Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Aboriginal Australians Study and teaching Australia'

"November 2003".
Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Australian Centre for Educational Studies, School of Education, 2004.
Bibliography: leaves 243-267.
Introduction -- Literature review -- Meanings and perspectives of Reconciliation in the Australian socio-political context -- An explanation of the research method -- Meanings of Reconciliation in the school context -- Survey results -- The role of education in the Reconciliation process -- Obstacles and barriers to Reconciliation -- Teaching for Reconciliation: best practice in teaching resources -- Conclusion.
The research detailed in this thesis investigated how schools in NSW responded to the social and political project of Reconciliation at the end of the 1990s. -- The research used a multi-method research approach which included a survey instrument, focus group interviews and key informants interviews with Aboriginal and non Aboriginal teachers, elders and educators, to gather qualitative as well as quantitative data. Differing research methodologies, including Indigenous research paradigms, are presented and discussed within the context of this research. From the initial research questions a number of sub-questions emerged which included: -The exploration of meanings and perspectives of Reconciliation evident in both the school and wider communities contexts and the extent to which these meanings and perspectives were transposed from the community to the school sector. -The perceived level of support for Reconciliation in school communities and what factors impacted on this level of support. -Responses of school communities to Reconciliation in terms of school programs and teaching strategies including factors which enhanced the teaching of Reconciliation issues in the classroom and factors which acted as barriers. -- Firstly in order to provide the context for the research study, the thesis provides a brief historical overview of the creation of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. It then builds a framework through which the discourses of Reconciliation are presented and deconstructed. These various meanings and perspectives of Reconciliation are placed within a linear spectrum of typologies, from 'hard', 'genuine' or 'substantive' Reconciliation advocated by the Left, comprising a strong social justice agenda, first nation rights and compensation for past injustices, to the assimiliationist typologies desired by members of the Right which suggest that Reconciliation is best achieved through the total integration of Aboriginal people into the mainstream community, with Aboriginal people accepting the reality of their dispossession. -- In between these two extremes lie degrees of interpretations of what constitutes Reconciliation, including John Howard's current Federal Government interpretation of 'practical' Reconciliation. In this context "Left" and "Right" are defined less by political ideological lines of the Labor and Liberal parties than by attitudes to human rights and social justice. Secondly, and within the socio-political context presented above, the thesis reports on research conducted with Indigenous and non Indigenous educators, students and elders in the context of the NSW school system to decipher meanings and perspectives on Reconciliation as reflected in that sector. It then makes comparisons with research conducted on behalf of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation during the 1990s on attitudes to Reconciliation in the community. Perceived differences are analysed and discussed.
The research further explores how schools approached the teaching of Reconciliation through a series of survey questions designed to document the types of activities undertaken by the schools with Reconciliation as the main aim. -- Research findings indicated that while both the community at large and the education community are overwhelmingly supportive of Reconciliation, both as a concept and as a government policy, when questioned further as to the depth and details of this commitment to Reconciliation and the extent to which they may be supportive of the 'hard' issues of Reconciliation, their views and level of support were more wide ranging and deflective. -- Findings indicated that, in general, educators have a more multi-layered understanding of the issues related to Reconciliation than the general community, and a proportion of them do articulate more clearly those harder, more controversial aspects of the Reconciliation process (eg just compensation, land and sea rights, customary laws). However, they are in the main, unsure of its meaning beyond the 'soft' symbolic acts and gatherings which occur in schools. In the late 1990s, when Reconciliation was at the forefront of the national agenda, research findings indicate that while schools were organising cultural and curriculum activities in their teaching of Indigenous history or Aboriginal studies - they did not specifically focus on Reconciliation in their teaching programs as an issue in the community. Teachers did not have a clearly defined view of what Reconciliation entailed and schools were not teaching about Reconciliation directly within their curriculum programs. -- The research also sought to identify facotrs which acted as enhancers of a Reconciliation program in schools and factors which were seen as barriers. Research findings clearly pointed to community and parental attitudes as important barriers with time and an overcrowded curriculum as further barriers to the implementation of teaching programs. Factors which promoted Reconciliation in schools often related to human agency and human relationships such as supportive executive leadership, the work of committed teachers and a responsive staff and community.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
xvi, 286 leaves ill

