Decolonising Schooling Practices through Relationality and Reciprocity: Comprehensive Study Guide

Structural Framework and Principles of the Culture, Community and Curriculum Project (CCCP)

  • Project Scope and Overview:

    • The Culture, Community and Curriculum Project (CCCP) was a three-year pilot study (2016–2018) supported by funding from the Ian Potter Foundation [RG152361] and the UNSW School of Education.
    • The study operated across five government schools within a single cluster in Australia, comprising primary schools and one high school (with one primary school in the cluster declining participation).
    • Project participants included 15 classroom teachers and 8 Aboriginal community members, alongside Aboriginal Education Officers (AEOs) and school principals, with some community members operating across multiple school sites.
    • Conceptualized to address systemic issues of power, tokenism, deficit assumptions, and the reproduction of race hierarchies in formal schooling systems.
    • Founded on the premise that Aboriginal parents and community members must hold a genuine, meaningful role in education decision-making and classroom practices—including determining what is taught, how it is taught, and by whom (Gillan, Mellor, and Krakouer 2017; Lowe et al. 2019; McLaughlin et al. 2012).

  • Core Objectives:

    • Overturn deficit assumptions held by the formal education system regarding a perceived lack of family interest or support in Aboriginal communities (Lowe 2017).
    • Encourage culturally responsive pedagogies that utilize relational and reciprocal learning frameworks to embed local Aboriginal perspectives (Vass 2017).
    • Benefit all students across the school community, rather than functioning strictly as an isolated intervention for Aboriginal learners.

  • Theoretical and Methodological Foundations:

    • Indigenist Relatedness Theory: Anchored in Martin's (2008) three-fold framework:
    • Ways of Knowing and the Project of Critique: Re-centres micro-stories to restore voices that speak back to dominant colonial narratives, addressing how Indigenous peoples have been oppressed by theory (Smith 2012).
    • Ways of Being and the Project of Re-framing: Reframes critiques to restore Aboriginal terms of reference, holding educators and researchers accountable for the relatedness of their thoughts, values, and actions.
    • Ways of Doing and the Project of Harmonisation: Reconstructs and re-presents research stories to reconcile interface tensions between institutional demands and Aboriginal research practices.
    • Indigenous Relationality Paradigm: Follows Moreton-Robinson's (2016) premise that social research must begin with awareness of proper relationships with the world, governed by respect, responsibility, generosity, obligation, and reciprocity.
    • Decolonial Epistemological Disobedience: Aligns with Mignolo's (2011, 2016) concept of "delinking" from imperial/colonial knowledge apparatuses, transitioning from Western control to "knowledge-making for well-being."

Policy Context and Historical Critique of Mainstream Schooling

  • Tokenism versus Genuine Integration:

    • Mainstream schooling frequently confines Aboriginal perspectives to isolated calendar events (e.g., NAIDOC Week, Sorry Day, Reconciliation Day), special assemblies, flag-raising ceremonies (Mathews and Aberdeen 2004), or tightly controlled units of work (Lowe and Yunkaporta 2013).
    • Critique of tokenistic practice by community members: "Schools don't open their doors enough. They need to open their doors more. Not just because it's NAIDOC Day. Not just because it's Sorry Day. That's only two days in how many? Fifty-two weeks, or whatever it is? You know? That's only two days" (Aunty Mavis, Community Member, 2016).
    • Common teacher resistance: "Well, we can't include Indigenous perspectives in every geography lesson" (Researcher Fieldnotes, 2016).
    • While Indigenous perspectives are often treated as extraneous additions, the constant inclusion of Eurocentric/colonial perspectives across every lesson is rarely interrogated, reinforcing white privilege and racial hierarchies (Leonardo and Grubb 2014; Montgomery 2013).
    • Reverting to a curriculum lacking cultural diversity is actively harmful to learners (Leonardo and Grubb 2014).

  • Historical and Policy Landscape in Australia:

    • Indigenous communities maintained effective teaching and learning practices for tens of thousands of years prior to Western schooling being imposed ~200 years ago to serve imperial agendas (Battiste 2013; Shay 2016).
    • Settler-colonial schooling historically functioned to exclude, segregate, assimilate, and indoctrinate Aboriginal peoples, creating a rational legacy of mistrust (Beresford 2012; Phillips 2012).
    • Policy developments since the 1970s (Watts 1980) and the establishment of the National Aboriginal Education Policy in 1989 (Beresford 2012; Whatman and Duncan 2012) have mandated Indigenous representation.
    • Contemporary policy requirements include:
    • AITSL Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (2011): Focus Area 1.4 (Strategies for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students) and Focus Area 2.4 (Understanding and respecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to promote reconciliation).
    • ACARA Cross-Curriculum Priorities: Mandates the integration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures across all learning areas.
    • Implementation gaps persist due to teacher fears of causing offense (Baynes 2016), lack of preparation (Craven, Yeung, and Han 2014; Ma Rhea 2015), deficit mindsets (Morrison et al. 2019; Vass 2017), and a congested curriculum (Lowe 2017; Nakata 2011; Salter and Maxwell 2016).

