supremacy (Francis, 1996). It continues to define non-Indigenous and Indigenous relationships such as justifying the imposition of bureaucratic, managerial and disciplinary actions, and promoting deficit-framed stereotypes (Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009; Fforde et al., 2013). Today, the corpus is increasingly inclusive of authentic Indigenous voices, but remains firmly seated within western knowledge-making traditions and paradigms (Nakata, 2007).

Implications of the cultural interface for working with Indigenous Australian students

Indigenous students are located at the cultural coalface of contested positions between traditional cultural knowledge, contemporary and often socially marginalised realities, projections of objectified “Indigenous” knowledge, and western curriculum demands. Life at school and at home can be a constant negotiation between contrary viewpoints, a tug-of-war between demands for alignment with either side, conflicting allegiances, a choice between opposition and assimilation. This can lead to ambiguity, internal conflict and physical and mental exhaustion (Nakata, 2007). The situation is compounded by the fact that Indigenous students often lack initiated traditional knowledge and the academic English meta-language to explain and argue their views and challenge the objectified corpus and any stereotypes.

In this situation, the first step towards working with Indigenous students in the classroom is to create a culturally-safe space. This can be achieved by a number of initiatives. At the classroom level, an inclusive environment must be established. Representations of Indigenous stereotypes and any deficit-framed depictions must be avoided, such as an overly focus on exhibiting traditional “primitive” tools and tokenistic artwork without local context and meaning (Yunkaporta, 2009). Instead, these representations can be replaced by a ‘Welcome to Country’ delivered by a local Elder, regular ‘Acknowledgment to Country’ (McKenna, 2014), representations of contemporary Indigenous culture and role models such as Indigenous sport heroes, artists, writers, inventors or Australians of the Year (Korff, 2016). Further, engagement with Indigenous parents and community leaders in the selection of authentic and meaningful material for displays can make a real difference in creating a culturally-responsive teaching and learning space (Harrison & Greenfield, 2011).

At the next level, valuing and utilising Indigenous staff and parents, including Indigenous teachers and teacher aides can make a significant impact in helping Indigenous students to navigate the cultural interface at school (Sarra, 2005; Queensland Government, Department of Education and Training (DET), 2015). The Queensland Government framework ‘Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives in schools (EATSIPS) (2015) provides additional guidelines for planning and developing culturally-appropriate curriculum materials, including aspects of how to best incorporate authentic Indigenous perspectives in content selection, as well as advice on culturally-appropriate pedagogies that value knowledges and resources Indigenous students bring to the classroom, elaborated in more detail below. Perhaps the most important aspect for working with Indigenous students at the cultural interface in school is to engage synergistically in the overlap between non-Indigenous and Indigenous realities and ways of knowing (Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009).

Teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and representation of Indigenous peoples and cultures

Teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in the classroom requires a number of considerations. The first relate to the selection of teaching and learning material. Martin Nakata is explicit about problems inherent in the corpus of objectified knowledge about Indigenous Australians (2007). Many resources can be distorted and questionable, by promoting inaccurate generalisations, stereotypes and deficit perspectives. In order to address the potential for misrepresentations, the State of Queensland, Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCCA) provides additional guidelines for embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in schools by recommending five criteria for evaluating Indigenous teaching and learning resources (QCCA, 2010):

1. Authenticity – including accuracy of statements made about Indigenous Australians, misrepresentation of Indigenous land use (e.g. terra nullius myth) and Indigenous resistance to European occupation, any generalisations made across multiple different groups of Indigenous peoples
2. Balanced nature of presentation – critically review material for author bias, trivialisation and over-representations (e.g. importance of men’s roles, exclusive focus on Indigenous art in curriculum), negative stereotypes, overly focus on traditional and exotic cultural aspects
3. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander participation – participation and acknowledgment of Indigenous authors in the research, writing and presentation processes
4. Accuracy and support – looking for local relevance of material and endorsement by the relevant local Aboriginal education consultative and/or Indigenous community groups
5. Exclusion of content of secret or sacred nature – engage in consultation with local Indigenous community to review material for any presentations of secret and/or sacred items, practices, sites, representations, as well as photographs and the names of deceased

