Abstract
Starting in 2020 members from the Culturally Nourishing Schooling (CNS) research team regularly made the day long commute to spend time with teachers, leaders, and local cultural and linguistic knowledge holders of one school on Wiradjuri Lands, in central NSW (Australia). The CNS team were hopeful that the ideas and practices they had to offer would be of value, and the local learning community were hopeful that positive changes could be made to improve the school’s approach to Indigenous education. Simmering alongside these concerns, the impacts of standardising policies, accountability measures, natural disasters, teacher shortages, and distance from urban centres and material resources, were some of the other challenges the school experienced. From the outset, there was a shared enthusiasm about the collaboration between educators, researchers, school leaders, and local Community members, families and young people - but nobody involved would have predicted the end results. Now, as the project draws to a close, it is a critical time to reflect on the experiences and changes that have taken place within the learning community. Importantly, this is not a story only to be told by the researchers, and this paper brings together the voices of school leaders, teachers, and local cultural and linguistic knowledge holders, to help tell this tale. This is an encouraging and hopeful story of whole of school reform. It is the story of one school, in a ‘remote’ community, as people work together to achieve socially just schooling for the young people who attend the school.
Presenters
Greg VassAssociate Professor, School of Education, University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
Education and Learning Worlds of Differences
KEYWORDS
Indigenous Education; Teacher Research; Whole of School Reform; Community Collaboration
