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This document summarises the learnings and underlying philosophy that informed a partnership project in the remote far north west of South Australia. Although focused on the challenge of building strong local employment in remote communities, this document can be used to inform anyone who is considering working in remote communities in order to make a good start and prioritise ethical engagement and community benefit in the work they are planning to undertake.

Abstract from Dusseldorp website. Show less

The Remote Education Systems (RES) project within the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP) has, over the last four years, gathered and analysed qualitative data directly from over 230 remote education stakeholders and from more than 700 others through surveys. The research was designed to answer four questions: (1) what is education for in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities?; (2) what defines 'successful' educational outcomes from the remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander standpoint?; (3) how does teaching need to change in order to achieve 'success' as defined by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander standpoint?; and (4) what would an effective education system in remote Australia look like? Based on this data, the paper reveals how perceptions differ for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from remote communities compared with people who come from elsewhere. The analysis points to the need for some alternative indicators of 'success' to match the aspirations of local people living in remote communities. It also points to the need for school and system responses that resonate with community expectations of education, and to develop narratives of aspiration and success alongside community views.

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Researchers in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contexts within Australia are frequently faced with the challenges of working in an intercultural space where channels of communication are garbled with interference created by the complexities of misunderstood worldviews, languages, values and expectations. A concern of many researchers in these contexts is to ensure that the voices of research participants in remote communities are not only accurately represented, but are allowed to transcend the noise of dominant paradigms, policies and practices.

This paper brings together the experiences of five researchers in the space of remote vocational education and training. The authors present three vignettes from research in the context of health, employment and education. These vignettes highlight some of the conundrums for researchers as they attempt to harmonise the aims of research with the expectations of organisations involved. Wrapped around these vignettes, the authors highlight the progressive thinking associated with Indigenist and culturally responsive methodologies, and draw together conclusions that may assist other researchers in their attempts to find ways that support the credibility, integrity and validity of the research process while at the same time doing the same for the voices of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants.

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The 2004 project, ‘Engaging industry in flexible learning’, aimed to identify successful flexible learning solutions to improve the quality and increase the take-up of structured training in Australian workplaces. Industry includes both enterprise and industry sectors. This paper is one of five research papers emerging from the research project. They examine the ways in which flexible learning (including e-learning) could be used to facilitate the development of high performance workplaces, including the needs of mature, rural and remote learners (including Indigenous), and to provide dynamic models of enterprise and registered training organisations (RTOs) partnerships. The paper examines the potential of e-learning for increasing the knowledge and skills of tourism personnel in regional and remote areas. Strategies and policy recommendations were developed to facilitate the introduction of e-learning and a community of practice within the Queensland Information Centre Association.

Papers from the project are indexed from TD/TNC 83.98 to TD/TNC 83.102. Show less

This article sets the scene for the series of [articles] on 'red dirt thinking'. It first introduces the idea behind red dirt thinking as opposed to 'blue sky thinking'. Both accept that there are any number of creative and expansive solutions and possibilities to identified challenges - in this case, the challenge of improving education in very remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island schools. However, the authors believe that creative thinking needs to be grounded in the reality of the local community context in order to be relevant. This article draws on emerging data from the Remote Education Systems project (a project within the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation - CRC-REP) and highlights further questions and challenges [the authors] wish to address across the life of the project. It is part of a collection of papers presented on the theme 'Red dirt thinking'. The red dirt of remote Australia is where thinking for the CRC-REP's Remote Education Systems research project emerged.

This article will examine the various public positions that exist in regard to the aspirations of young remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, and consider the wider views that are held in terms of what constitutes educational 'success'. [The authors] will explore the models of thinking and assumptions that underpin this public dialogue and contrast these ideas to the ideas that are being shared by remote Aboriginal educators and local community members through the work of the Remote Education Systems project. [They] will consider the implications and relevance of the aspiration and success debate for the remote Australian context and propose approaches and key questions for improved practice and innovation in relation to delivering a more 'successful' education for remote students.

The authors begin by posing the simple question: How would, and can remote educators build aspiration and success? The wisdom of several commentators on remote education in Australia is presented in terms of a set of simple solutions to a straightforward problem. The assumptions behind these simple solutions are often unstated, and part of this article's role is to highlight the assumptions that common arguments for solutions are premised on. Further to the above question, [the authors] also consider the question: In remote communities where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students live and learn, how is success defined? Is there language that corresponds to the western philosophical meanings of success? Having considered some possible alternatives, based on the early findings of the Remote Education Systems project research, the authors then pose the question: How would educators teach for these alternative measures of success? The answers to these questions are still forthcoming. However, as the research process reveals further insights in relation to these questions, it may be possible for all those involved in remote education to approach the 'problem' of remote education using a different lens. The lens may be smeared with red dirt, but it will enable people involved in the system to develop creative solutions in a challenging and rich environment.

