(2014). An Exploration of the Role of Schema Theory and the (Non-Indigenous) Construction of Indigenous Identity. Environmental Education Research, v20 n6 p795-813. Community engagement is increasingly important in environmental management. While such engagement has tended to comprise only one-way communication, genuine engagement often requires meaningful cross-cultural communication. This paper explores issues surrounding engagement with Australian indigenous communities, suggesting that the construction of the cultural identity of these communities is an important impediment to meaningful social engagement. Drawing on schema theory and the notion of Bhabha's interstitial space, we argue that environmental management needs to embrace such ideas. Using examples from a study of the non-indigenous construction of Australian Aboriginal identity through a long-established Australian newspaper, we explore implications of non-indigenous construction of Australian Aboriginal identity in environmental management. We argue, thus, that contemporary environmental management needs to encourage a focus on conscious engagement or self-critique of identity… [Direct]
(2018). Cross-Sector Perspectives: How Teachers Are Responding to the Ethnic and Cultural Diversity of Young People in New Zealand through Visual Arts. Multicultural Education Review, v10 n2 p139-159. In 2015, cross-sector perspectives were sought on how teachers of visual arts in a sample of early childhood centres, primary schools and secondary schools in Auckland were responding to the increasing ethnic and cultural diversity of young people in New Zealand. The research was contextualised within national curricula, demographic statistics and literature on multiple approaches to pedagogy that foreground engagement with culture(s). The findings, presented through the voices of teachers and art works by children and students, provide insightful perspectives about the place of visual arts across these three sectors, and how teachers are responding in differing ways to the diversity of the young people they teach. This research provides a starting point for conversations within, and beyond New Zealand, about the role of visual arts education for equity and inclusion…. [Direct]
(2008). Engaging Aboriginal Families to Support Student and Community Learning. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, v2 n1 p64-81 Jan. Engaging families in school-related programs, such as family literacy programs, has been promoted as an effective strategy to assist students who might otherwise fail to achieve success in school. The authors in this article report on an action research initiative with an urban Australian government community school in a relatively socioeconomically disadvantaged area with a significant Aboriginal population. Drawing on a popular education framework, critical pedagogy, and a social practice theory of literacy, the authors develop insights about how strengthening family and community relations with schools can help all parties through developing practical approaches to family engagement and addressing disengagement and resistance to engagement with schools and learning. The authors conclude that educators, project workers, and researchers need to become more literate about the families and communities within and around a school, and make a consistent effort to reach out and include… [Direct]
(2017). Voyaging the Oceanic Terrains: Sustainability from within Pasifika Early Childhood Education. Waikato Journal of Education, v22 n1 p37-43. Using the Pacific metaphor of the vaka, va'a, waka [canoe] this review considers the journey of Pasifika early childhood education (ECE) in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past decade. The discussion covers three major areas within the Pasifika sector: the need to celebrate the strong heritage and resilience of Pacific early childhood educators and researchers; second, contemplating our future voyages in the ECE sector with its uncertainties and the dominance of competition; third, the articulation on aspects of quality in Pasifika early childhood policy and practice required to steer the vaka forward. The Pasifika ECE sector has on many levels been 'targets' for producing outcomes that are more suited to dominant discourses. Beyond broad aims and goals there remains no comprehensive strategic plan to comprehensively implement policy or empower Pacific ECE services, including those services that desire to respond more effectively to Pacific children and fanua [family] to build upon… [PDF]
(2003). Dhinthun Wayawu – Looking for a Pathway to Knowledge: Towards a Vision of Yolngu Education in Milingimbi. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, v32 p1-10. In this paper we present a brief history of education at the community of Milingimbi in northeast Arnhem Land, Northern Territory from the mission times to today. In focusing on the emergence and implementation of bicultural curriculum initiatives we explore some of the difficulties and ever present challenges encountered by Yolngu educators, leaders and elders in developing a local vision of education which, in order to meet community needs and aspirations, needs to be grounded in Yolngu stages of learning, cultural values of identity, responsibility and structures of authority…. [Direct]
