We start this chapter by introducing ourselves.

Melinda: I reflect on thirty years of professional and academic practices supporting health science education and higher education curriculum. With a near-completed PhD on academic identities, a story of PhD as People, I am interested in story in all forms, and value the pleasure of deep-time learning with First Nations Elders and knowledge holders.

Bruce: I am an educator with thirty years of teaching in science, management and psychology. I am passionate about learning experiences that lead to deeper levels of human connection and being. My time on country has been profoundly rewarding.

The National and Local Context for Cultural Competence

Universities across Australia place Indigenous cultural competence as a core graduate capability as a national project and priority. Specifically, developing cultural competence sits within social justice ethos, and involves the practice of developing a certain critical consciousness about being aware of one’s own biases. The aim is to prepare staff and students to successfully engage and work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and communities, through a beginning awareness of Aboriginal cultural perspectives, and to use this foundation to work together with people whose culture and biography may differ from our own. According to a senior Aboriginal academic leader at an Australian university, a critical consciousness is: ‘… about being aware of one’s own cultural values and world view and their implications for making respectful, reflective and reasoned choices, including the capacity to imagine and collaborate across cultural boundaries’ (personal communication, August, 2016).

Widening participation in the context of Indigenous Australian higher education has been discussed as a policy priority for more than four decades (Behrendt, Larkin, Griew, & Kelly, 2012), as Indigenous students are one of six priority equity groups (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent, & Scales, 2008). Grote suggested that this priority supports the national employability agenda, thereby working to better meet the needs of industry and communities, and continue to foreground the role of graduate attributes as preparation for a future workforce (2008). The aim to promote IACC is a major project of Universities Australia and discussed within the Guiding Principles for Developing Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities (2011), which states that ‘Indigenous knowledges and perspectives be embedded in all university curricula and that ICC be included as a graduate attribute, with the need for staff training to achieve this goal’ (Recommendations 1, 2 and 4). The urgency of this strategy was upgraded within Universities Australia Indigenous Strategy 2017–2020 (Universities Australia, 2017) requiring all 39 Australian public universities to embed Indigenous content and experiences within courses. In response, universities aim to develop curriculum and pedagogical frameworks to educate students to begin their journey of becoming culturally competent, including the impact of forms of bias within education.

What is a Bias, and Why Focus on Unconscious Bias?

A bias refers to a disposition, implicit or explicit, to reach a particular kind of conclusion or outcome, or to remain in one (Kenyon & Beaulac, 2014). Sometimes, it is used to refer to the adoption of a particular perspective from which some things become salient and others merge into the background. Biases are generally rooted in and riddled with stereotypes and prejudices. A stereotype is a simplistic image or distorted truth about a person or group based on a prejudgment of habits, traits, abilities or expectations (Weinstein & Mellen, 1997). Drawing on cognitive psychology, there are many forms of bias, for example, confirmation bias, over-confident bias, availability bias and anchoring bias (Robbins, Judge, Millett & Boyle, 2013). Within the context of education, there may also be belief bias, instruction bias and judgement bias, the latter which plays out particularly in relation to educational assessment.

We choose to focus on unconscious bias as it has been declared to be an obstacle to cultural competence development and is akin to having blind spots, which poses implications for educators (Bellack, 2015). Furthermore, unconscious biases affect all of our relationships, and understanding our own biases is the first step towards improving the interactions we have with all people, and is essential if we hope to build deep community connections. A seminal definition offered by the Equality Challenge Unit (2013, p.1) states that: ‘Unconscious bias is a term used to describe the associations that we hold which, despite being outside our conscious awareness, can have a significant influence on our attitudes and behaviour. Regardless of how fair-minded we believe ourselves to be, most people have some degree of unconscious bias. This means that we automatically respond to others (e.g. people from different racial or ethnic groups) in positive or negative ways. These associations are difficult to override, regardless of whether we recognise them to be wrong, because they are deeply ingrained into our thinking and emotions.’

