History of Aboriginal Education
Aboriginal children are yet to get the quality education they deserve. The Australian curriculum offers a platform that teaches about cultures and histories through Aboriginal education. Aboriginal education allows all students to extend their knowledge of Australia by learning the oldest continuous cultures from across the world. Aboriginal education, as provided in the Australian curriculum, is strong, resilient, rich, and diverse. It is through changes in policies that the education sector has been able to support some of the education rights for the Aboriginal people.
Aboriginal education uses a conceptual framework to provide a background for learning. The conceptual framework consists of the underlying elements of identity and communities’ key concepts of origin, culture, and people. To develop knowledge about Aboriginal education, students explore cultures to understand people’s cultures, languages, and knowledge (Perry & Holt, 2018). The first concept of the organizing ideas features an important connection to people’s origin and the special beliefs that attach people physically to their place of origin (Ellinghaus & Judd, 2020). The second concept features the diversity of people’s cultures by their language and lifestyle, as shown in historical reviews.
However, much Aboriginal education is important; there are many barriers to effective learning. The first language of Aboriginal students is mostly not English, which creates a language barrier. If the context found in teaching does not relate to aboriginal lives, they are of little importance for students (Burgess & Lowe, 2019). There are also few Aboriginal teachers in Australia, and the few are not from Aboriginal cultures who exhibit poor teaching quality. Schools in rural areas lack adequate infrastructure to accommodate many Aboriginal students (Burridge & Chodkiewicz, 2012). Aboriginal students also have huge problems with their parents, as they cannot dream big like their peers who aspire to well-paying careers.
The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority understand the gap in learning outcomes between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and non-indigenous students. This has led to the formation of policies to help bridge the gap (Shay, 2016). The educational experiences and outcomes of aboriginal students are poor compared to those of non-Aboriginal students. This creates difficulties in transition in school and later in life.
Before the 1960s, Aboriginal affairs were under state governments, which made the Aboriginal education policies differ across Australia. Aboriginal people were considered to be inferior, and they were allowed to receive minimal training. This led to the exclusion of Aboriginal children from government-run schools (Street et al., 2018). In the 1970s and 1980s, Aboriginal education started gaining acceptance from policymakers after various inquiries at the state and Commonwealth levels. The Aboriginal Education Policy Task Force in 1988 provided a report recommending a coordinated National education policy (Renganathan & Kral, 2018). This led to the formation of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy (AEP) in 1990, which made a significant improvement to the access to quality education for the Aboriginal people.
Most of the past policies, attitudes, and actions toward the Aboriginal people in Australia have resulted in intergenerational educational disadvantage. There have been various landmark actions and decisions that have shaped the educational situations for the Aboriginal people today. The 1967 Referendum, for instance, determined how the government was responsible for Aboriginal affairs and led to the formulation of policies aimed at improving the economic and social circumstances of the Aboriginal people in Australia (Price et al., 2019). Most elements of these policies did not protect the educational rights of this group fully.
Although most of the policies made in over the past half-century are aimed at improving access to education for the Aboriginal children, there are still some elements in the present-day practices and policies which show that the Aboriginal education is yet to receive the attention from those responsible for providing the education to the group in the school system.
References
Burgess, C., & Lowe, K. (2019). Aboriginal Voices: Social Justice and Transforming Aboriginal Education. In Higher Education, Pedagogy and Social Justice (pp. 97-117). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Burridge, N., & Chodkiewicz, A. (2012). An historical overview of Aboriginal education policies in the Australian context. In Indigenous Education (pp. 9-21). Brill Sense.
Ellinghaus, K., & Judd, B. (2020). Writing as Kin: Producing Ethical Histories Through Collaboration in Unexpected Places. Researching FW Albrecht, Assimilation Policy and Lutheran Experiments in Aboriginal Education. In Questioning Indigenous-Settler Relations (pp. 55-68). Springer, Singapore.
Perry, L., & Holt, L. (2018). Searching for the Songlines of Aboriginal education and culture within Australian higher education. The Australian Educational Researcher, 45(3), 343-361.
Shay, M. (2016). Seeking new paradigms in Aboriginal education research: methodological opportunities, challenges and aspirations. Social and Education History, 5(3), 273-296.
Price, A., Jackson-Barrett, E., Gower, G., & Herrington, J. (2019). Understanding the complex work of Aboriginal education workers in schools. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 48(1), 93-105.
Street, C., Smith, J. A., Robertson, K., Motlap, S., Ludwig, W., Gillan, K., & Guenther, J. (2018). A historical overview of responses to Indigenous higher education policy in the NT: Progress or procrastination?. Australian Universities’ Review, The, 60(2), 38.
Renganathan, S., & Kral, I. (2018). Exploring language and education policies for the indigenous minorities in Australia and Malaysia. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 20(1), 138-156.