(2018). The RME Principles on Geometry Learning with Focus of Transformation Reasoning through Exploration on Malay Woven Motif. Journal of Turkish Science Education, v15 spec iss p33-41 Dec. The use of concrete objects in a real-life situation is one of the effective ways for teachers to teach and students to explore and learn transformation geometry. The present study, which used a local wisdom or learning context (called Malay woven motif of Kepulauan Riau), focused on developing the reasoning of transformation geometry with Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) approach. The sample of this two cycles of design research consisted of grade 4 students from a state elementary school of 001 Toapaya, Bintan Regency. The questions 'How does this learning approach illustrate some characteristics?' and 'How well does it perform?' need to be responded. Hence, the RME principles (i.e., activity, reality, level, intertwinement, interactivity, and1 guidance) in the implementation of learning have been re-formulated over the years. This study showed that learning geometry through transformation reasoning with all RME principles helped students actively learn mathematics. The… [PDF]
(2018). What and Who in the L2 Motivational Self System: The Interlinked Roles of Target Language and Heritage Learner Status. Canadian Modern Language Review, v74 n2 p279-301 May. Second language (L2) learning is widely acknowledged as complex due to variables such as learner, context, and target language. Such variables are particularly relevant to the learning of immigrant or indigenous languages in countries such as Canada, the United States, and New Zealand. The motivational roles of such variables are considered through a study of intergroup learner difference in 700 New Zealand university learners of foreign languages (FLs) and Maori. Learner groups were distinguished by target language and by whether they were heritage language (HL) learners of their L2. Groups differed on several L2 motivational self system (L2MSS) variables. Significant differences existed between learners of Maori and learners of FLs, and between HL and non-HL learners. Findings also indicated that the roles of target language and HL learner status were intertwined with regard to their impact on L2MSS variables…. [Direct]
(2018). Factors Affecting Language and Literacy Development in Australian Aboriginal Children: Considering Dialect, Culture and Health. Journal of Early Childhood Research, v16 n1 p104-116 Mar. Australian Aboriginal children, in general, lag behind their mainstream peers in measures of literacy. This article discusses some of the complex and interconnected factors that impact Aboriginal children's early language and literacy development. Poor health and historically negative socio-political factors are known influences on Aboriginal children's participation and achievement in education. Cultural and dialectal differences are also considered in this article for the effect these variables may have on children's learning, in terms of both the child's ability to code-shift between dialects and the development of the educator-child relationship. The importance of this relationship is discussed, partly because of the valuable communicative interactions that are involved. These educator-child interactions allow children an opportunity to extend their oral language skills, which are essential precursors to literacy development. This discussion concludes with some suggestions for… [Direct]
(2018). Infusing Indigenous Knowledge and Epistemologies: Learning from Teachers in Northern Aboriginal Head Start Classrooms. McGill Journal of Education, v53 n1 p26-46. Five Aboriginal Head Start early childhood educators from a northern Canadian community participated in interviews for the purpose of informing non-Indigenous teachers' classroom teaching. Their observations and experiences highlight the importance of learning from and on the land alongside family members, and of family stability and showing acceptance of all children. Additionally, participants talked of the impact of residential schools on their families in terms of loss of their Indigenous language, and their attempts to learn and to teach the children in their classrooms the Indigenous languages and teachings…. [Direct]
(2014). Leaning over the Fence: Heritage Fair Projects as "Funds of Knowledge". Alberta Journal of Educational Research, v60 n2 p361-376 Sum. This paper is a response to an article, "Creepy White Gaze: Rethinking the Diorama as a Pedagogical Activity" (Sterzuk & Mulholland, 2011), published in the "Alberta Journal of Educational Research," in which Sterzuk and Mulholland critiqued a heritage fair entry, "Great Plains Indians." I report on a school-university collaborative research project that examined the ways in which out-of-school practices and knowledges of Canadian Aboriginal students might provide these students with access to school literacy practices. Grounded in a "funds of knowledge" approach, this paper presents an alternative reading, explaining how students' linguistic and cultural resources from home and community networks were utilized to reshape school literacy practices through their involvement in a heritage fair program…. [Direct]