The lack of success in addressing the educational needs of Aboriginal English (AbE) speaking adolescents is evidenced by consistently lower outcomes in literacy than those of their non-Indigenous peers. Differences in literacy levels between Indigenous girls and boys suggest that gender is an influential factor in literacy achievement. This ethnographic study explores cultural and gender influences on the writing practices of a group of female Indigenous adolescents in the cross-cultural context of an urban Western Australian secondary school.

This study explored how the discursive practices of government education systemic discipline policy shape the behaviour of Aboriginal primary school students in an urban education district in Western Australia. First, this study conducted a Foucauldian genealogical discourse analysis of the historical and contemporary discursive forces that shaped systemic discipline policy in Western Australian government schools between 1983 and 1998 to uncover changing discursive practices within the institution. This period represented a most turbulent era of systemic discipline policy development within the institution. The analysis of the historical and contemporary discursive forces that shaped policy during this period revealed nine major and consistent discursive practices. Secondly, the study conducted a Foucauldian genealogical discourse analysis into the perspectives of key interest groups of students, parents and Education Department employees in an urban Aboriginal community on discipline policy in Education Department primary schools during the period from 2000 to 2001; and the influence of these policies on the behaviour of Aboriginal students in primary schools. The analysis was accomplished using Foucault's method of genealogy through a tactical use of subjugated knowledges. A cross section of the Aboriginal community was interviewed to examine issues of consultation, suspension and exclusion, institutional organisation and discourse. The study revealed that there are minimal consistent conceptual underpinnings to the development of Education Department discipline policy between 1983 and 1998. What is clear through the nine discursive practices that emerged during the first part of the study is a strengthened recentralising pattern of regulation, in response to the influence of a neo-liberal doctrine that commodifies students in a network of accountability mechanisms driven by the market-state economy. Evidence from both genealogical analyses in this study confirms that the increasing psychologisation of the classroom is contributing towards the pathologisation of Aboriginal student behaviour. It is apparent from the findings in this study that Aboriginal students regularly display Aboriginality-as-resistance type behaviours in response to school discipline regimes. The daily tension for these students at school is the maintenance of their Aboriginality in the face of school policy that disregards many of their regular cultural and behavioural practices, or regimes of truth, that are socially acceptable at home and in their community but threaten the 'good order' of the institution when brought to school. This study found that teachers and principals are ensnared in a web of governmentality with their ability to manoeuvre within the constraints of systemic discipline policy extremely limited. The consequence of this web of governmentality is that those doing the governing in the school are simultaneously the prisoner and the gaoler, and in effect the principle of their own subjection. Also revealed were the obscure and dividing discursive practices of discipline regimes that contribute to the epistemic violence enacted upon Noongar students in primary schools through technologies of power.