Guide to Debiasing Teaching and Learning Through the Affordances of an Indigenous Australian Cultural Competence Curriculum

The aim of developing a working guide to teaching–learning strategies is to assist our students develop into sensitive, and culturally competent practitioners who are self-aware, who strive to avoid unintended social hurts or discriminatory actions, and who learn to consciously align their behaviours with their good intentions to mitigate the negative effects of unconscious bias (Bellack, 2015). According to Kenyon and Beaulac (2014), the literature on cognitive and social psychology approaches to understanding debiasing indicates that teaching people about biases does not reliably debias them. Therefore, the following guide describes observed biases in higher education contexts, and recommends a strategy used by the authors or colleagues.

Exploring Biases in a Bi-Cultural Divide

Predominant knowledge practices drawn from a Western notion of knowledge, which privileges the individual (Connell, 2007), alongside a deficit discourse (Lowitja Institute, 2018), collectively feeds bias and stereotypes that can result in the use of disempowering language and practices. Prime examples of deficit discourse are when Indigenous Australian health and education needs are described using terms like ‘gaps’, ‘the Aboriginal problem’, ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘the intervention’. These labels and language further work to pathologise individuals, and lead to group stereotyping, known to be at odds with a socially just and strengths-based curriculum.

A recommended primary strategy is to expand knowledge work in higher education curriculum (see Ashwin, 2014). Embedding Indigenous knowledges as per the Indigenous Education Strategy (IES) offers learners the awareness that there are many forms of knowledge, for example through art, story, dance, song, dreaming etc. This can be achieved by inviting conversations and building relationships with Elders who support cultural competence curriculum. Offering their collectivist worldviews and cultural orientations allows learners to recognise known forms of power and privilege through curriculum. Examples at Charles Sturt University include:

  • ‘Working with Indigenous Australian Staff’ guide

  • Wiradjuri Elders co-facilitation on Indigenous Cultural Competence Program (ICCP) professional development workshops with the uImagine group, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences teachers (2017–2018)

  • Elder facilitation and mentoring during on-country cultural immersion experiences, with the DVC (Student Services) team, Three Rivers University Health Department (TRUHD) group of interdisciplinary health professionals (2019)

  • Elder invitation to membership of faculty-based Indigenous Curriculum working groups (e.g., Faculty of Science, 2019)

  • Elder invitation to perform Welcome (Smoking and tree planting) ceremony within Orientation annually, and other events, ad-hoc (e.g., Engineering, 2016)

  • Elder engagement with collaborative scholarship projects and expert panels, led by School of Community Health & Gulaay (2018-).

In examples such as these, the deficit discourse can be flipped by asking: Why was Australian school curriculum devoid of a realistic historical education in Australia in the 1970s and onwards? Why were students led to believe racial untruths about most Aboriginal people?

Melinda’s Journey: I have had the pleasure of co-facilitating workshops and on-country cultural immersions with the Elders. The manner in which all strengths are at the table, or on the land, means no question or comment from any participant can go unnoticed, or unanswered. I myself have experienced anger, frustration and deep shame of being a white person educated within a system that perpetuated historical lies, biases and untruths. When hearing the authentic stories and versions of history from the Elders, whilst uncomfortable and challenging, deep learning and change can only proceed when we sit together and support each other. The notion of sitting down places was gifted to me through mentoring offered by Uncle Brian (Personal communication, December 2019). Within this worldview, sitting down places are a welcoming place for everyone to sit down, reflect on life, make decisions, act, breathe and share. Sitting down places offer deeply relational ways to enable equitable practices based on cultural appreciation and personal sensitivity (Universities Australia, 2019).

Organisational Culture and Education Policy

Observing organisational cultures help us to understand the places in which we work, and relationships with leadership and forms of power as formal and political processes. According to Fulop, Linstead, Lilley and Clarke (2009), the culture of an organisation is a unique configuring of norms, values, beliefs, and ways of behaving to get things done. There are the basic assumptions of the organisation, the artefacts and creations, and the way in which the organisation handles dilemmas and challenges. However, there is no one single culture that defines an organisation. Cultures are heterogeneous, built on many sub-cultures that may diverge deliberately from each other, and the increasingly corporatised core mission of a university.

