ORCID Profile
0000-0002-0158-0292
Current Organisations
UniSA
,
University of South Australia
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Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-2014
DOI: 10.1177/117718011401000101
Abstract: Remote Indigenous school principals find themselves caught in the middle of system priorities and demands, the demands of running complex and busy local schools, and the expectations and needs of the local community. Remote communities often complain that they are not being listened to or “heard”, but the process of listening, hearing and understanding in the complex cultural context of remote Aboriginal communities is far more complex than a visit or a single conversation can achieve. This paper examines the clash between values, perspectives and worldviews that is played out on a daily basis as schools go about their business of educating whilst also attempting to take account of what is important for the communities they work in. This work highlights the need for remote principals and educators to reposition themselves in the dialogue with communities in order to allow room for a new conversation that gets to the “heart of learning”.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 23-12-2018
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-2014
DOI: 10.1177/117718011401000102
Abstract: For remote Central Australian Aboriginal communities, the world has changed completely and irrevocably in the space of a lifetime. Drawing on Jonathan Lear's (2006) Radical Hope, the authors highlight the comparative struggles outlined in Lear's reflection on the life of Crow Indian chief Plenty Coups. For Anangu (Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara people), the same question that confronted Plenty Coups arises: “How can Anangu pursue a ‘virtuous’ Anangu existence in a world where ‘being Anangu’ no longer ‘makes any sense’?” The authors explore the possibilities of choosing cultural re-invention over resigning to a sense of “the end” and consider how the recognition and retention of long-held values might benefit the broader experience of education, rather than be considered as a barrier or constraint to “success”.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 12-2019
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2018.1
Abstract: The 2014 Wilson review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory recommended boarding school models as the preferred secondary education option for very remote Aboriginal students. This study considers boarding uptake by Aboriginal students from the Central Land Council region of the Northern Territory. An examination of boarding programs available to Aboriginal students in this region found that scholarship access is largely determined by socioeducational advantage and the perceived social stability of the family and student. To increase access and participation in boarding, more flexible funding assistance programs are needed. An expanded role for brokering could also increase retention and completion rates. Ultimately, more investment is also required in remote community schools, and in the development of ‘both ways’ capital if the social and educational aspirations of young Aboriginal students and their families in this region are to be realised through a boarding school model.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 14-12-2022
Abstract: In late 2013, under the leadership of Prime Minister Abbott, the Australian Government announced a new policy designed to increase attendance rates in remote community schools—the Remote School Attendance Strategy (RSAS). The model assumed that employing local people in the program, which was designed to support parents get their children to school, would yield significant improvements and consequently improve educational outcomes. After a slight initial increase in school attendance rates, RSAS schools have seen average attendance rates decline since 2016, which now stand more than eight percentage points lower than at commencement. This article analyses My School data for Very Remote Aboriginal schools, showing how the RSAS school attendance results compare with similar non-RSAS schools. We question why the Australian Government continues to invest in a program that is not meeting its objectives, asking, what went wrong?. We do this by critically analysing 36 policy-related documents, looking for ideological clues that show why the government continues to invest in the program and how it sees it as “successful”. We conclude by raising ethical and accountability concerns about the RSAS, which lacks evidence of attendance improvement, and which potentially causes harm to its objects: First Nations students.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 03-11-2015
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2015.20
Abstract: The Remote Education Systems (RES) project within the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP) has, over the last four years, gathered and analysed qualitative data directly from over 230 remote education stakeholders and from more than 700 others through surveys. The research was designed to answer four questions: (1) What is education for in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities? (2) What defines ‘successful’ educational outcomes from the remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander standpoint? (3) How does teaching need to change in order to achieve ‘success’ as defined by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander standpoint? and (4) What would an effective education system in remote Australia look like? Based on this data, the paper reveals how perceptions differ for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from remote communities compared with people who come from elsewhere. The analysis points to the need for some alternative indicators of ‘success’ to match the aspirations of local people living in remote communities. It also points to the need for school and system responses that resonate with community expectations of education, and to develop narratives of aspiration and success alongside community views.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 14-12-2022
