Red dirt thinking on power, pedagogy and paradigms: De-limiting the dialogue in remote education

Sam Osborne, UniSA and CRC REP John Guenther, Flinders Uni and CRC REP

Presentation for The 3rd International Symposium for Innovation in Rural Education (ISFIRE) 13th – 15th February 2013 Perth, Western Australia

Areas of RES activity

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Kimberley

Ngaanyatjarra Lands

Southern NT/APY Land

Elcho Island

Tanami

The Remote Education Systems project is part of the CRC REP (Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation). There are five initial focus regions. Pathways to Employment is a project closely linked to our work and has two focus areas currently.

Where do Anangu live?

*note – the term Anangu is also used by Pintupi/Luritja communities, for example, which spreads further to the North and West of this map. Source: Ara Irititja archive website http://www.irititja.com/the_archive/audience.html

Remote Education Systems approach:

• Reference group from Indigenous academics to systems representatives, NGOs etc

• Aboriginal Community Researchers

• Community conversations as well as engaging remote educators at the academic level.

The Remote Education Systems project has four main questions that local research teams can work on. They are:

• What is education for in remote Australia and what

can/should it achieve?

• What are ‘successful’ outcomes for education from Anangu standpoints?

• How can teaching change in order to achieve these successes?

• What would an effective education system in remote Australia look like?

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It’s Simple, right…? ‘Blue sky thinking’ The utopian Often ‘externally imagined’

‘Red dirt thinking’ The pragmatic – taking steps ‘in context’ – place based Aralya, SA

The knowledge interface

Western (scientific) Indigenous Knowledge(s)

The contested ‘middle space’

‘Decolonised’ space

Politically, socially, contextually constructed

Nationally valued/measured

Typically the limits of teacher’s experience

failure

behind

Community engagement

Place-based learning

Strength based

‘Mickey Mouse’

Co-constructed knowledge

Closing the Gap

Derived from eternal axioms (dreaming) Derived from Western/Greek

philosophy – accepted axioms of our education system

The values interface Kardiya Yapa

Where does the inspired/inspiring educator begin?

• Being Responsible

• Individual • Education • 3 ‘R’s; Reading,

wRiting, aRithmetic

• Respect: authority, property, achievement

• Friendship

• Giving unconditionally

• Collective • Learning • 3 ‘L’s; Look,

Listen, Learn • Respect: country,

knowledge, relationship

• Relationship (no such thing as ‘friend’) and reciprocity

The knowledge interface

• understanding the limits of their own thinking

• engaging in open, exploratory and creative inquiry

• building language and tools for describing and analysing what they engage with

• engages the politics of knowledge production and build critical skills

Nakata et al 2012: Pedagogy proposal

How we position remote educators, not where…

Who can benefit from this more nuanced ‘positioning’?

• Remote systems • Remote educators • Remote Service providers • Remote Employers • ‘The bourgeois brotherhood’ & the ‘easy answers’ gang.

What are Aboriginal remote educators and communities saying? • Children need to be competent in both western and Yolngu teachings. Yolngu culture

is paramount and western education must be embedded in a learning context that respects and affirms traditional Yolngu cultural knowledge, traditions and practices.

• Mainstream education at all levels is essential if Yolngu children are to have the same life chances as other Australians.

(Wearne & Yunupingu 2011) Aspiration and the future is viewed through the lens of family, not through the

modelling/coaxing of white educators. (Tjitayi, Minutjukur, Burton) ‘We want the power that education offers, but we have our own power that we must retain’ (Minutjukur & Osborne 2013 – in press)

The knowledge interface

Red dirt thinking: Can we re-imagine and begin to step outside the Western-Indigenous binary and support a liminal space for the co-generation of ‘codes of power’? (Delpit 1993)

How do we move beyond the limitation of the lived experience of remote students and step outside of the limits of remote educators’ lived experience?

A remote education that empowers rather than constrains?

Red dirt thinking… A remote education that:

• Builds confidence (open spirit) to acquire new knowledge

• Lays footprints for aspiration • Takes account of and

empowers traditional knowledge

• Essential mainstream education