Urban Aboriginal students often come to school with a different set of cultural and language learnings than those of their non- indigenous peers. These differences can pose major barriers for the primary- aged Aboriginal student trying to access the curriculum which is based on Standard Australian English (SAE). Aboriginal students often come to school speaking a recognised dialect of English, Aboriginal English (AE) which has its own grammatical, phonological, pragmatic and socio- cultural standards which at times are quite different from those of classroom language interactions. The mismatch between the language of the home (AE) and the language of the classroom (SAE) can have dramatic effects on the literacy learning of Aboriginal students and hence their ability to effectively read in Standard Australian English. This study aims to explore the question of whether changes would be evident in urban Aboriginal students (who speak Standard Australian English as a second dialect), following a targeted reading intervention program. This reading intervention program, called an "Integrated Approach" combined existing strategies in reading and second language I second dialect teaching and learning, with cultural understandings, in a methodology aimed at improving the reading ability of the participating Aboriginal students. The students who were the 5 case studies were part of a larger cohort of students within a wider study. Students were drawn from primary schools in urban localities within the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. Qualitative data collection procedures were used to observe the 5 case study students over a period of 6 months and quantitative measures were also utilised to support this data for the purposes of triangulation. Both data collection sources for the case studies and the wider study showed that the reading intervention program did have significant effect on reading accuracy, reading comprehension and the affective area of learning. The study revealed that by using the teaching I learning strategies described in the intervention program, combined with socio-cultural understandings which include respect for the students' home language and an understanding of the effects of learning English as a Second Dialect (SESD), educators can assist Aboriginal students m improving their abilities to read in SAE. Other positive effects on students' behaviours during the intervention program which were recorded during the study included: an improved attitude to reading; a new willingness and confidence in reading; an improved willingness to participate in language activities both in tutorial sessions and back in the classroom; improved use of decoding skills and an improved control over SAE grammatical structures in writing tasks. This study emphasises the need for educators to work ardently at increasing their own understanding of how best to assist Aboriginal students in becoming competent literacy learners in SAE. Closing the gap created by the mismatch between home and school language can only be achieved by educators exploring eclectic pedagogical options and valuing the Aboriginal student's home language as a vital learning tool in gaining this competence in SAE literacies. KEYWORDS Australian Aborigines; Aboriginal; urban Aborigines; Primary- aged students; Standard Australian English; English as a Second Language; Standard English as a Second Dialect; Aboriginal English; Standard Australian English; home language; socio- cultural; culture; language; oral language; oral culture; prior knowledge; literacy; reading; reading comprehension; reading strategies; modelling reading; literature; learning styles; mechanics of reading; code switching; standardised assessment.

This was an investigation of factors that assisted Australian Aboriginal students complete or incomplete a business course at a University in Perth between 2000 and 2010. The concept of resilience and related factors of inclusion and exclusion from the participants’ past were assumed clues by the researcher. The investigation involved four inquiries. First, the researcher reviewed recent statistics of Aboriginal population, education and employment. A short history of Aboriginal education in Western Australian was also made. Both reviews indicated Aboriginal people endured relative exclusion and a lower status than the mainstream population in areas of education and employment. Second, the researcher assumed that a shared interdependency existed between distinct “ethnic groups” (Barth, 1969) in terms of “levels of engagement at the cultural boundaries”. The cultural boundaries consisted of four layers, namely observable behaviour and material artefacts, institutions, values and worldviews (Barney, 1973; P. D. Milnes & Grant, 1999b). At these “cultural boundaries” that the researcher explored, there were more than three “Rs” (i.e. reading, writing and arithmetic) concerns active in the classroom, namely the silent “R”, resilience. Third, the researcher built upon the theoretical work of Francis’ (1981) ‘teach to the difference’, Nakata’s (1997) idea of ‘cultural interface’ and Milnes’ (2008) concept of ‘meeting place’. The researcher then adapted a new research model called ‘engagement at the cultural boundaries’. Fourth, the researcher conducted a large case study on four samples. A short life-history interview was made of each sample: 1) a pilot study of a previous business graduate; 2) Aboriginal graduates (n=17); 3) Aboriginal non-graduates (n=13); 4) teaching and administrative staff (n=6). Then the pilot study and three groups of stakeholders were rated with a ‘resilience score’ in terms of their engagement at social and economic boundaries based on their personal, public, training and economic identities. The researcher concluded that overall ten factors of resilience had assisted the Aboriginal students complete or incomplete the tertiary business course. These ten factors were: a strong self-reference point, sense of community, structured living, strong support network, stakeholders identifying with struggles, significant role models, strong status and a single mindedness to complete the task at hand, skills in crisis management, and a previous history of successful engagement at the cultural boundaries. Besides the pilot study, the students who completed the tertiary business course had a high resilience score based on previously, strong inclusive engagements at the two key cultural boundaries, the social and economic boundaries. Those students who did not complete the tertiary business course still had a high resilience score, but showed less experiences and examples of inclusive engagement at the overall cultural boundaries prior to and for the duration of the tertiary business course. Teachers of Aboriginal students would do well to discern that Aboriginal students do have a high resilience score overall despite their publicly acknowledged low status and historic loss of economic power. Teachers and key stakeholders in Aboriginal tertiary education also would do well to recognise that some of the ten factors of resilience in Aboriginal tertiary students, especially those resilience factors linked to training and economic identity, require more focus and strengthening. The challenge for all stakeholders of tertiary education is to develop all factors of resilience so that Aboriginal students can experience more inclusion as the latter engage at the tertiary cultural boundary.