Education policy can be used to make adjustments to organisational culture, and can thereby be used to promote or demote specific groups and sub-cultures within the organisation. As the sub-culture which better understands Indigenous communities and ideologies is better supported, they gain influence to affect a positive cultural change to the broader organisational culture, including the leaders and policy influencers. This can become an iterative process. For example, at Charles Sturt University the Gulaay team aims to offer many bridges within the university, across groups and teams, and between the university and communities. Recent feedback into a whole of university policy review process realised an increase in support for strengthening the Indigenous Australian Content in Courses Policy (IACCP), and Assessment Policy to support student experience of developing their cultural competence. Systematic policy-driven processes ensure formal course reviews adhere to policy, and that best practices within disciplines are achieved.

A recommended strategy is to focus and strengthen the sub-culture which better understands Indigenous communities and ideologies within our organisation. Provide policy and moral support for members and encourage them to propagate their culture within the organisation. This might be exploring opportunities to run workshops and discussions with senior leaders, course designers, educators, students to discuss the importance and meaning of protocols, for example, when to offer an Acknowledgement of Country, are we in deficit discourse, where are our biases being revealed? Ultimately, we can work on making further changes to policy, and thereby further change culture.

Outcomes-Based Education for Attaining Graduate Attributes

Outcomes-based educational approaches (Harden, Crosby & Davis, 1999) or graduate attributes evolved over two decades in response to the graduate employability agenda in Australia (Barrie, 2007; Oliver, 2013; Oliver & Jorre de St Jorre, 2018). Depending on the main driver for graduate attribute statements, there may be an industry bias. An individualistic bias is inherent within Western-oriented learning theories and pedagogies, which privileges individual attainment of learning and achievement of said outcomes. Where learning is constructed socially, for example through social construction and discourse, there may be a bias against the sense of community learning, peer learning, or co-construction.

An analysis of graduate attribute statements from 39 Australian universities over the past 15 years revealed that social inclusion was frequently articulated (Bosanquet et al., 2012). Examples include:

  • respect for and appreciation of diversity;

  • possessing a global or international perspective;

  • commitment to equity and social justice;

  • having a sense of social responsibility, and participating in the community.

At Charles Sturt University, teachers are encouraged to focus on a graduate learning outcome within their subjects or modules. Banks of generic learning outcome statements for the intended curriculum can be contextualised for disciplines. For example: ‘Examine own biases and prejudices that may consciously or unconsciously exist toward cultural differences and actively work towards transforming them.’

A recommended strategy is to use this key opportunity to drive development of cultural competence at the curriculum level. There is a risk that many disciplines will engage with learning outcomes in a tokenistic way to meet policy requirements, a form of superficial compliance that holds many risks. The real opportunity here is to influence cultural shifts at all levels, for example, represent our sub-cultures within the organisation, have authentic discussions with course designers from all disciplines, model ways to bridge the bi-cultural divide, open communication to bring Elders into discussions and offer a form of academic status equivalent to their cultural standing.

Curriculum and Pedagogy

It is well known that curriculum is political, contested, and the site of and for transformation (Shay & Peseta, 2016). Curriculum has the potential to perpetuate and reinforce unconscious biases through forms of knowledge and cognitive labour within a university culture or cultural identity (Equality Challenge Unit, 2013). Forms of academic, cognitive and programme bias reside alongside biases within conceptual curriculum frameworks and teaching practices originating from a Eurocentric and Westernised notion of knowledge. Frustrations may be experienced by people who are unable to recognise that the development of cultural competence is not linear, and often fraught with complexities, as it challenges their assumptions of culture and self (Buehler, Gere, Dallavis & Haviland, 2009). Furthermore, Indigenous knowledges are representative of First Nation’s people, which are diverse, offering a common misconception that there is one form of Indigenous knowledge within Australia. Also, the expression and sharing of Indigenous knowledges are grounded in country, language, story, song, dance and art, all with their unique features.

