This course will immerse students in the competing and politicised discourses that play a part in what is known as Indigenous education in Australia. The aim of the course is to equip students with skills, knowledges and confidence that will support them in becoming active and aware contributors to improving teaching practices and learning outcomes within the Indigenous education landscape. Informed by ideas and strategies coming from a range of theoretical frameworks, this course will critically engage with the literature and research that underpins Indigenous education, challenging students to reflexively position themselves within this landscape as active agents of change.

The course is organised in four interrelated sections. Initially, students will explore the challenges and opportunities of working with different theoretical approaches, with the aim of developing a more critically informed awareness of the possibilities and limitations of each in relation to the varied contexts across the Indigenous educational landscape. The second section will deepen the students understanding of Indigenous studies by investigating the policy, curricular and pedagogic implications of a largely non-Indigenous teaching profession being asked to work with Indigenous knowledges/perspectives in educational settings. The next section turns attention to the teaching and learning experiences of Indigenous students in schooling, with the aim here being to critically unpack the ‘deficit’ perspective by shifting focus to consider what educators and schooling can start doing differently. The final phase of the course brings the different threads together to invite students to consider their own location within the Indigenous education landscape.