Master of Philosophy
As Australia’s leading agency for funding health research (expending over $400 million in 2006), the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has a major responsibility to improve the evidence base for health policy and practice. There is an urgent need for better evidence to guide policy and programs that improve the health of Indigenous peoples. In 2002, NHMRC endorsed a series of landmark policy changes to acknowledge its ongoing role and responsibilities in Indigenous health research—adopting a strategic Road Map for research, improving Indigenous representation across NHMRC Council and Principal Committees, and committing 5% of its annual budget to Indigenous health research. This thesis examines how these policies evolved, the extent to which they have been implemented, and their impact on agency expenditure in relation to People Support. Additionally, this thesis describes the impact of NHMRC policies in reshaping research practices among Indigenous populations.

Intercultural communication between mainland Chinese speakers of English and Anglo-Australians is receiving ever-increasing attention in many fields. These fields include intercultural communication. English language teaching, education and business. This study approached the intercultural communication between mainland Chinese speakers of English and Anglo-Australians from a cognitive perspective by applying the theoretical framework of cultural linguistics. The intercultural discourse produced by mainland Chinese speakers of English in the context of them interacting with Anglo-Australians was analysed. The analysis was made by employing key concepts such as schemas, cultural schemas, discourse scenarios and discourse indexicals. A body of 39 audio-taped conversations between mainland Chinese speakers of English and Anglo-Australians which ran about 50 hours was collected according to the research tradition of the ethnography of communication. The data were transcribed and examined with the “emic” and “etic” insights provided by volunteer participants and informants. Fifty live excerpts of these conversations were analysed in line with cognitive anthropology and cultural linguistics.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2004.
Title from electronic document (viewed 15/6/10) Presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Western Sydney, 2004. Includes bibliography.

