Social And Cultural Context Of Education: Western Efforts And Indigenous Students In Australia

Western efforts to improve educational outcomes for indigenous students have only had minimal success in Australia

Discuss about the Social And Cultural Context Of Education.

This study deals with evaluating the hypothesis that states the fact about how western society had made an effort to improve in the educational outcomes for indigenous students that have only minimal success especially in Australia (Zipin et al., 2015). The current segment explains efforts of western society to teach aboriginal students in Australia. It is important to teach Aboriginal students as it need to convey a relatedness as it considers as key feature of these society. Their culture is all about traditions and spirituality. These students actually look at the micro view of the world and notice everything in detail.

Efforts of western society in educating indigenous students

The Western society is of the opinion that Aboriginal children present in remote societies need proper Western education (Wilks & Wilson, 2015). According to western society, these remote indigenous communities as well as endorsed low expectations Aboriginal people should be provided with a palliative education. These indigenous people need the best possible education but the western society faced challenge with Aboriginal people as these people cannot be empowered as they show no interest to prioritize the one key to permission teaching. Because of that, the western society claims that the parents need to negotiate their cultural life for the sake of their children’s fiscal or financial future and this is the problem that underlies presently (Whatman & Singh, 2015)

It is acknowledged that traditional and innovative owners of the region pays special admiration to the Australian Aboriginal Torres Islander societies as they are main custodians that include past as well as present and future elders (Wagner et al., 2017). For these students, English is considered as second or third language. It is essential for the teachers to explain these students about the significance of the culture. These students should be taught in their first language that needs the brain to be neurologically developmentally primed at the same time (Dickson & Manalo, 2014).

Australian Professional Standards for teacher highlights on the fact on what teachers need to understand in order to teach Aboriginal Torres Islander communities languages as well as history and culture (Trudgett, 2014). There are resources used in schools that help teachers for understanding the fact on how to meet initial teacher education as well as ongoing professional learning.

The archaeological history of the First Australians can be termed as truly remarkable story (Santoro, 2015). These people made social as well as economic choices and developed sustainable ways of living by undertaking significant activities and most unique civilizations in and across the world.

Teaching education

Aboriginal Torres Islander community’s functions according government policies that connects with indigenous health as well as housing and education by using human rights framework (O’Shea et al., 2017).

The extensive failure of indigenous students is noted during adolescence age and this can be termed as shameful features present in the Australian education. Students need to gain knowledge and skills after attending school; rather they are leaving school by getting access to minimal knowledge and skills. There is lack of indigenous teachers and as a outcome results schools have to depend upon the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander for getting access to indigenous input (Milne, Creedy & West, 2016).

Aboriginal Torres Islander communities have the essential skills of literacy and numeracy that are scaffolded as well as then enriched (McLaughlin, 2014).

Aboriginal Torres Islander communities need to be employed and received priority in government programs. Measures need to undertake for eliminating discrimination based on attributes such as caste or ethnic group (Martin et al., 2017).

It is very important to educate youth in own cultures and make use of indigenous languages for educating the people (Hunt et al., 2015). It is necessary to educate indigenous people where the main focus is on education indigenous information, representations as well as approaches and satisfied with both formal and non-formal educational systems. There had been growing recognition as well as use of indigenous education methods that can be a retort to the erosion as well as loss of indigenous information by a process of colonialism, globalization as well as modernism. It was claimed by these communities that are able to regain as well as increase their languages and traditions for bringing improvement in the enlightening realization especially of indigenous students that ensures existence as a philosophy (Hollinsworth, 2016).

For instance,

Indigenous Feminism is one of the theory and practice of feminism that explains the sovereignty especially for indigenous people. In addition, the branch of feminism displays the oppression of indigenous people that results as a racist as well as patriarchal colonization.

Building social and Cultural capital within the indigenous community is important aspect that needs to be taken into consideration in this study. Recognition of the rick cultural capital among indigenous students brought in their schools that enhances the students who actually have experienced less opportunity to learn about their culture and work together for building strong home-school-community partnerships that help in strengthening student engagement in schooling as well as learning process.

Staffing provided in schools

Research showed that relationship between learning outcomes as well as their impact had mainly on attributes such as family, social capital and development as a whole. It was argued that social capital help in capturing the multiple processes that is involved in the study where the process is consistent and their assets are in the shape of social capital that gets benefited from the returns of investment for getting access to better stronger as well as enhanced family life.

Research showed that economic capital and development of indigenous people needs improvement in Australia. For past 20 years, these people aims to combine academic as well as teaching excellence on the Aboriginal people with realism, relevance and objectivity.