The aim of embedding the graduate outcomes in curriculum is not just to meet the employability skills agenda for industry, but to create a more harmonious society. Within teaching education, the goal of establishing an anti-bias curriculum is where many viewpoints are respected and multiple forms of knowledge are generated. An anti-bias pedagogy aligns with a social justice ethos, inclusive pedagogical approaches, and the creation of the safest spaces possible for learning and inquiry to flourish. Indigenous pedagogies supporting Indigenous curriculum appreciates all forms of knowing, sharing, learning and growing. According to Yunkaporta (2019), Indigenous thinking is different as it knows the world is complex, and ways to communicating this knowledge is done through pictures, carvings and stories.

A recommended strategy is to recognise that the best teaching approach for each situation might be different. Allowing a range of pedagogies to exist within each course, and to allow topics related to Indigenous culture to use more appropriate pedagogies, such as transformative learning approaches (described below). While we acknowledge that each pedagogy is loaded with bias to some degree, a mixture of pedagogies can serve to mitigate the effect of bias.

Transformative learning approaches by Jack Mezirow (2000) is an adult learning theory that originated in the late 1970s and is particularly suited to support cultural competence development. Central to the theory is the argument that adults experience a catalyst that causes them to question their worldview, the disorienting dilemma, which leads to a fundamental change in the way that they view the world. Additionally, the learner engages in critical self-reflection which entails examining the influences around oneself that contribute to a worldview change, or examining those influences as they apply to oneself and one’s worldview, respectively (Kitchenham, 2012). This is best illustrated with a sample learning activity below, offering reflective prompts into our inherent and habitual attitudes (Bullen & Roberts, 2018).

Academic Disciplines

Students are encultured to learn within the culture and conventions of the field of knowledge or professional practice domain where the learning process is inherently contextualised. The historical origin of the discipline and practices may be considered different from, or even at odds with, social justice and cultural competence national agendas. At times there are forms of bias towards disciplinary autonomy, evidenced as push-back, resistance or neglect to work towards a graduate attributes policy in lieu of disciplinary knowledge. Disciplinary biases may surface within interdisciplinary curriculum strategies, arising as tensions between individuals from differing home disciplines. There may be disparity of interest and effort between disciplines working towards the strategic goals and policy mandates as they grapple with their contextualisation of cultural competence and navigate their personal learning journeys.

The pedagogical framework adopted by Charles Sturt University works through a critically reflexive process that includes looking at the positioning of a disciplinary field and professional practice, and reflecting on the legacy of past practices that may have perpetuated forms of injustice. The development work from the Gulaay team invites each discipline to reflect on the historical practices and policies, for example, forms of power and privilege in the dominant beliefs that informed the field of Psychology. The approach may also include viewing forms of research bias that led to the adoption of the development of policy and practice standards. Academics in the fields of Policing, Law & Justice, Social Work and Psychology at Charles Sturt University (to name a few) work to ensure their critical eye over curriculum and teaching avoids a blame and shame approach, preferring to model equity and advocacy for continuing changes.

A recommended strategy is to invite academics to reflect on their discipline’s response to steps towards reconciliation. Is the discipline taking appropriate steps? Where are the gaps when compared to other disciplines? How much does my discipline simply rely on the goodwill of its members? Can we look more deeply into the biases behind the statement ‘That won’t work for my discipline’?

Teacher Philosophies

According to Mackaway, Winchester-Seeto, Coulson, and Harvey (2011), individual academics, perhaps driven by a particular educational theory and philosophy, can influence graduate attributes and their impact on curriculum and student experience. Implicit and explicit biases reside within individuals, including teachers, and can surface within the teacher inquiry process (Alhadad, Thompson, Knight, Lewis & Lodge, 2018). For example, learning through instruction holds implicit levels of power whilst learning through participation is designed to allow all students to undertake a range of experience-based learning activities (Bosanquet, Winchester-Seeto & Rowe, 2012).

Teachers are biased towards their preferred pedagogies. For example, the authors are biased by their preference to facilitate learning by creating opportunities for reflection and illuminating responses for deeper engagement, rather than direct instruction. We prefer extended abstract and complex phenomena, such as cultural competence, rather than concrete formulae and step-by-step procedures. We scrutinize the content of case studies and the practice of role plays as modes for learning about cultural competence, as both approaches open the possibility to explore biases.