Abstract: Nyangatjatjara College is an independent Aboriginal school distributed across three c uses in the southern region of the Northern Territory. Since 2011, the College has conducted student and community surveys to obtain feedback regarding students’ educational experiences and their future aspirations. In 2016 Nyangatjatjara College funded a research project, Centring Anangu voices in Anangu education, to look more closely at Anangu educational aspirations to inform the development of a five-year strategic plan. Among other activities, interviewers conducted surveys by listening carefully to Anangu school students and community through sharing first-language narratives. This paper focuses on the most commonly discussed aspiration of students, their families and communities, namely, that school should enable young people to get a job. This finding parallels other research findings (Guenther et al., 2015) and the philosophical underpinnings of “red dirt thinking” on aspiration and success (Osborne & Guenther, 2013). Our examination of the data suggests that the theme of “work” is intertwined with aspects of the local community context. The paper concludes with an analysis of existing school-to-work transitions and opportunities, with suggestions for strengthening local participation in employment initiatives across the tri-state region at the intersection of the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 13-10-2018
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 14-02-2019
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 08-2020
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2018.17
Abstract: Schooling for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote or ‘Red Dirt’ communities has been cast as ‘problematic’, and ‘failing’. The solutions to deficit understandings of remote schooling are often presented as simple. But for those who work in Red Dirt schools, the solutions are not simple, and for education leaders positioned between the local Red Dirt school and upward accountability to departments of education, they are complex. Between 2011 and 2016, the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation's (CRC-REP) Remote Education Systems project explored how education could better meet the needs of those living in remote communities. More than 1000 people with interests in remote education contributed to the research. Education leaders were identified as one stakeholder group. These leaders included school-based leaders, bureaucrats, community-based leaders and teacher educators preparing university graduates for Red Dirt schools. This paper focusses on what Red Dirt education leaders think is important for schooling. The findings show school leaders as ‘caught in the middle’ (Gonzalez & Firestone, 2013) between expectations from communities, and of system stakeholders who drive policy, funding and accountability measures. The paper concludes with some implications for policy and practice that follow on from the findings.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 15-07-2023
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 06-04-2023
Publisher: The University of Queensland
Date: 13-12-2013
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2013.25
Abstract: MindMatters, implemented by Principals Australia Institute, is a resource and professional development initiative supporting Australian secondary schools in promoting and protecting the mental health and social and emotional wellbeing of members of school communities, preferring a proactive paradigm (Covey, 1989) to the position of ‘disaster response’. While the MindMatters national focus has continued, grown and become embedded in schools since its beginning in 2000, MindMatters staff have also specifically sought to establish localised mental health and wellbeing (MHWB) promotion in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities that empowers local school and community groups to build on community values and intergenerational capacities for supporting the MHWB of young people. This article outlines the processes for successful practice that have been developed in a very remote Aboriginal school context, and highlights the strengths and benefits of this approach from the perspectives of Anangu (Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara people of Central Australia) educators. Using a community development approach, Anangu educators, skilled linguists, community members and MindMatters trained staff formed learning communities that recontextualised MHWB curriculum to be taught in Anangu schools. While critically reflecting on the process MindMatters has adopted, this article draws on the voices of A nangu to privilege the cultural philosophical positions in the discourse. In so doing, important principles for translating what is fundamentally a western knowledge system's construct into corresponding Anangu knowledge systems is highlighted. Through building on the knowledge base that exists in the community context, Anangu educators, school staff and community members develop confidence, shared language and capacity to become the expert educators, taking their knowledge and resources to other Anangu school communities to begin their MindMatters journey ‘Anangu way’. This process supports students as they engage in the school-based activities and build a language for reflecting on MHWB concerns, leading them to learn and practice ‘better ways of thinking and acting’ (Kulintja Palyantja Palya —the Pitjantjatjara language title for the MindMatters, ‘Anangu Way’ program).