Researcher Positionality and Relational Dynamics

  • Michelle Bishop: A Gamilaroi woman raised on Dharawal Country. Entered the project as a first-time researcher committed to mutual trust and respect, informed by family stories of schooling's harms and transformative potentials.
  • Greg Vass: Son of 20th-century migrants to Australia; raised without early critical awareness of his whiteness or male privilege. Served as Chief Investigator, working to contest curriculum politics and name institutional privilege.
  • Katherine Thompson: From the USA with a background in teaching in under-resourced contexts and managing school-university partnerships. Focused on school-community relationships while navigating institutional tensions.
  • Relational Research Dynamics: The team purposefully disrupted traditional academic hierarchies, positioning local Aboriginal community members and knowledge holders as the primary authority in decision-making processes.

Operational Mechanics of the CCCP

  • School and Community Setup:
    • Project initiated following consultation with the local Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG), securing principal agreements and formal institutional ethics approval.
    • Primary and high schools entered the project via a staggered rollout across 2016–2018.
  • Workshop Series and Training:
    • Initial workshops prioritized relationship-building grounded in ontology and axiology between community members and teachers (Yunkaporta and Shillingsworth In press).
    • Subsequent workshops covered culturally responsive pedagogies (Vass 2017) to develop co-designed teaching units.
    • Pedagogical focus: Building on student cultural wealth, engaging with the politics of knowledge construction, fostering intercultural fluidity, and provoking socio-political consciousness (Morrison et al. 2019).
  • Design Adaptation and Sustainability:
    • Originally planned for 5–6 week units (5 hours/week community involvement) across two terms (10–12 weeks total).
    • Schools requested extended involvement across full school years and requested additional teachers join (up to 5 teachers in one school).
    • Post-project outcomes: 4 out of 5 schools established ongoing paid or volunteer positions for participating community members.

Professional and Pedagogical Transformations among Teachers

  • Unpacking Initial Hesitations and Deficit Assumptions:
    • Teachers initially reported low confidence, fear of offending, and reliance on surface-level execution.
    • Millie (Waratah Public School, 2017): "I've always felt that I wasn't very good at embedding Aboriginal perspectives in my lessons. It was always, for me, seen as a tick box, and I spoke about Dreamtime, I ticked a box, and that's it… you didn't want to step on any toes, and you didn't want to offend anyone, so you just touched – you just skimmed the surface."
    • Judy (Lilly Pilly Public School, 2017): "I'm blatantly aware how Anglo the room looks. But I guess I don't want to do something that is tokenistic… I think, personally, if you're not going to do it well, don't do it. But obviously it's easy for me to fall back on my comfort zone."
  • Critical Moments and Mindset Shifts:
    • Janet (Grevillea Public School) experienced a pedagogical turning point while teaching a lesson on Aboriginal soldiers in the Boer War who were denied passports to return to Australia due to institutional racism.
    • Janet on relinquishing teacher authority: "It was so confronting for me, initially… it's all about my relationship with the community member, and me looking at myself as a teacher, and reshuffling how I see myself in the room, and moving myself to one side and saying, 'come on, it's not all about you'" (2017).
    • Kim (Grevillea Public School, 2018) on modifying curriculum execution: "…you're not changing the outcomes, but you're changing the syllabus content to suit your community."
  • Moving toward Relational Power-Sharing:
    • Progression along McLaughlin et al.'s (2012) spectrum of school-community relationships (assimilation, integration, delegation, autonomy), moving toward surrendering historic teacher authority.
    • Emma (Bottlebrush Public School, 2016): "…it's out of my comfort zone in a few ways because it's not just me driving my own ship. I'm relying on other people to come in and to be here and to give their ideas."
    • Lola (Grevillea Public School, 2018): "I kind of knew, but didn't know how bad it was… So that was quite confronting. It really opened me up to thinking from a different perspective… So I'm learning a lot from Aunty as well…"
    • Millie (Waratah Public School, 2017): "Well, I feel now that it's my first priority to make sure that I put Aboriginal perspectives in my lessons, in all my lessons, not just history and geography."
    • Jodie (Bottlebrush Public School, 2018): "It's made me become a lot stronger and more resilient, and I think if I had to move, or transfer, to a different school, I would be comfortable…"