Adapting our teaching philosophies and approaches towards an inclusive learning environment and safe learning spaces support learner feelings of discomfort and unconscious bias. Academic teachers often do not feel adequately skilled to facilitate learning in this way and require deep learning on country and immersive learning experiences with Elders and knowledge holders to build confidence and connections.

A recommended strategy for developing culturally sensitive teaching philosophies is broadening the repertoire of teaching practices available to the teachers, providing professional development which models a range of different teaching pedagogies. As teachers experience a range of pedagogies, including socially constructed and Indigenous pedagogies, they are able to reflect on where and how they might work in their discipline.

Student Assessment of Learning

Current curriculum assessment approaches privilege academic success based on Western ideas of learning and achievement. An alternative framing for student success within IACC curriculum lies in developing and building relational and reflective capabilities, for example, seeing connections and patterns, being critically reflexive, noting misconceptions, sitting amidst contested and complex situations, and building partnerships with communities. Furthermore, according to the Indigenous Advancement Strategy Evaluation Framework (2018) good evaluation is systematic, defensible, credible and unbiased. It is respectful of diverse voices and worldviews, with appropriate processes for collaborating with Indigenous Australians.

Within the advanced cultural competence online module offered to probationary teachers within a Graduate Certificate at Charles Sturt University, attempts to fit a grading rubric for the task of producing a lesson plan and written reflective assessment risked forms of judgement bias by markers. A preferred approach was to offer a reflective (conceptual) framework as a writing structure, outline a set of feedback criteria (e.g., depth, application), and an exemplar of an appropriate piece of work. In this way, adult learners chose their specific focus in relation to their current teaching context making it authentic and relevant to the real-world. Facilitators aim to suspend judgement about marks or grades, preferring to focus on the task and the contexts impacting teaching and student experience by offering feedback on the suitability of the lesson plan in relation to cultural protocols, university policy and strategy for embedding Indigenous content in their curriculum.

A recommended strategy is to acknowledge that student assessment does not have to be based on specific knowledge or skills outcomes. An alternative is encouraging teachers to explore modes of assessment that include evidence of reflexive practice and progress towards ideals or self-actualisation. We cannot insist that each student arrives at a particular point in their journey, only that they engage with their journey. The growth of wisdom cannot be measured in the same way as the growth of knowledge. Where assessment aims to be inclusive and integrated to build self-efficacy, and in response to complex learning outcomes and content, the following principles may apply:

  • Focus on the process not the outcome;

  • Regard feedback as a continual process over an extended period of time offering the opportunity to learn, practice, reflect;

  • Contextualise assessment tasks in daily life;

  • Utilise reflection as a way to determine learning needs, next steps;

  • Offer multi-method, multi-perspective approaches where students can think and act inter-culturally.

Ongoing Issues and Conclusions

Higher education remains predominantly behavioural in teaching, assessment, and in defining student learning outcomes. The drift towards professional entry as the driving force for many courses has reinforced the behavioural pedagogy, and brings about a bias towards knowledge and task capability, rather than nuanced transformation. Questioning the framework of knowledge, skills and application as the educational norm may offer space for reflexive practice, presence and identity to form part of a richer university experience.

Our goal of recognising and reducing bias isn’t to make everyone feel and act the same, or feel ridiculed for their beliefs and actions. Increasing our diversity, inclusiveness, and cultural competency requires us to undertake a long journey of continuously challenging our perceptions and slowing down our impulse to judge instantaneously and reactively. This means we must continually confront unconscious biases that are problematic at the level of the organisation, curriculum, communities, and our learners.

As co-authors, Bruce and Melinda opened the chapter with a question as to whether Indigenous Australian cultural competence curriculum can work to debias teaching and learning in higher education? We believe with leadership, connections and consultation, together we can work towards shifting our own biases, and those inherent within universities. Ultimately, the result will be more conscious, inclusive and humane organisations with greater opportunity for all.