While the above criteria address some of the main concerns about appropriate selection of Indigenous resources for the classroom, a critical application of the cultural interface concept is also concerned with how this material is presented (Nakata, 2007). First of all, there is the integrity of the knower, knowledge and practices. Some knowledge must be learned from the traditional holders of knowledge (i.e. Elders), while other knowledge is limited to local context and might require initiation. The teacher needs to develop a critical awareness on what can be presented, how and why, reviewing the value and application for her or his students, as well as any potential commercial or political interest behind resources. Finally, there is the peril of framing Indigenous knowledges in opposition to culturally-valued paradigms, such as Science. As Nakata remarked, Indigenous knowledge cannot simply be inserted into the curriculum without first developing critical awareness and acknowledgment of differences in knowledge spaces, in particular the discursive practices of the subject, differences in paradigms, philosophical positions, production technologies and practices and, last but not least, languages (2007). However, despite all these difficulties navigating the cultural interface between different systems of knowledges, the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives into the classroom is an invaluable opportunity for students to generate dialogical exchange, reconciliation and create new knowledge (Bala & Joseph, 2007).

Pedagogical frameworks working at the cultural interface and embedding Indigenous perspectives

A number of pedagogies have explored ways to embed Indigenous cultural knowledge and lived experiences in ways that engage Indigenous students in the curriculum (Martin, Nakata, Nakata & Day, 2015). Perhaps the single most comprehensive pedagogical framework informed by the overlap of Indigenous and non-Indigenous learning processes at the cultural interface is the 8 ways of Aboriginal learning (8ways) (Yunkaporta & Kirby, 2011).

8 Aboriginal Ways of Learning

This framework was developed by the James Cook University School of Indigenous Studies in collaboration with the Western New South Wales Regional Aboriginal Education Team and DET staff in 2007-2009 and emphasises Indigenous processes of knowledge transmission as opposed to the introduction of “indigenised” curriculum content. All eight pedagogical approaches are mutually beneficial for non-Indigenous and Indigenous students and include (Yunkaporta, 2009):

1. deconstruct/reconstruct – starting all teaching and learning activities or texts with the big concepts and connections before going into details, elsewhere also referred to as holistic learning (Ryan, 1992)
2. learning maps – developing concept maps and visual models as an anchor and reference point to the learning subject, elsewhere explored as narrative-spatial mapping of songlines as a culturally-specific and traditional mnemonic device (Uttal, 2000)
3. community links – encouraging student engagement by positioning teaching and learning episodes in relation to community life and values, based on the premise that motivation for learning comes from social inclusion and building relationships (Kearney, McIntosh, Perry, Dockett, & Clayton, 2014)
4. symbols and images – using concrete images and abstract symbols to support visual-spatial learners and to generate symbolic cues and anchors for teaching and learning units (Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009)
5. non-verbal – allowing students to critically test new knowledge non-verbally through experience, introspection and practice (Wheaton, 2000)
6. land-links – place-based education building on Indigenous connections between place/space and knowledge, supporting experiential learning and emphasising local relevance, ecological applications and outdoor education (Cameron, 2014)
7. story-sharing – actively involving students in introspection and analysis through personal narratives, a traditional knowledge-transmission format that is central in all Indigenous pedagogies (Wheaton, 2000)
8. non-linear – by supporting non-sequential, cyclical and lateral thinking, any perceived dichotomies of opposing views at the cultural interface can be avoided by allowing for complementary experiences and knowledges, as well as encouraging creative thinking (e.g. De Bono, 2010)