"August 2006"
Thesis (PhD) -- Macquarie University, Division of Law, 2007.
Bibliography: p. 343-364.
Abstract -- Candidate's certification -- Acknowledgements -- Acronyms -- Chapter one -- Chapter two: Linking public participation to environmental decision making and natural resources management -- Chapter three: The right to public participation -- Chapter four: Implementing the right to public participation in environmental decision making : the participation of indigenous peoples in the conservation and management of protected areas -- Chapter five: The legal and policy regime for the participation of indigenous peoples in the conservation and management of protected areas in Australia -- Chapter six: The legal and policy regime for the participation of indigenous peoples in the conservation and management of protected areas in Uganda -- Chapter seven: Implementing public participation in environmental decision making in Australia and Uganda : a comparative analysis -- Chapter eight: The right to public participation in enviromental decision making and natural resources management : summary and conclusions -- Bibliography.
In recognition of the importance of public participation as a basis for good governance and democracy, Mr Kofi Annan, Secretary General to the United Nations, has noted that: "Good governance demands the consent and participation of the governed and the full participation and lasting involvement of all citizens in the future of their nation. The will of the people must be the basis of governmental authority. That is the foundation of democracy. That is the foundation of good governance Good governance will give every citizen, young or old, man or woman, a real and lasting stake in the future of his or her society". The above quotation encapsulates the essence of what this thesis has set out to do; to examine the concept of public participation and its application in environmental governance within the context of the participation of indigenous peoples in the conservation and management of protected areas in Australia and Uganda. The concept of public participation is of such intrinsic importance that it has emerged as one of the fundamental principles underpinning environmental governance and therefore forms the basis for this study. -- Environmental governance, as a concept that captures the ideal of public participation, is basically about decisions and the manner in which they are made. It is about who has 'a seat at the table' during deliberations and how the interests of affected communities and ecosystems are represented. It is also about how decision makers are held responsible for the integrity of the process and for the results of their decisions. It relates to business people, property owners, farmers and consumers. Environmental governance is also about the management of actions relating to the environment and sustainable development. It includes individual choices and actions like participating in public hearings or joining local watchdog groups or, as consumers, choosing to purchase environmentally friendly products. -- The basic principles behind good governance and good environmental decision making have been accepted for more than a decade. The 178 nations that attended the Rio Summit in 1992 all endorsed these nvironmental governance principles when they signed the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (Rio Declaration) - a charter of 27 principles meant to guide the world community towards sustainable development. The international community re-emphasised the importance of these principles at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. -- The right to public participation in nvironmental decision making and natural resources management is one of the 27 principles endorsed by the nations of the world and is embodied in the provisions of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration.
Environmental decisions occur in many contexts. They range from personal choices like whether to walk or drive to work, how much firewood to burn, or whether to have another child. They encompass the business decisions that communities or corporations make about where to locate their facilities, how much to emphasise eco-friendly product design and how much land to preserve. They include national laws enacted to conserve the environment, to regulate pollution, manage public land or regulate trade. They take into account international commitments made to regulate trade in endangered species or limit acid rain or C02 emissions. -- Environmental decisions also involve a wide range of actors: individuals; local, state and national governments; community and tribal authorities such as indigenous peoples; civic organisations; interested groups; labour unions; national and transactional corporations; scientists; and international bodies such as the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Trade Organisation. -- Each of the actors have different interests, different levels of authority and different information, making their actions complex and frequently putting their decisions at odds with each other and with ecological processes that sustain the natural systems we depend on. -- Accordingly, this thesis aims to examine participation in environmental decision making in a way that demonstrates these complexities and interdependencies. It will explore the theoretical and conceptual basis for public participation and how it is incorporated into international and domestic environmental and natural resources law and policy. -- It will examine public participation in the context of the legal and policy framework for the conservation and management of protected areas and will use case studies involving the participation of indigeneous peoples in Australia and Uganda to provide the basis for a comparative analysis. -- The thesis will also faces on a comparative analysis of the effectiveness and meaningfulness of the process for public participation in environmental decision making in Australia and Uganda. There is extensive literature on the purposes to which participation may be put; the stages in the project cycle at which it should be employed; the level and power with regard to the decision making process which should be afforded to the participants; the methods which may be appropriate under the different circumstances, as well as detailed descriptions of methods; approaches and forms or typologies of public participation; and the benefits and problems of such participation.
However, there is not much significant literature that examines and analyses the meaningfulness and effectiveness of the contextual processes of such participation. This is despite the widespread belief in the importance and value of public participation, particularly by local and indigenous communities, even in the face of disillusionment caused by deceit, manipulation and tokenism. Accordingly, the thesis will use case studies to demonstrate the meaningfulness and effectiveness or otherwise of public participation in environmental decision making in protected area management. -- Increasingly, the terminology of sustainable development is more appropriate to describe contemporary policy objectives in this area, with an emphasis on promoting local livelihood and poverty alleviation within the constraints of ecosystem management. However, the domestic legal frameworks, and institutional development, in Australia and Uganda tend to reflect earlier concepts of environmental and natural resources management (referred to as environmental management in this thesis). There are some significant differences between a North (developed) nation and a South (developing) nation, in terms of the emphasis on economic objectives, political stability, resources and legal and administrative capacity. The thesis intends to explore these differences for the comparative analysis and to draw on them to highlight the complexities and interdependencies of public participation by indigenous peoples in environmental decision making, natural resources and protected area management.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
377 p

