Keywords

Introduction

For Indigenous Australians, the beginning of the new millennium in 2000 was a major marker of what they and many thousands of other Australians hoped would shift reconciliation from aspirational rhetoric to genuine recognition of Indigenous peoples’ unique place within Australia as First Nations peoples. This review focuses on the evidence of the shift from an aspirational assertion of Indigenous rights to the agentic actions of Indigenous people and partner schools in support of the existential project of the renaissance of culture and Indigenous knowledge, and practices (Jones, 2014). This chapter looks to capture the hesitant but still deliberate actions of Indigenous communities in their assertion of their rights to their unique identities that inherently connect them to Country and the languages and knowledges that reside within those unique spaces (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2009; Waugh, 2011).

Indigenous people continue to look for opportunities to position political debate in Australia to support their rights to engage in their cultural practices and/or to reclaim their threatened languages (Douglas, 2011). Yet until very recently, indifference, antipathy or active resistance from schools has been the most likely response, which has made it well-nigh impossible in all but the most remote locations for authentic cultural programs to be developed and taught within classrooms (Lowe, 2009). However, while this may describe the typical schooling experience of the vast majority of Indigenous students, there is evidence of a small number of schools that have, with community support, established prized cultural programs including local language teaching (McNaboe & Poetsch, 2010). Evidence suggests that the establishment of these programs cannot be overstated as they provide strong testimony to the impact of community and student support, and in many cases, an acknowledgment of those few but extraordinary teachers who challenge the ever-present schooling project of assimilating Aboriginal children (Lowe, 2011; Freeman & Staley, 2018). Despite this, the challenge so often heard from teachers is that of feeling unable to teach Indigenous cultural content for which they have little or no connection to and/or knowledge about. This struggle, too often confused as being pedagogic in dimension, plays out with tokenistic curriculum adjustments, or an inability to link Indigenous content to broader discipline learning outcomes. However, recent research into curriculum theory and practice identifies how the technology of curriculum explicitly alienates teachers’ moral sense of social justice. Lowe and Cairncross (2019) and Maxwell et al. (2018) identified how academic disciplines and their direct influence on the knowledge construct of curriculum, systemically silences teachers in developing pedagogic narratives that challenge the underpinning moral assertions of settler colonialism, nation-making and the extinguishment of Indigenous sovereignty (Lowe & Galstaun, 2020).

Although the ever-present assimilatory endeavors of schooling are seen to play out in Australian classrooms (Harrison & Skrebneva, 2020), there are counter-intuitive moments in national and state policymaking that appear to support Indigenous cultural aspirations. From the early 2000s, state and commonwealth governments have worked to establish a curriculum framework to support schools in developing local Indigenous languages courses (ACARA, 2013; Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, n.d.; Board of Studies NSW, 2003). While this curriculum offers students a unique opportunity to learn one of the hundreds of Australia’s first languages, it also embeds within it, an implicit assertion of the legitimacy of Indigenous peoples’ ontological connection to Country (Emmanouil, 2017).

Yet even though various policies have been established that at least in principle support community cultural aspirations (NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs, 2013), this review highlights the ongoing structural challenges experienced by Indigenous communities in maintaining deep cultural knowledge when these principles have not been realized, consequently limiting the learning and transmission of their knowledges and languages. In response to the complex socio-political and structural issues influencing students’ access and engagement in school-based cultural programs, this review seeks to investigate the following: ‘Does Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander school student access to cultural and language programs have an impact on their educational engagement and learner identities?’

Methodology

Using the systematic methodology described in Chap. 2, this review is distinguished from narrative reviews through its emphasis on ‘transparent, structured and comprehensive approaches to searching the literature and its requirement for [the] formal synthesis of research findings’ (Bearman et al., 2012, p. 625). Using protocols described in the PICoFootnote 1 framework (Santos et al., 2007), this review focuses on the impact of school efforts to establish cultural and/or language programs and practices in support of Indigenous students’ identity and knowledge acquisition. Using this systematic approach, the review identifies evidence of the efficacy of these programs, their impact on students’ sense of identity and connections to their community and Country, schools’ connections to local Indigenous communities, and the effect these programs have on Indigenous schooling success.

The review identified 1407 studies for initial review which was externally verified by a second team member by applying inclusion and exclusion protocols adopted by the Aboriginal Voices team (Lowe et al., 2019). The PRISMAFootnote 2 checklist (Moher et al., 2009) (Fig. 3.1) captures the methodical application of the inclusion/exclusion protocols to the studies, which reduced the number of studies to a final 27 that met all six stages of inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Fig. 3.1
A flow diagram illustrates P R I S M A for the inclusion and exclusion process, which includes initial investigation where n equals 1372, the papers go through six protocol criteria. Documents meeting sixth protocol criteria where n equals 27. In between each process exclusion also happens.