Elements of the the 8ways pedagogical framework can be found in other pedagogies working at the cultural interface. Uncle Ernie Grant’s My Land My Tracks (1998) connects the concept of land, language and culture in the context of time, place and relationships, thereby focusing on land links and community links. YuMi Deadly Maths (Carter et al., 2016) emphasises aspects of working with symbols and images and the deconstruction and reconstruction of knowledge. Aunty Mary Graham emphasises the importance of non-linear logic in accommodating logically opposing knowledge systems at the cultural interface (Graham, 1999). The 8ways framework is also compatible with the Productive Pedagogies framework that emerged out of the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study and informs inclusive teaching practices in Australia with particular emphasis on high intellectual quality, relevance and connectedness to students’ lives, creating supportive classroom environments, and valuing and working with difference (Mills et al., 2009). The promotion of high intellectual expectations combined with the provision of high support and scaffolding is an important addition to the 8ways pedagogical framework and addresses the first goal of the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians which explicitly states the importance of promoting high expectations for the learning outcomes of Indigenous students (Barr et al., 2008).

Relevance of the cultural interface for teaching practice

The ‘cultural interface’ between non-Indigenous and Indigenous participants in a teaching and learning community is one of contested knowledge spaces framed by challenges as well as great opportunities (Nakata, 2007). In order to navigate this interface, teachers first and foremost need to be respectful of and interested in Indigenous cultures, perspectives and knowledge-making practices. Teachers will also need to be critically aware of their own cultural capital and be sensitive to its potentially marked incongruence with the cultural and social capitals or “virtual schoolbags” of their students (Thomson, 2002). Indigenous students face many “foreign” curriculum demands, economic, political, ideological, linguistic and pedagogical practices in mainstream schools. This situation can result in the rejection of and opposition to a school system perceived as disempowering and irrelevant (Groundwater-Smith, 2009). Therefore, teachers need to be clear about the historical and cultural nature of the curriculum and discipline knowledges, and not simply assume the dominant heuristic method to be universal and superior to others. It is essential for teachers to refuse the misperception that schools can only offer constrained choices between non-Indigenous and Indigenous knowledge and perspectives. Here, working with the cultural interface can offer a shared or third cultural space (DET, 2010) with promises of cogenerative dialogue, reconciliation, and new knowledge creation (Nakata, 2007; Bala & Joseph, 2007; Yunkaporta, 2009).

Teachers needs to be careful not to teach a simplistic and imagined Indigenous past. Instead they need to support students with the knowledge, skills and practices that will allow them to confidently establish their unique perspectives in our complex, ever-evolving and increasingly global world. Indigenous knowledges are best included in respectful consultation with socially-recognised ‘knowers’ among Indigenous parents and the local Indigenous community (Kearney et al., 2014). Teachers need to be aware that some knowledge requires a spiritual and location-based context that might extend beyond the possibilities of their classroom (DET, 2015).

The constant demands of navigating multiple cultural ways of valuing, being, doing and knowing (Lowe & Yunkaporta, 2013) can create physical, cognitive and emotional tensions in Indigenous students, their parents and carers (Nakata, 2007). Therefore, it is essential that teachers create a culturally safe and inclusive teaching and learning space in their classrooms, and look for opportunities in the curriculum to include authentic and relevant Indigenous perspectives and content. Perhaps most importantly, teachers should work with culturally-responsive pedagogies in “doing knowledge” that engage and empower all his students (Woods, 2013). Finally, teachers must challenge the institutionalised deficit induction around Indigenous students and their capabilities (Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009) by setting high academic expectations (Sarra, 2005; Mills et al., 2009; Woods, 2013; Chaffey, Bailey, & Vine, 2015).

All of this can seem a daunting task. However, the fact that education is one fundamental pathway towards offering Indigenous Australians a more prosperous future, strong and positive identities and opportunities to better support their families and communities, can serve as a strong motivation. Teachers will receive support on the way of their professional journey, through recognition of their efforts by Indigenous students, parents and community members, as well as across the teaching profession which increasingly recognises the need to improve educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students (Barr et al., 2008; Burgess & Berwick, 2009; Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2014, i.e. Australian Professional Standards for Teachers 1.4 & 2.4).

References

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