Recognition

In this section I explore how the cultural positioning of educators working with Aboriginal students informed their views that recognition of their students’ cultural backgrounds was key to supporting cultural wellbeing. A set of assumptions about students is implied by curriculum design, standardised assessments, school cultures, and the attitudes and discourses of broader society. The sum of these expectations is represented by what Ulrikson (2009) calls the “implied student”, an idealised representation of the student for whom the education system has been designed and delivered. In this section I will discuss the cultural wellbeing of students who, according to the educators who teach them, are dissimilar to the implied student and who the education system fails to recognise or cater to their culturally located education and wellbeing requirements.

Aboriginal educator Valerie described the importance of recognising Aboriginal students’ culture in supporting cultural wellbeing. Her perception of cultural wellbeing centred around Aboriginal students recognising and valuing their Aboriginal identities, and for their Aboriginality to be recognised and valued by others. Valerie commented, “I think it’s really important that the children have pride in their Aboriginal culture” and noted the cultural wellbeing benefits of “being with

other Aboriginal people and talking through stuff”. Valerie’s interpretation of cultural wellbeing emphasised the connections with Aboriginal people who “understand the difficulties and challenges that you come up against, and the historical aspects”.* _For

Valerie, this appears to be part of “that understanding and knowing” that comes with recognising and valuing Aboriginality.

Valerie’s colleague Kathryn similarly perceived that cultural wellbeing involved Aboriginal students developing self-belief and self-recognition: “I think it’s important that they have pride.” Kathryn indicated that an important part of

supporting cultural wellbeing was for her students to recognise the intrinsic value of who they are and where they are from. Referring to student performances she attends that involve students from her school, she commented, “The thing I notice with many children [from here] who step onto the [Theatre] stage is they have no

pride.... Students from here will stand with their head down as if they don’t deserve to be there” which she contrasted with the demeanour of students from other less-

marginalised schools. Cultural wellbeing in Kathryn’s view involves students

developing “pride just in themselves and to actually believe they are worth more than what they think they are worth”.

Both Valerie and Kathryn discussed cultural wellbeing as involving their students recognising and identifying with their Aboriginal culture. Additionally, as will be described below, both educators spoke of a need for the education system to similarly recognise and cater to their students’ Aboriginality. A challenge facing

* _{Valerie did not explain directly what she meant by “historical aspects”, however she gave me her}

recent Artist Statement from an exhibition she had been commissioned for in South Australia. The artist statement described aspects of historical racism and mistreatment of Aboriginal people,

Valerie and Kathryn is that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have been (and continue to be) marginalised through schooling, both historically and in the present, and their student cohorts are labelled “at risk” of disengaging from schooling based on their racial and background profiles (Keddie, 2011). The school system, catering to the “implied” student, disciplines students to fit with expectations of the “good” student according to the dominant culture (Grant, 1997, p. 107). Navigating the school system is heavily reliant on meeting these expectations. That the

expectations are established by the dominant culture is typically left unquestioned, and likewise, who these expectations privilege and marginalise remains largely untroubled. Evidence from Indigenous scholarship finds that “Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing are holistic, contextual, and spiritual in nature while learning takes place within reciprocal and interconnected relationships between people, nature and the land” (Brown, 2010, p. 16; see also Dockery, 2010). The following depictions by Kathryn and Valerie convey an expectation that their students’ Aboriginal

identities would be recognised by teaching practice and school expectations that were more culturally informed.

Valerie critiqued the classroom-bound ways of her school, commenting “the thing about learning now is it’s mainly focused on the inside, it’s not out in the big world.” She considered this inadequate for the cultural wellbeing of her Aboriginal students because schooling “is all just learning inside a screen and the students become very alienated from the natural world.” Valerie perceives that supporting cultural wellbeing requires “being able to engage in practicing art and stuff that my ancestors have done” and that teaching “inside a screen” fails to recognise what she perceives to be her students’ “physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual needs.”

Her teaching colleague Kathryn was similarly critical of the failure of the school to recognise the cultural wellbeing needs of her Aboriginal students:

I would take these kids out to the farm for one lesson every term given half a chance. We would go and build huts... But no, you’re not allowed to. You have to have a set number of hours that you’re teaching literacy and numeracy. You have to have ticked the right amount of boxes. (Kathryn)

Valerie and Kathryn describe what they perceive to be a misalignment

between the expectations and requirements of mainstream schooling, and the cultural context of their students’ lives. Valerie brought this into a critical perspective of the broader national schooling context. “I think that within the education system there’s not enough told about the true histories of this place”, she commented, referring to the marginalising and dispossession of Aboriginal people throughout the history of white Australia. “Some students are quite challenged by it” she says in reference to the violent history, “but the truth needs to start being told to them earlier… This place can’t be separated from its history, because then we don’t acknowledge and know the truth. It’s like going through life with a lie.”

Aboriginal culture is subject to the consequences of co-existing within the dominant national culture which is entrenched in European colonialism. Were we to consider Valerie and Kathryn’s perspectives of what and how their implied

Aboriginal student might learn, these would differ from the education system’s perspectives which are largely based on the dominant ways of knowing reproduced through schooling. As Ulriksen explains, expectations of the implied student are built through curriculum policy documents (i.e. the Australian Curriculum), in addition to

the systems of assessment that reward particular performances of learning (i.e. standardised NAPLAN testing). These instruments are inscribed within curriculum and assessment policies which establish expectations that schools will develop learners who demonstrate, for example, particular levels of literacy attainment (or alternatively logical reasoning or particular narrow forms of mathematical and scientific understanding etc.).

What remains implicit, unspoken and largely unchallenged is that these performances of assessable learning output are based on dominant culture views of what is widely understood to be a literate or numerate practice (i.e. reading a book in English language; writing a persuasive essay; delivering a debate; calculating

equations; reading a map). These are particular performances of learning that are expectations of the dominant culture and recognised and legitimated in Australian schools through curriculum, assessment and reporting regimes (i.e. the Australian Curriculum, NAPLAN, MySchool). A consequence of privileging dominant ways of knowing is that other ways of knowing and other pedagogies are marginalised and misrecognised in the school system (Keddie, 2011). This lies at the heart of the challenges to cultural wellbeing that Valerie and Kathryn perceive for their students whose experiences of schooling is characterised by marginalisation and

misrecognition.

Valerie and Kathryn clearly conveyed their views that Aboriginal students at their school were not appropriately recognised by the accountability regime which dictated the practices which could and could not take place. The educators perceived that cultural wellbeing would be better supported for Aboriginal students if their connections to country, community and Aboriginal culture were recognised as

dominant) forms and representations of knowledge and ways of knowing is a form of symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1977). While Valerie and Kathryn perceived their students’ cultural wellbeing would be enhanced by the students recognising the value and significance of their own culture, the marginalisation of non-dominant cultures through the standardised assessment regime actively works against their preferred pedagogical approaches.