Indigenous Educational Inequalities and Promised Solutions: Historical, Policy, and Transnational Perspectives on “Closing the Gap”

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session analyses constructions of Indigenous students as learners and future citizens in contemporary and historical educational policies and professional debates. Drawing on case studies from settler-colonial societies of Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada and Australia, representations of Indigenous disadvantage and difference are interrogated to unsettle familiar patterns of policy explanation, and open spaces for alternatives to current forward-focused, globally competitive and individualized reform agendas. The following questions are addressed: what might such historical and postcolonial analyses illuminate or foreclose in terms of Indigenous education? How do official policy discourses converge or diverge with the views expressed by Indigenous peoples? In what ways and with what effects do contemporary policy discourses represent a continuation of colonial discourses, specifically in settler-colonial nations?

Sub Unit

• SIG-Postcolonial Studies and Education

Chair

• Jo-Anne Margaret Dillabough, The University of British Columbia

Papers

• Critical Analysis of the Achievement “Gap” Attributed to Australian Indigenous Students: Insights, Tensions, and Dilemmas - Sophie Rudolph, University of Melbourne

• Discourses of Indigenous Self-Determination in Contemporary Education Policy: Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and Canada - Marra Neilson, University of Auckland

• On Noticing and Not Noticing Indigenous Students as Learners and Future Citizens - Julie E. McLeod, University of Melbourne

Discussant

• Jo-Anne Margaret Dillabough, The University of British Columbia