PRISMA flow diagram representing inclusion and exclusion process

Full size image

Once analyzed using NVivo, the findings were grouped into the four themes used in this report: (1) Indigenous peoples’ attachment to culture, (2) the role of the school, (3) language planning and (4) the impact of programs on stakeholders.

Analysis

Theme 1: Indigenous Communities—Cultural Attachment and Aspirations

Vernacular terms such as ‘community’/Indigenous/local identity, cultural knowledge, language/lingo, Place/Country and Dreaming to name a few are used to describe the complex, relational concepts that acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ feelings of moral, social and cultural connections to their unique knowledges (Biddle & Swee, 2012; Disbray, 2016; Lowe, 2017; Martin, 2017). While many of the studies in this review focused on remote locations where language and cultural practices are still practiced,Footnote 3 all of those tagged to this theme identified the positive impact of programs that accorded to the community’s language and/or cultural aspirations, and a hope of its curative impact on the levels of intergenerational community trauma caused through their lost connections to Place (Purdie et al., 2010).

Community Connectedness to Country

The construct of ‘Country’ and belonging were ever-present in many of the findings, with Biddle and Swee (2012), Douglas (2011) and Martin (2017) all noting the relationship between Indigenous well-being and each community’s desire to access and transmit their language and culture (Hobson et al., 2010). This assertion was even more pronounced when communities saw that learning their ‘lingo’ provided a bridge to their sense of belonging to and intimate knowledge about who they are. This process of ‘re-awakening’ their relationship to this knowledge grounded the community in an increasing desire to connect to the stories of Country and responsibilities they have to it and their kin (Anderson, 2010; Colquhoun & Dockery, 2012). This sense of ‘being’ on and ‘belonging’ to Country were recurring themes taken up by Godinho et al. (2015), who noted the particular strength exhibited by those who could situate themselves on ancestral country or articulate cultural knowledge while being off-Country. Osborne and Guenther’s (2013) findings underscored the particular benefits accrued by young adults living on Country and engaging in cultural practices. Further, they highlighted a positive impact when active engagement with Country occurred, especially when it was seen to uphold their sense of a unique identity expressed through language and knowing culture (Colquhoun & Dockery, 2012; Douglas, 2011).

Indigenous Enculturation

A number of studies reported on the particular benefits for Indigenous youth who participated in cultural programs that facilitated the transmission of knowledge that intimately connected them to their community and its history. While Colquhoun and Dockery (2012) noted the deleterious intergenerational impacts of colonization and its particular demoralizing effect on generations of children, studies by Lane (2010), Anderson (2010) McNaboe and Poetsch (2010) and Biddle and Swee (2012) recognized the benefits stemming from programs that iteratively enculturated students through the school providing quality, coherent cultural and language programs. These latter studies noted students’ heightened sense of self-worthiness, cultural identity, personal resilience and sense of community.

Valuing Elders

The important agentic role of Elders in driving the development of cultural programs is seen in Anderson’s (2010) decade-long, whole-of-town project of re-introducing the Wiradjuri language. Having held their language and cultural knowledge, he noted that Elders proactively initiated community language programs, supporting Wiradjuri families to participate in community education programs as well as many school programs. McNaboe and Poetsch (2010), Douglas (2011) and Osborne et al. (2017, p. 37) similarly identified the role of Elders as protectors of knowledge, advocates and teachers, frequently liaising with schools to support language learning as well as the children’s broader cultural education.

Knowledge and Its Impact on Community

There were many studies that identified the positive impact when the community supported the schools’ cultural programs. Lowe (2017) noted the progress made in relational capacity building between the language and classroom teachers, as they learnt language together and co-developed and taught programs that over time infiltrated the general life of the school. Murray’s (2017) study on bilingual education on the Tiwi Islands identified a further example of the key work of Elders who constantly sought opportunities for the intergenerational re-enactment of cultural practices with teachers, students and Aboriginal school workers. Similarly, McLeod, Verdon and Kneebone (2014), Lowe (2017) and Green (2010) noted a shift in community well-being when their children could engage in learning coherent and staged language learning. It was seen that these programs boosted the communities’ sense of cultural custodianship and sparked a desire to awaken ‘sleeping’ epistemological knowledge.

While the first theme identifies issues that relate broadly to Indigenous communities’ interests in supporting students’ access to cultural programs, the second theme looks at the school as a particular site of cultural exposure, how this was achieved, its commitment and understanding and the issues faced in their attempts to establish programs.