Normalization was one of the basic objectives of Indigenous Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and transforms the society for added implications. Before getting indulged into normalization analysis, it is thereby essential to understand the nature of land-holding under the Land Rights Act.

People often argue with the term Meritocracy as it is like working with all-white juries all schooled in western literature and naturally rise to the top.

The reason to why western efforts failed in educating indigenous students are poor levels of attendance, literacy as well as low retention rates and numeracy outcomes that goes below within the Australian society (Fredericks et al., 2014). Teaching Aboriginal students need sensitivity for their special needs as well as knowledge on matters relating to Aboriginal cultural protocols. There are various successful programs that relates to real life as well as work that goes around Aboriginal parent’s limitations. Most of the non-aboriginal teachers do not have much of experience in teaching as well as engaging with the Aboriginal children. In order to reach them efficiently and make them learn, teachers need to leave behind the textbooks solutions that they had studied at their times (Graham, Van Bergen & Sweller, 2015).

For instance,

It is noted several times that teachers find it difficult to address the unacceptable gap that is present between Aboriginal as well as non-Aboriginal students outcomes because of lack of education and knowledge in specific area. Most of the teachers are in fear of doing the wrong thing or offending the sentiments of Aboriginal people.

Conclusion

At the end of the study, it is concluded that it is important to educate Aboriginal people. Aboriginal students mostly avoid direct eye contact with an adult as in their culture, it is considered as rude behavior. These types of students actually are shy in nature and do not answer questions in classroom session as in their culture, they are told stories. These students actually know the answer but hesitate to say anything in front of class. The above study properly explains the need for educating Aboriginal students where teachers should take special attention by understanding their culture and traditions.

Recognition of aboriginal ancestry

References

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Fredericks, B., Maynor, P., White, N., English, F. W., & Ehrich, L. C. (2014). Living with the legacy of conquest and culture: Social justice leadership in education and the Indigenous peoples of Australia and America. InInternational handbook of educational leadership and social (in) justice (pp. 751-780). Springer Netherlands.

Graham, L. J., Van Bergen, P., & Sweller, N. (2015). To educate you to be smart’: disaffected students and the purpose of school in the (not so clever)‘lucky country.Journal of Education Policy, 30(2), 237-257.

Hollinsworth, D. (2016). Unsettling Australian settler supremacy: combating resistance in university Aboriginal studies. Race ethnicity and education, 19(2), 412-432.

Hunt, L., Ramjan, L., McDonald, G., Koch, J., Baird, D., & Salamonson, Y. (2015). Nursing students’ perspectives of the health and healthcare issues of Australian Indigenous people. Nurse education today, 35(3), 461-467.

Martin, G., Nakata, V., Nakata, M., & Day, A. (2017). Promoting the persistence of Indigenous students through teaching at the Cultural Interface. Studies in Higher Education, 42(7), 1158-1173.

McLaughlin, J. (2014). ‘Crack in the pavement’: Pedagogy as political and moral practice for educating culturally competent professionals. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 12(1).

Milne, T., Creedy, D. K., & West, R. (2016). Integrated systematic review on educational strategies that promote academic success and resilience in undergraduate indigenous students. Nurse education today, 36, 387-394.

O’Shea, S., May, J., Stone, C., & Delahunty, J. (2017). First-in-Family Students, University Experience and Family Life: Motivations, Transitions and Participation. Springer.

Santoro, N. (2015). The drive to diversify the teaching profession: narrow assumptions, hidden complexities. Race Ethnicity and Education, 18(6), 858-876.

Trudgett, M. (2014). Supervision provided to Indigenous Australian doctoral students: a black and white issue. Higher Education Research & Development, 33(5), 1035-1048.

Wagner, B., Fitzpatrick, J., Symons, M., Jirikowic, T., Cross, D., & Latimer, J. (2017). The development of a culturally appropriate school based intervention for Australian Aboriginal children living in remote communities: A formative evaluation of the Alert Program® intervention. Australian occupational therapy journal, 64(3), 243-252.

Whatman, S. L., & Singh, P. (2015). Constructing health and physical education curriculum for indigenous girls in a remote Australian community. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 20(2), 215-230.

Wilks, J., & Wilson, K. (2015). A Profile of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher Education Student Population.Australian Universities’ Review, 57(2), 17-30.

Zipin, L., Sellar, S., Brennan, M., & Gale, T. (2015). Educating for futures in marginalized regions: A sociological framework for rethinking and researching aspirations. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(3), 227-246.