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 15-01-2020
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2019.28
Abstract: Abstract Over the 10 years of ‘Closing the Gap’, several interventions designed to improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have been trialled. In 2014 the Australian Government announced the ‘Flexible Literacy for Remote Primary Schools Programme’ (FLFRPSP) which was designed primarily to improve the literacy outcomes of students in remote schools with mostly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. The programme, using Direct Instruction (DI) or Explicit Direct Instruction, was extended to 2019 with more than $30 million invested. By 2017, 34 remote schools were participating in the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia. This paper analyses My School data for 25 ‘very remote’ FLFRPSP schools with more than 80% Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander students. It considers Year 3 and 5 NAPLAN reading results and attendance rates for participating and non-participating primary schools in the 3 years before the programme's implementation and compares them with results since. Findings show that, compared to very remote schools without FLFRPSP, the programme has not improved students' literacy abilities and results. Attendance rates for intervention schools have declined faster than for non-intervention schools. The paper questions the ethics of policy implementation and the role of evidence as a tool for accountability.
Publisher: The University of Queensland
Date: 13-12-2013
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2013.24
Abstract: In the remote schooling context, much recent media attention has been directed to issues of poor attendance, low attainment rates of minimal benchmarks in literacy and numeracy, poor retention and the virtual absence of transitions from school to work. The Australian government's recent ‘Gonski review’ (Review of Funding for Schooling – Final Report 2011) also strongly advocates the need to increase investment and effort into remote education across Australia in order to address the concerns of under-achievement, particularly of Indigenous students. Large-scale policies designed to improve access to services have caused a significant increase in services delivered from external sources, policy development at all levels of government, and tight accountability measures that affect remote communities and in turn, schools in various ways. Remote educators find themselves caught in the middle of this systemic discourse and the voices and values that exist in the remote communities where they live. Within this complex environment, the purpose of this article is to lify Indigenous community voices and values in the discourse and by doing so, challenge ourselves as educators and educational leaders to examine the question: ‘While we're busy delivering education, is anybody learning anything?’ This article focuses on the Anangu (Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara) context of the North-West of South Australia, southern regions of the Northern Territory and into Western Australia. This region is referred to as the ‘tri-state’ region. Using a qualitative methodology, this article examines three Pitjantjatjara language oral narrative transcripts where Anangu reflect on their experiences of growing up and learning. By privileging these Anangu voices in the dialogue about learning in the remote Aboriginal community context, key themes are identified and analysed, highlighting important considerations for remote educators in understanding the values and cultural elements that inform Anangu students in their engagement with a formal education context.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-2020
Abstract: Many recent policy documents have outlined the challenges of delivering high-quality education in remote First Nations communities and proposed that boarding schools are one important solution. These documents have influenced the increasing uptake of boarding options and there has been considerable public investment in scholarships, residential facilities and transition support. Yet the outcomes of this investment and policy effort are not well understood. The authors of this article came together as a collaboration of researchers who have published about boarding school education for First Nations students to examine the evidence and develop a theory-driven understanding of how policies drive systems to produce both desirable and undesirable outcomes for First Nations boarding school students. We applied complexity theory and post-structural policy analysis techniques and produced a useful tool for the evaluation of boarding policy and its implementation.