Theme 2: The Role of School and School Systems

Policy

Many of the studies highlighted the national and state policy frameworks that have been established to underpin the development of local and state programs. Studies by Disbray (2016) and Simpson, Caffrey and McConvell (2009) highlight how the overlapping policies of funding, curriculum and language strategies often led to jurisdictional confusion and conflict between funding bodies and Indigenous communities. However, Disbray’s (2016) study does note the potential of policy, such as the national languages curriculum, to support the establishment of quality classroom programs (ACARA, 2013) and with it, the potential to support community advocacy for this program. Yet, as much as the school can be seen to be a key to the success of these programs, Disbray’s study also highlighted the consequence when schools ‘sacrificed’ these programs if they appeared to compete with other policy priorities such as the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) external assessments. Even schools who initially garnered community support to establish a culture and/or language program, later failed to recognize the loss of trust and goodwill when they dismissed the community’s historic investment of social and cultural capital in these programs (Simpson et al., 2009; Disbray, 2016; Cairney et al., 2017). Conversely, Lowe’s (2017) study noted that the act of schools supporting a community’s socio-cultural aspirations enabled them to forge highly productive collaborations with local language advocates and tutors, Aboriginal staff and teachers.

Leadership

The need for insightful, but strong leadership was one of the more significant findings of our review, with many studies noting a correlation between what was acknowledged as ‘effective’ cultural programs and ongoing, strong executive support. Lane (2010), Douglas (2011) and Guenther, Disbray and Osborne (2015) found that though the efficacy of a program was measured by its ability to connect learning to community and Country, it’s success was in the hands of school leaders who were seen to hold the power to resource and protect the program. Lane’s (2010) study, which unpacked this issue of leadership, suggested that a key element of effective school administration was to find ways to bridge the chasm between the aspirations of the diverse language groups and families in their South Coast community, and then advance a local language program that had broad community and school support. The importance of these findings was evidenced in studies by Lowe (2017), Anderson (2010), Osborne et al. (2017) and Martin (2017) who each identified the importance of co-leadership between schools, local language advocates and Elders as a way of garnering community acceptance of programs that sought to strengthen student identity.

Theme 3: Language Planning

Systemic Support in Building Community Involvement

Many of the studies provide insights into issues seen as pivotal to the success of school-based programs. Anderson’s (2010) and Lowe’s (2017) both identified the key role of the Elders in establishing school programs. They found that this participation not only shored up the school program, but facilitated its expansion across the town’s six schools, while galvanizing wider support among the largely non-Aboriginal community. Disbray (2016), McNaboe and Poetsch (2010) and Lane (2010) noted that the reward for the months of language planning and curriculum development was the elevated levels of relational trust when families saw programs incorporate rich local knowledge into their classroom programs.

While Douglas’ (2011) study highlighted the consequences when schools failed to meet community aspirations and employed inappropriate people in the project, studies by Anderson (2010), Maier (2010) and McNaboe and Poetsch (2010) identified that when structural issues are addressed, schools experienced better relationships with families, and a greater willingness to teach and support the program. In all, these studies highlighted that improved levels of trust led to the development of productive pedagogic relationships with teachers and the opportunities for local knowledges to inform classroom learning.

Cultural Programs

Bobongie’s (2017) study on Torres Strait Islander girls attending boarding school highlighted the consequences when students’ cultural aspirations were restrained as a result of the school being unwilling to provide cultural instruction. Supported by Osborne et al. (2017), this finding noted that students from remote locations needed to maintain regular contact with their communities and its day-to-day rendering of cultural practices, as these grounded their identity, supported their cultural well-being and resilience and critically, taught them about ‘living good ways’ (p. 13). As noted by Guenther et al.’s (2015) the ‘authority’ of any of these programs rested squarely on the participation of the Elders and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge.

Theme 4: Impact of Programs

Cultural Connectedness

One of the key findings was evidence of the positive impact of authentic language and/or cultural programs on students. Armstrong et al. (2012) found that these programs supported student resilience by providing them with the knowledge and tools to negotiate their Indigenous cultural identity.Footnote 4 These findings echoed those by Biddle and Swee (2012), who noted that student local language use supported deeper cultural learning and fortified their community’s unique identity.

Martin (2017) similarly noted that parents clearly understood the importance of opportunities to reconnect with community knowledge and their Country by learning about their families and community’s history. This resonates with the studies by Harrison and Greenfield (2011), Colquhoun and Dockery (2012), Cairney et al. (2017) who found that many parents looked to schools explicitly to teach their children about local knowledge and history.