Our knowledge of Aboriginal demography in Australia at a national level is limited by the lack of conformity of the census counts on the size of the population and the unavailability of vital data. Hence, regional and small area studies were found useful to reveal the recent patterns of Aboriginal demography. This study begins with a review of Aboriginal demography at a national level. The distinct demographic characteristics of the Aboriginal population are pointed out in comparison with the total population of the country. The study then focuses on a regional level, Central Australia, for a closer examination of mortality and fertility levels, patterns, trends and differentials. It confirms that the levels of Aboriginal mortality and fertility in Central Australia are substantially higher than those of the total population of the country and are similar to those found for the Aboriginal population elsewhere; however, it registers, for the first time through a single study on a particular population, the occurrence of a process of steady decline in Aboriginal mortality and establishes that this decline in mortality is largely due to the reduction in deaths from diseases of the circulatory and respiratory systems, which are in the meantime still the leading causes of death of the Aboriginal people. Aboriginal fertility was found to be very high in the early ages of childbearing and the observed decline is mostly due to the reduction of fertility of the older women of 30 and over and younger women of 15-19. A detailed study of the demographic characteristics of the Aboriginal population in Alice Springs revealed that while as a whole the characteristics of Alice Springs Aborigines are similar to those of Aborigines elsewhere, different patterns of socio-economic and historical conditions have led to the emergence of two demographically distinct Aboriginal groups in Alice Springs; those Aborigines who live in the town proper and those who live in the town camps. While the majority of those Aborigines who migrated to the town proper came from other urban centres, most of the town campers are rural-urban migrants mostly from ether Aboriginal settlements and stations in Central Australia.

This thesis, entitled The Return of the Noble Savage: By Popular Demand, is written after several years of being an avid Aboriginal television watcher, filmmaker, and activist. It is based on research on a neglected topic and in response to the consistent attack from well-meaning critics, in an attempt to argue for the complexity of the meanings generated on television, and for the rights of the individual filmmaker in representation. In myth-making about Australian Aborigines there has been a consistent paradigm of opposing poles-noble and savage, good blacks and bad blacks, primitive and civilised, real and unreal. Oscillating between these two poles are all kinds of imaginings of Aboriginal identity, politics and desires for truthful representation. When early documentary filmmakers began to film Aborigines they disregarded the Aboriginal audience, and spoke rather to themselves and to white audiences whom, for all kinds of reasons, they wanted to inform about Aborigines. In contrast, there are in the Australian television industry today many more Aboriginal people making films than there have ever been, and a greater recognition of the existence of Aboriginal television audiences. Aboriginal filmmakers have been backed by a history of radical politics and by the efforts of non-Aboriginal filmmakers. The recent marriage between Aboriginal filmmakers and mainstream television has been neglected by most commentators and scholars. Critics ignore the efforts and progress made by mainstream television and documentary filmmakers. They have written about television without making references to Aborigines; and they have written about Aborigines without making reference to television. This is startling when one considers the invisibility of Aborigines before television, and the difference television has made. The thesis also addresses the problem that in the current climate, new pressures being brought to bear on filmmakers making documentary films on Aboriginal topics. Because they do not take into account the nature of filmmaking, or the rights of individual filmmakers, these pressures are infringing upon the rights not only of white but also Aboriginal filmmakers. This pressure has swung the pendulum from savage to noble imagery, the latter of which is just as unrealistic and untrue as the former. It also requires Aboriginal audiences and filmmakers to protect and uphold a particular vision of Aboriginality, and denies them the right to critique and defend themselves.

Vol. 2 consists of unpublished or not readily available papers and miscellaneous material referred to in vol. 1. Includes historical material and Kaurna language texts.
Includes bibliographical references (47 p.)
2 v, : ill. (some col.), maps ; 30 cm.
Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Linguistics, 1998