Shifting paradigms: placing Australian Indigenous educational endeavours on new footings (16 Oct 18)
Shifting the culture and educational futures of Indigenous students requires a seismic shift across multiple layers (institutionalized policies, historic practices, cultural mores and professional as well as personal and sometimes familiar relationships with community members, educational administrators, educators, parents and students). Drawing from case studies, the presenters explored the institutional positioning of Indigenous students relative to cultural ways of knowing and the circumstances that are confronted including a perpetuation of colonizing practices of assimilation, historical privilege of western epistemologies and practices aligned with a deficit pathology and a placement of Indigenous within a guest paradigm (Morgan, in press). The case studies enlist rhetorical analyses and first hand observations of the stated goals, strategies and practices within educational institutions to bring to the fore:
- Issues involved in transforming institutions and shaping practices which builds upon rather than displaces Indigenous identities, culture, knowledge and practices in a transformative fashion (Smith, 2011)
- The beliefs, practices and policy dispositions that can obstruct progress –for example, constructions of cultural identity and practices in ways that reflect assimilation and inclusive models overriding eclecticism and accommodation
- The rationalization of the social reproduction of privilege and power and the perpetuation of a pathology of difference
- Gatekeeping operations, entrenched practices and attitudes that maintain the status quo
The case studies were also used to explore the deeply rooted and systemic forces at play and the complexities and “tricky ground” of working to make changes grounded in situated community engagements.