Nurturing Well-Being Through Language and Culture

The study by Biddle and Swee (2012) identified Indigenous economic well-being as a key to each community’s overall capacity and ability to be involved in cultural activities. It was noted that some communities appeared better able to marshal the financial and cultural resources needed to establish, participate in and sustain cultural programs. Bobongie’s (2017) study argued that the high level of boarding student’s two-way disconnection from their homes and school could be ameliorated through programs that provided regular opportunities for them to participate in empowering ‘women business’. The issue of individual and community well-being was a focus of Osborne et al. (2017) study as it emphasized that the power of community-focused cultural immersion was their ‘everydayness’, where commonplace access contextualized children’s learning within a powerful dynamic of intergenerational cultural transmission.

Broader Learning Impact

While the assertion that learning a second language assists in literacy acquisition in a child’s first language, limited research exists to test the veracity of these claims. Having been asked to verify this, Chandler et al. (2008) investigated whether learning an Aboriginal language assisted the acquisition of English literacy skills. This study of 118 students in four schools found that year 2 students’ exposure to a local Aboriginal language program had a higher score in a phonics-based non-word reading assessment than students who had no access to a second-language program. This study provides some limited evidence that students’ learning of a second (e.g. local Aboriginal) language can enhanced their capacity to improve the acquisition of English literacy skills.

Discussion

This review provides evidence of the significance and value for both Indigenous children and their families, when they were given opportunities to actively engage with school programs that facilitated an immersive experience in a local language and/or culture. This review identified that when students had access to authentic, community-centric cultural programs, it appeared to improve their engagement with school. Further, evidence suggests that community language learning has the effect of re-connecting Indigenous students to the unique body of ancestral cultural knowledge and gain new insights into the epistemic mysteries of their Country, improving their self-well-being and going some way to reduce the consequences of intergenerational trauma (Colquhoun & Dockery, 2012).

Read in the light of the critical Indigenous methodology underpinning this review, these studies speak to student and community aspirations to know and identify themselves through their cultures and languages (Guenther et al., 2015). Secondly, the studies highlighted a cumulative value to communities, where this contact was shown to enable a re-acquaintance with long-hidden practices and local epistemologies (MacMahon, 2013). A third finding centers on the voices of students and their families who spoke of their desire to rebuild connections to family and Elders (Biddle & Swee, 2012; Murray, 2017). Finally, the studies evidenced community agency, where Elders and families applied pressure on schools to support the establishment of programs that met their cultural and educational aspirations for their children (Lowe, 2017; Osborne et al., 2017).

While much of the research was undertaken in remote areas, there was a small but powerful body of studies which focused on the efforts of Indigenous communities in regional or urban locations. These identified the struggles that schools had in establishing programs when there was limited language knowledge within urbanized and largely mixed Indigenous communities (Green, 2010). These diverse and displaced populations of Indigenous people came with fractured histories, intergeneration resistance, competing standpoint positions and with diverse cultural memories. Often these issues impacted on how local cultural and language reclamation programs could be developed, especially when there was little linguistic content that could be used and taught (Lowe, 2017). While this reality is widely recognized, there is little research which describes how local community aspirations to learn their culture and their language can be accomplished (Simpson et al., 2019). Unresolved questions also remain in regard to schools, especially in respect to identifying which language is to be taught and what teaching methodologies best supports effective learning within and across different cultural environments. However, across all of the studies, there was no doubt that community supported local culture and/or language programs have the potential to positively affect Indigenous students to ‘grow up strong’ (Martin, 2017, p. 96).

Conclusion

Overall, the studies paint a picture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities’ clearly articulated aspirations for their children to have a deep ongoing relationship to the cultural knowledge of their Country (MacMahon, 2013; Martin, 2017). While there is no shortage of policy rhetoric that speaks of Indigenous peoples’ rights to access and learn their cultural knowledges and languages (e.g. NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs, 2013), the realities are that contradictory policies and a lack of sustained effort and resources have undermined these aspirations (Simpson et al., 2009). Limited as the research is, it is clear that while there is overwhelming support across Indigenous communities (Martin, 2017) for this long-term endeavor, the broader schooling system has largely failed to affect the educational levers needed to make systemic and school policy promises an educational reality. Yet, notwithstanding the actions of governments, teachers, community educators, Elders, Indigenous language teachers, cultural mentors and linguists continue to work tirelessly to provide students with the experiences and knowledge that underpins each student’s positive sense of identity, and the knowledge, skills and understanding required to develop deep constitutive epistemic relationships bridging the past with present and aspirational futures. This work has been shown to be critical to the cultural survival of Indigenous Australians.