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Date: 2017
Publisher: The Society for the Provision of Education in Rural Australia (SPERA)
Date: 17-07-2020
Abstract: Editorial
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2020
Publisher: Northern Institute
Date: 12-2017
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-2014
DOI: 10.1177/117718011401000103
Abstract: In recent years, Anangu (Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara) education and remote education more broadly have strongly focused attention on key areas such as attendance and literacy and numeracy benchmarks. Remote schools have implemented a number of policies, programmes and strategies, but national statistics show that student attainment remains “behind” and the “gap” is increasing on these measures. In this paper, the authors explore the key ingredients that build confidence and “open the spirit” of young Anangu students to be receptive to acquire new knowledge as they encounter new and unfamiliar experiences in school. In order to achieve this, remote educators need to consider the role of family members and the intergenerational learning environment that cements knowledge deep within the spirit. Educators are encouraged to consider the critical tools and processes required to acquire “codes of power” (Delpit, 1993), building mastery and confidence in the Western social context of schools and mainstream society.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-2014
DOI: 10.1177/117718011401000104
Abstract: Mainstream Australian society tends to assume that the purposes of schooling and aspirations that school should enable are universal and roundly accepted. The authors of this paper examine the issues with these assumptions and consider what “imagined futures” (Nakata, 2007a) mean for young people in Anangu (Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara) schools and communities today. They pose the question, “How might remote educators enable a space for re-imagining the future on Anangu terms and what potential does remote education offer in this regard?” This paper emphasizes the strong self-determination stance and action that is required by Anangu in both articulating Anangu values in the education process and in instilling a positive perspective about the opportunities for young people into the future. The authors also interrogate the role of Piranpa (non-Indigenous) remote educators in how they might position themselves for student imagination, aspiration and hope, pointing students back to the intergenerational capacities that are critical in this regard.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 14-09-2020
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2020.22
Abstract: Abstract The authors of the article ‘Did DI do it? The impact of a programme designed to improve literacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote schools’ respond to a critique of their analysis of work.
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2023
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 31-05-2021
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 21-07-2022
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 31-12-2015
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2015.17
Abstract: Remote Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools and communities are erse and complex sites shaped by contrasting geographies, languages, histories and cultures, including historical and ongoing relationships with colonialism, and connected yet contextually unique epistemologies, ontologies and cosmologies.This paper explores the history of Anangu (Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra and Ngaatjatjarra) populations, including the establishment of incorporated communities and schools across the tri-state remote region of central Australia. This study will show that Anangu have a relatively recent contact history with Europeans and Anangu experiences of engagement with colonisation and schooling are erse and complex.By describing historical patterns of population centralisation and decentralisation, I argue that schooling and broader education policies need to be contextually responsive to Anangu histories, values, ontologies and epistemologies in order to produce an education approach that resists colonialist social models and assumptions and instead, works more effectively towards a broader aim of social justice. Through assisting educators and policy makers to acquire a clearer understanding of Anangu histories, capacities and struggle, I hope to inform a more nuanced, contextually responsive and socially-just consideration of the provision of Western education in the tri-state region.
Publisher: The University of Queensland
Date: 13-12-2013
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2013.19
Abstract: Recent debates in Australia, largely led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island academics over the past 5 or so years, have focused on the need for non-Indigenous educators to understand how their practices not only demonstrate lack of understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, but even deny their presence. This debate has serious implications for the non-Indigenous remote educator who wishes to support remote students to achieve ‘success’ through their education. The debates on the one hand advocate the decolonising of knowledge, pedagogy and research methods in order to promote more just or equal approaches to research and education, while other voices continue to advocate the pursuit of mainstream dominant Western ‘outcomes’ as the preferred goal for Indigenous students across Australia. This dilemma frames the context for this study. The Remote Education Systems Project, in the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation, seeks to explore these and other questions as part of the broader research agenda being undertaken. This project is particularly focused on large-scale questions such as: ‘What is a remote education for and what would ‘success’ look like in the remote education context?’ We are approaching these research questions from community standpoints and perspectives as a critical starting point for these types of debates and discussions. In doing so, our findings indicate that remote Aboriginal community members have a strong sense of western education and its power to equip young people with critical skills, knowledge and understandings for the future, but also a strong sense of retaining of their ‘own’ knowledge, skills and understanding. This presents a complex challenge for educators who are new to this knowledge interface. Here, we offer the concept of ‘Red Dirt Thinking’ as a new way to position ourselves and engage in situated dialogue about what remote schooling might be if it took into account power issues around Indigenous knowledges in the current policy context. This article questions whether remote communities, schools and systems have, in fact, taken account of the knowledge ower debates that have taken place at an academic level and considers how remote education might consider the implications of stepping outside the ‘Western–Indigenous binary’. It seeks to propose new paradigms that non-Indigenous educators may need to engage in order to de-limit the repositioning of power-laden knowledge and pedagogies offered in remote classrooms.
