Implementing Project-Based Learning for Indigenous-Led Social Change: Navigating Relational Accountabilities

• In Event: Indigenous Futures: Forging New Educational Possibilities and Leadership for Social Change Through Decolonizing Learning Environments

Abstract

This paper introduces a project-based Indigenous leadership program in Oceania, which aims to build capacity and networks to enable Indigenous-led social change across Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the South Pacific. Centring Indigenous approaches to ‘relational accountability’ in network development, the program deploys PBL as the primary tool through which participants develop, honour and elevate Indigenous priorities for social change.

Project Based Learning (PBL) is a learner-centred approach well-established in adult education and leadership training contexts (Grossman, Herrmann, Kavanagh & Pupik 2021; King & Smith, 2020). PBL enables participants to bring real-life cases to a group context, developing analytic and research expertise alongside collaboration skills. Our program is currently tasked with developing practices, approaches to and examples of Indigenous-led social change, through such a project-based model.

Defining social change from an Indigenous perspective, however, requires centring Indigenous sensibilities; of lands, waters and skies, ancestors, future generations, and obligations (Tuck, 2009). There is a breadth of literature written from non-Indigenous perspectives engaging with the concept of ‘social change’ as the primary unit of analysis, in fields ranging from sociology, history, anthropology to social movement studies (Christiansen, 2009; Giugni, Bosi & Uba, 2020). Whilst this literature provides an important theoretical and historical touchstone for understanding how social change can occur, analyses of who and what drives social change have been predominantly generated from Western ways of being and knowing (Skocpol, 2000; Selvanathan & Jetten, 2020). We aim to enrich Western constructions of social change by approaching social change through and from Indigenous perspectives, and within Indigenous contexts, through networks that centre Indigenous relationalities (Rigney, Bignall & Hemming, 2015; Roche, Maruyama & Virdi Kroik, 2018).

Through a series of focus groups, participants reflected on the first iteration of the PBL leadership program and opportunities for learning and collaboration. The design employed two methods: a short survey that was completed by 11 of the 18 Fellows (61% participation rate) and focus groups that were held with 12 of the 18 Fellows (66% participation rate).

Challenges and opportunities with the PBL design have become apparent through initial reflection. Whilst the quality of the learning experience has had positive individual, familial, and workplace impacts, some participants struggled to connect assessable work to their projects; yet for others the impact of the approach was profound. Overall, the opportunity to develop new networks and collaborate across differences was a key benefit of the program.

By centring Indigenous ‘relational accountabilities’ in a PBL leadership development context, this program is navigating the challenges and opportunities of individualised leadership alongside culturally determined structures of collective accountability. Project-based learning allows participants to bring real-world cases to a learning context focused on Indigenous resurgence and futurity. By redefining ‘social change’ from an Indigenous perspective, centring accountability, reciprocity and obligation in Indigenous leadership, and developing collaborative networks that embed these values, the program is developing a stepwise approach to education for collaborative leadership in service of Indigenous communities’ resurgent agendas.

Author

• Nikki Moodie, University of Melbourne