Supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education through culturally responsive teaching and learning

Recognising that the knowledges and cultures of Indigenous peoples are a resource all Australians can learn from, several flagship projects led by UNSW School of Education in the faculty of UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture are dedicated to addressing these issues through whole-school reforms. 

Culturally Nourishing Schooling

The first of these, the Culturally Nourishing Schooling project focusses on holistic changes to improve schooling for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and the second focusses on cultural mentorship and teacher professional learning to improve education about Indigenous knowledges for all students. This project investigates strategies to support deep cultural inclusion in learning to improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. This has included engaging with communities, local New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Groups (AECG) and jurisdictional collaborative partners, New South Wales Department of Education (NSW DoE) and eight DoE schools in urban, regional, rural and remote areas in New South Wales to generate a systemic shift in schools’ engagement with Indigenous families and teachers’ epistemic beliefs about students’ and communities’ knowledges. 

Cultural Residents Project

The second project is the Cultural Residents Project that works with local Aboriginal communities to create “Cultural Resident” or Cultural Educator positions within Eastern suburbs primary schools in Sydney, to meaningfully integrate Indigenous histories, knowledges and cultures across the curriculum. This has included collaborating with World Vision and a range of Indigenous and ally organisations, as part of a proof-of-concept project for Know your Country, to lobby all levels of government to fund public and independent primary schools to employ locally approved Indigenous cultural residents. 

“Every child across this vast continent deserves to learn from the wisdom of the first custodians of the country they live on. Our society can benefit from being grounded in Indigenous peoples’ ways of being, doing and knowing. This is integral to achieving reconciliation and improving the educational outcomes for all students.” says Associate Professor Kevin Lowe, a Gubbi Gubbi man.

The Cultural Residents project is making a significant impact through assisting schools and local Aboriginal communities to forge meaningful and ongoing connections. Eight local Aboriginal "Cultural Residents" were employed to support primary schools for 12 months in the delivery of Indigenous peoples curriculum content, strengthening the confidence and ability of teachers to engage with these elements of the curriculum. Professional learning in knitting Indigenous peoples content together into a meaningful narrative grounded in local Country and community knowledges enabled schools to avoid tokenistic approaches to Indigenous peoples education, for the benefit of all students.

Eight schools, more than 200 teachers and thousands of students across NSW participate 

Eight schools in NSW are participating in the Culturally Nourishing Schooling project that aims to improve the academic achievements of Indigenous learners while concurrently fostering a strong and healthy cultural identity grouped in the local context. More than 200 teachers were engaged in the program which reached thousands of students across the eight schools. 

Improving academic achievements of Indigenous learners 

The Culturally Nourishing Schooling project team collect qualitative and quantitative data through focus groups, interviews, classroom observations, and surveys of school leaders, teachers, and Cultural Mentors, as they work with the learning communities connected with eight schools in NSW, to establish the ‘culturally nourishing’ research-informed framework model. This framework is designed to improve the academic achievements of Indigenous learners while concurrently fostering a strong and healthy cultural identity grounded in the local context.

The work of both the Cultural Residents project and Culturally Nourishing Schooling projects has been facilitated in part by the pre-existing UNSW Matraville Education Partnership, which has given UNSW a local community-based presence through enrichment activities, special programs, research, and having UNSW staff members based at Matraville Sports High School since 2015.