Aboriginal Education

Academic Essay- Written reflections & Critical Analysis
This essay will discuss the Aboriginal Education policies in Victoria and Federally and how these policies impacted upon the children of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. This essay will further analyse the impact these past policies had on the Aboriginal and Torres strait Islanders’ families and children’s education and how current policies were put in place to assist indigenous students’ access to education. Further to this an analysis of how teachers can implement these changes in the curriculum and classroom.
From the 1800s to the mid-1960s Partington (1998 as cited in Shirley, 2012) described these times as the mission period, the protection era and the assimilation period.

The plan focused on three areas which were engagement, connections and attendance. The plan was to give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders a voice and cultural context that addressed the cultural gap of non-Indigenous educators and administrators (Hogarth, 2015). The limitation of the three targeted areas focused on engagement, connection and attendance but neglected the other categories of education. The plan focused only on the three domains and ignored the other areas hence causing the quality of literacy and numeracy to decrease in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. As a result, the government introduced a policy called Closing the gap in 2007. This policy was introduced to improve the quality of literacy and numeracy of Indigenous and non-indigenous students within a decade (ACARA, 2016). The three targeted areas to closing the gap was directed to improving the young Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander educational outcomes. Australia’s statistics showed that in 2009 there were 129,953 indigenous students enrolled in schools comparing to the 2 million non-indigenous students enrolled in school. These statistics show a great difference in enrolments. Since the introduction of the ‘closing the gap’ policy the number of Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander students in schools

It was investigated that students enjoyed lessons that had eleven different pedagogies. The pedagogical approaches used was relationship building, facilitation of effective hands on activity work, participation in classroom discourse and connecting the science activities to the student’s experiences. Teachers reported that more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students attended class when they had SciTech activities. However, Indigenous students performed poorly on the NAPLAN test in literacy and numeracy. Poor education in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders lead to a decreased employment opportunity that cause poor health, lower life expectancy and a likelihood of problems with the law. The increase in Indigenous students participating in science hands on studies gives the impression that they are more successful in hands on crafting. This is an incentive for indigenous student to attend school and learn. While attending school they also learn literacy and numeracy skills. The purpose of the study was to engage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in school and how pedagogical approaches aided in this (Hackling et al,