Published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner. Show less

Researchers in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contexts within Australia are frequently faced with the challenges of working in an intercultural space where channels of communication are garbled with interference created by the complexities of misunderstood worldviews, languages, values and expectations. A concern of many researchers in these contexts is to ensure that the voices of research participants in remote communities are not only accurately represented, but are allowed to transcend the noise of dominant paradigms, policies and practices.

This article brings together the experiences of four non-indigenous researchers in the space of remote vocational education and training. The authors present two vignettes from research in the context of health, employment and education. These vignettes highlight some of the conundrums for researchers as they attempt to harmonize the aims of research with the expectations of organizations involved. The purpose of the article is to explore the utility of Critical Race Theory (CRT), Indigenist methodologies, culturally responsive methodologies and those positioned at the 'cultural interface' (Nakata 2007). In so doing this article makes some assessments about the fit of CRT methodologies for such contexts.

Published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner. Show less

Recent debates in Australia, largely led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island academics over the past five or so years, have focused on the need for non-Indigenous educators to understand how their practices not only demonstrate lack of understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, but even deny their presence. This debate has serious implications for the non-Indigenous remote educator who wishes to support remote students to achieve 'success' through their education. The debates on the one hand advocate the decolonising of knowledge, pedagogy and research methods in order to promote more just or equal approaches to research and education, while other voices continue to advocate the pursuit of mainstream dominant western 'outcomes' as the preferred goal for Indigenous students across Australia. This dilemma frames the context for this study. The Remote Education Systems Project, in the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation, seeks to explore these and other questions as part of the broader research agenda being undertaken. This project is particularly focused on large-scale questions such as: 'What is a remote education for and what would 'success' look like in the remote education context?' [The authors] are approaching these research questions from community standpoints and perspectives as a critical starting point for these types of debates and discussions. In doing so, [their] findings indicate that remote Aboriginal community members have a strong sense of western education and its power to equip young people with critical skills, knowledge and understandings for the future, but also a strong sense of retaining of their 'own' knowledge, skills and understanding. This presents a complex challenge for educators who are new to this knowledge interface. Here, [the authors] offer the concept of 'Red dirt thinking' as a new way to position ourselves and engage in situated dialogue about what remote schooling might be if it took into account power issues around Indigenous knowledges in the current policy context.

This article questions whether remote communities, schools and systems have, in fact, taken account of the knowledge/power debates that have taken place at an academic level and considers how remote education might consider the implications of stepping outside the 'Western-Indigenous binary'. It seeks to propose new paradigms that non-Indigenous educators may need to engage in order to de-limit the repositioning of power-laden knowledge and pedagogies offered in remote classrooms.

Published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner. Show less

Remote Education Systems has gathered and analysed qualitative data from over 230 remote education stakeholders and more than 700 others through surveys over the last four years. The project was designed to investigate perceptions and aspirations for effective education of remote Indigenous students, and this paper examines the implications for developing the workforce needed to achieve effective schooling. Four research questions guided the study: (1) What is education for in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities? (2) What defines 'successful' educational outcomes from the remote standpoint? (3) How should teaching and learning look to achieve 'success' as defined by this standpoint? (4) What would an effective education system in remote Australia look like?

Excerpt from publication. Show less

When people talk about education of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, the language used is often replete with messages of failure and deficit, of disparity and problems. This language is reflected in statistics that on the surface seem unambiguous in their demonstration of poor outcomes for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. A range of data support this view, including the National Action Plan-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) achievement data, school attendance data, Australian Bureau of Statistics Census data and other compilations such as the Productivity Commission’s biennial ‘Overcoming Indigenous disadvantage’ report. These data, briefly summarised in this article, paint a bleak picture of the state of education in remote Australia and are at least in part responsible for a number of government initiatives (state, territory and Commonwealth) designed to ‘close the gap’. For all the programs, policies and initiatives designed to address disadvantage, the results seem to suggest that the progress, as measured in the data, is too slow to make any significant difference to the apparent difference between remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools and those in the broader community. [What remains is] a discourse that is replete with illustrations of poor outcomes and failures and does little to acknowledge the richness, diversity and achievement of those living in remote Australia.

The purpose of this article is to challenge the ideas of ‘disadvantage’ and ‘advantage’ as they are constructed in policy and consequently reported in data. It proposes alternative ways of thinking about remote educational disadvantage, based on a reading of relevant literature and the early observations of the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation’s Remote Education Systems project. It is a formative work, designed to promote and frame a deeper discussion with remote education stakeholders. It asks how relative advantage might be defined if the ontologies, axiologies, epistemologies and cosmologies of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families were more fully taken into account in the education system’s discourse within/of remote schooling. Based on what [the authors] have termed ‘red dirt thinking’ it goes on to ask if and what alternative measures of success could be applied in remote contexts where ways of knowing, being, doing, believing and valuing often differ considerably from what the educational system imposes.

Published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner. Show less