Raising the bar

02 June 2022
Empowered Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander young people are a force to be reckoned with, says
Dr Marnee Shay, a senior research fellow and author from the University of
Queensland. And education systems need to recognise the value of strength-based
approaches to achieving excellence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander education.
Shay and a team of researchers spent three years
listening to more than 100 Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander secondary school students in six urban, regional
and remote communities across Queensland and Western Australia.
The project, Cultural Identity, Health and Wellbeing
of Indigenous Young People in Schools (funded by the Lowitja Institute),
involved students who were disengaged and attending school inconsistently.
“Yet, when they were engaged in our project, their attendance rate increased to
almost 100 per cent,” says Shay, a Wagiman woman whose family is from Daly
River in the Northern Territory but who was born and raised in South East
Queensland.
Shay and her co-researchers, Professors Grace Sarra
and Annette Woods, also contributed a chapter to the book Indigenous
Education in Australia: Learning and Teaching for Deadly Futures, which
Shay co-edited with Rhonda Oliver.
She says the book is an edited collection of articles
from diverse Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, educators and
practitioners and is widely used in Australian teacher education programs.
“The topics covered are highly relevant to the AITSL
standards 1.4 and 2.4. Its content is based on evidence and scholarship and
complemented by practitioner stories and experiences, supported with resources
and tools that teachers can contextualise for their own school settings,” Shay
says.
In the chapter, Strong Identities, Strong Futures,
which was based on their research, Shay, Sarra and Woods write about the
resilience and tenacity shown by Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander young people in dealing with racism and media
representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They also
share their concerns about the under representation of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples as educators and leaders in Australian schools.
“Change starts with schools employing more Indigenous
people, at all levels, not just as teachers’ aides. And ensuring local
Indigenous community members are present in schools and provided with
meaningful ways of contributing to decision making,” she says.
Teachers can affirm the identities and future
opportunities of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander young people through strengths-based approaches and
high-expectations student relationships. “If teachers are not using a
strengths-based approach, they are at risk of developing low expectations for
all their students, including their Indigenous students,” Shay and her
co-authors write.
Now, several years after the Cultural Identity
project, the researchers “get to hear lots of anecdotes about the impact of
listening to their students and pushing them forward as potential leaders”.
“The young people we have worked with have gone on to
do some pretty amazing things after participating in that study,” she says.
“One remote school has had two Indigenous school captains since the project was
delivered in their school – and they had never had any Indigenous school
leaders in their history.”
Shay, who has a background as a youth worker, teacher
and school leader says: “We believe some of the success was because our
research framed Indigenous young people as being important agents in their own
lives, who had their own opinions and their own imaginings for their futures.”
“The other important key to success on this particular
project was that we employed local Indigenous researchers in every community we
worked with. Even though Grace (Sarra) and I are Indigenous, we ensured local
protocols were honoured and that local knowledge holders led the process. We
engaged local Elders to speak about the country that we were on, the history of
the community, and to guide the research. The project would not have been as
successful if the young people involved hadn’t seen their own local Elders,
their own community members, as part of the process. Young people told us very
clearly that they have strengths and capabilities, in terms of their Indigenous
identities, and they want to be able to showcase them in a school setting. They
also told us that they want to see themselves in the curriculum and in the
school environment.
“They want to see Aboriginal interests and knowledge
embedded throughout different key learning areas, not just in one discrete
program. They want to see it regularly featured in classrooms and lessons and
in the everyday practices of their schools.”
Shay says The Imagination Declaration, a statement
launched by a group of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander young people at the Garma Festival in 2019,
challenging our leaders to involve young people, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young
people, in policies that affect their future, reflected her own
research. She says it struck a chord and she was prompted to write about it in
an article in The Conversation, which has since gained a wide
readership.
The young people were supported by AIME Mentoring, an
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mentoring project established in 2004,
and their voices have continued to be heard in schools and classrooms around
the country.
“The declaration reflected the findings from our
research and has continued to illustrate the power of listening to and
empowering young people,” she says.
Shay says the Cultural Identity study showed the
importance of acknowledging that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young
people have strengths, capabilities and dignities.
“We need to shift away from thinking about Indigenous education as a gap to
close and see it as a framework of excellence for the future.”
“COVID obviously caused a massive disruption to
anything proactive in education, understandably, but I think we will pick up
some of those really important messages that came from the study and The
Imagination Declaration around ensuring that we are creating space to listen to
young people.
“Young people are our future. They are our future
leaders. And really, we should be making explicit space for them to be heard;
and to lead.”
By Leanne Tolra
This article was originally published in the Australian Educator, Autumn 2022