Community Member Experiences and Intergenerational Agency

  • Fulfilling Historical Community Ambitions:
    • Participation served as the continuation of long-standing advocacy by previous generations of Elders.
    • Aunty Mavis (2018): "I feel like I've done my mother's dream. This was her journey when she retired, and I was there to finish it off for her… These are the four women who were passionate to do this kind of stuff. They tried and tried for years, before they retired. Ten years… We finished their journey, darl, and the ones coming behind me, they're going to keep it flowing…"
  • Co-Teaching and Navigating Power Dynamics:
    • Kathy (2018): "…we made it work with co-teaching."
    • Aunty Beryl (2018): "I think just sharing, not so much power. Collaboration decisions… I mixed in with everything, and made sure that anyone that needed any help, I was sort of sitting next to them."
    • Exercise of patience and restraint by Elders: "Well, see, the teachers' roles are there and their lesson plans are there, so I've got to step in and – I sit back at first, and then I think, OK, oh, they're going to do it that way? OK. I would have done it this way! … Then we might come to agreement: Oh, we can do both!" (Aunty Mavis, 2017).
    • AEO Kelly (2016) on teacher limitations: "The teachers already do a lot of great things, but they don't know how to think outside what they already know. They're having difficulties imagining a new type of relationship that's more than just 'a role model in the class' or an assistant, and they're struggling with what it might look like to relinquish some control."
  • Reciprocal Classroom Engagement:
    • Aunty Agnes (2018) describing teacher learning: "…one of the teachers, she was that comfortable and interested! She moved everything from her desk and was just leaning over on her arm… laughing with the kids at the story… She's learning at the same time as the kids, and that makes me feel easy sitting there…"
    • Giselle (2017) on evolving student curiosity: "…from just talking about basic things like Parliament and everything, it's kind of changed to more, what did the Aboriginal people do? What did they eat? How did they survive?"

Impacts on Student Engagement and Learning Outcomes

  • Developing Critical Social Consciousness:
    • Without critical perspectives, non-Aboriginal students accept racial hierarchies and media stereotypes (Little 2012).
    • In a Waratah Public School classroom debate on the topic "Australia owns the land," teacher Millie (2018) observed that after learning about missions and the Stolen Generations from Aunty Mavis: "No-one wanted to be on the Australian side! They all had something to say."
  • Engagement Across Student Cohorts:
    • Community presence increased curiosity and interaction among non-Aboriginal students while boosting engagement for Aboriginal students (Kathy, Community Member, 2017).
    • Non-Aboriginal parents explicitly contacted schools requesting that Elders visit their children's classrooms (Kim, Grevillea PS, 2018).
  • Academic and Attendance Outcomes:
    • Aunty Mavis (2016) noted that her presence directly improved her nephew's school attendance and confidence in mathematics.
    • AEO Kelly (2016) documented a pedagogical sequence where Aunty Agnes delivered a story orally, followed by visual storytelling, physical re-enactment, and writing. A young Koori girl subsequently wrote two full pages of text and successfully completed a related problem-solving activity in mathematics.
  • Critique of Standardized Metric Limitations:
    • Broad educational policies prioritize standardized test scores (e.g., NAPLAN) and focus on "gap talk," which distracts from the socio-historical factors driving educational disparities (Lingard, Creagh, and Vass 2012).
    • The project demonstrated that relationally responsive approaches foster meaningful academic engagement without relying on deficit framings.

Harmonisation, Place-Based Context, and Educational Futures

  • Emphasizing Localized Cultural Knowledge:
    • Standardized curricula often teach distant Indigenous contexts (e.g., Northern Territory or Queensland) while ignoring local Country.
    • Aunty Mavis (2018) taking local students on a bushwalking and beach excursion: "…they only live [nearby]! The bushwalking or the beach out there, they didn't even know it existed! …So, it was such a good feeling for me, because I was teaching them about my community, which I'm proud of."
  • Moving Beyond Surface Representations:
    • Genuine inclusion requires moving past downloaded stories, dot painting on boomerangs, and tokenistic Acknowledgements of Country.
    • Requires recognizing that dispossession and privilege are twin components of the same settler-colonial narrative (Phillips 2012).
  • Reimagining Systemic Schooling:
    • Principal Regina (Waratah PS) allocated school funding to retain Aunty Mavis beyond the project's official end date (Jen, Teacher, 2018).
    • Kate (Waratah PS, 2017): "We're modelling the relationships we want to see across society, so we want to see Aboriginal people and Elders… being a part of education and being part of all sectors, really, and working collaboratively."
    • Janet (Grevillea PS, 2018): "…even Aunty would say, 'This is what Reconciliation is,' to the kids. 'We're all working together, we're moving forward.'"
    • Aunty Mavis (2016) on the ideal culturally responsive classroom: "Oh. I'm hoping that the doors open and you come in and you can feel it. You can feel the welcome. You can feel the warmth. You can feel, you know, that teachers are willing to learn, willing to understand."