(2017). Comparative and International Learning from Vanuatu Research Moratoria: A Plurilevel, Plurilocal Researcher's Auto-Ethnography. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, v16 n1 p78-92. In this article, I offer a reflexive auto-ethnography to revisit questions about knowledge and research practices in international contexts, influenced differently by aspects of globalization. Specifically, I position my experience of the Vanuatu research moratorium on "foreign" researchers of 2013/2014 as a lynchpin to analyse and contribute to long-standing, recently revived debates about ethics in research, the politics of international comparisons, and their relationships with traditional knowledge. I base analysis primarily on my plurilevel research and experiences in parts of Vanuatu, in Australia and in our shared South Pacific sub-region in global context between 2008 and 2016, and on my plurilocal personal and researcher identity. In these spaces, the salience of postcolonial identities–with those already allocated, perceived, or shared–has long been tied to different actors' research aims, application, conduct, and funding. Lenses of critical globalization and…
(2017). Learning English as an Additional Language in Early Childhood Settings: How Do Educators Support Young Children?. Early Childhood Folio, v21 n2 p33-38. New Zealand's increasingly heterogeneous population places manifold demands on the education sector to integrate children who do not speak English as a first language. Limited research exists on how minority language children acquire English within early childhood education settings and how teachers support this development. This article reports on research which shows teachers rely predominantly on centres' philosophies and sociocultural practices as per Te Whariki, and on children's perceived natural ability to learn by "osmosis". Lack of structural support and knowledge suggests there is a need for further research and targeted support for children and teachers…. [Direct]
(2014). Developing a Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages. Language Documentation & Conservation, v8 p345-360. The fluctuating fortunes of Northern Territory bilingual education programs in Australian languages and English have put at risk thousands of books developed for these programs in remote schools. In an effort to preserve such a rich cultural and linguistic heritage, the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages project is establishing an open access, online repository comprising digital versions of these materials. Using web technologies to store and access the resources makes them accessible to the communities of origin, the wider academic community, and the general public. The process of creating, populating, and implementing such an archive has posed many interesting technical, cultural and linguistic challenges, some of which are explored in this paper…. [Direct]
(2018). Decolonizing Community Writing with Community Listening: Story, Transrhetorical Resistance, and Indigenous Cultural Literacy Activism. Community Literacy Journal, v13 n1 p37-54 Fall. This article foregrounds stories told by Kiowa Elder Dorothy Whitehorse DeLaune in order to distinguish "community listening" from "rhetorical listening" and decolonize community writing. Dorothy's stories demonstrate "transrhetoricity" as rhetorical practices that move across time and space to activate relationships between peoples and places through collaborative meaning making. Story moves historic legacies into the present despite suppression enacted by settler colonialism, and story yields adaptive meanings and cultural renewal. When communities listen across difference, stories enact resistance by building a larger community of storytellers, defying divisive settler colonialist inscriptions, and reinscribing Indigenous peoples and their epistemologies across the landscapes they historically inhabit…. [Direct]
(2018). Indigenous Knowledges and Supervision: Changing the Lens. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, v55 n3 p384-393. Reflecting on a New Zealand-focused research project, this article shows that cultural knowledges can empower supervision practice. Within the New Zealand context, Maori and Pasifika cultures are priority groups: the national educational agenda aims to foster equal access to success. Western and Pasifika methodologies meet here. Underpinning our indigenous focus lies a larger survey of supervisors [n226] and doctoral students [n80] gathered via two anonymous digital questionnaires and analysed using Nvivo. Data using a "talanoa" method positions this paper within an authentic cultural framework. All data was re-analysed through the lens of cultural pedagogies. We found that cultural concepts, according immediately with our priority groups, also mapped onto western knowledges and general practice. We suggest that supervisors and their candidates should draw on their heritages, looking for culturally-appropriate pedagogies and protocols, because these are apt to inspire the… [Direct]