Publisher: The University of Queensland
Date: 13-12-2013
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2013.18
Abstract: When people talk about education of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, the language used is often replete with messages of failure and deficit, of disparity and problems. This language is reflected in statistics that on the surface seem unambiguous in their demonstration of poor outcomes for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. A range of data support this view, including the National Action Plan—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) achievement data, school attendance data, Australian Bureau of Statistics Census data and other compilations such as the Productivity Commission's biennial Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report. These data, briefly summarised in this article, paint a bleak picture of the state of education in remote Australia and are at least in part responsible for a number of government initiatives (state, territory and Commonwealth) designed to ‘close the gap’. For all the programs, policies and initiatives designed to address disadvantage, the results seem to suggest that the progress, as measured in the data, is too slow to make any significant difference to the apparent difference between remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools and those in the broader community. We are left with a discourse that is replete with illustrations of poor outcomes and failures and does little to acknowledge the richness, ersity and achievement of those living in remote Australia. The purpose of this article is to challenge the ideas of ‘disadvantage’ and ‘advantage’ as they are constructed in policy and consequently reported in data. It proposes alternative ways of thinking about remote educational disadvantage, based on a reading of relevant literature and the early observations of the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation's Remote Education Systems project. It is a formative work, designed to promote and frame a deeper discussion with remote education stakeholders. It asks how relative advantage might be defined if the ontologies, axiologies, epistemologies and cosmologies of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families were more fully taken into account in the education system's discourse within/of remote schooling. Based on what we have termed ‘red dirt thinking’ it goes on to ask if and what alternative measures of success could be applied in remote contexts where ways of knowing, being, doing, believing and valuing often differ considerably from what the educational system imposes.
Publisher: The University of Queensland
Date: 13-12-2013
DOI: 10.1017/JIE.2013.17
Abstract: This article sets the scene for the series of five articles on ‘red dirt thinking’. It first introduces the idea behind red dirt thinking as opposed to ‘blue sky thinking’. Both accept that there are any number of creative and expansive solutions and possibilities to identified challenges — in this case, the challenge of improving education in very remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island schools. However, the authors believe that creative thinking needs to be grounded in the reality of the local community context in order to be relevant. This article draws on emerging data from the Remote Education Systems project (a project within the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation — CRC-REP) and highlights further questions and challenges we wish to address across the life of the project. It is part of a collection of papers presented on the theme ‘Red Dirt Thinking’. The red dirt of remote Australia is where thinking for the CRC-REP's Remote Education Systems research project emerged. This article will examine the various public positions that exist in regard to the aspirations of young remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, and consider the wider views that are held in terms of what constitutes educational ‘success’. We explore the models of thinking and assumptions that underpin this public dialogue and contrast these ideas to the ideas that are being shared by remote Aboriginal educators and local community members through the work of the Remote Education Systems project. We will consider the implications and relevance of the aspiration and success debate for the remote Australian context and propose approaches and key questions for improved practice and innovation in relation to delivering a more ‘successful’ education for remote students. The authors begin by posing the simple question: How would, and can remote educators build aspiration and success? The wisdom of several commentators on remote education in Australia is presented in terms of a set of simple solutions to a straightforward problem. The assumptions behind these simple solutions are often unstated, and part of this article's role is to highlight the assumptions that common arguments for solutions are premised on. Further to the above question, we will also consider the question: In remote communities where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students live and learn, how is success defined? Is there language that corresponds to the western philosophical meanings of success? Having considered some possible alternatives, based on the early findings of the Remote Education Systems project research, the authors then pose the question: How would educators teach for these alternative measures of success? The answers to these questions are still forthcoming. However, as the research process reveals further insights in relation to these questions, it may be possible for all those involved in remote education to approach the ‘problem’ of remote education using a different lens. The lens may be smeared with red dirt, but it will enable people involved in the system to develop creative solutions in a challenging and rich environment.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 07-12-2015
Publisher: Northern Institute
Date: 04-2016
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2020
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Date: 2021
Publisher: Università degli Studi di Torino
Date: 2018
No related grants have been discovered for Samuel Osborne.