Faculty of Education - Theses

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Start date: 2013 × Author: Cubillo, Joshua × Subject: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Education ×

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    Toward a land-based curriculum: An Australian Indigenous discourse analysis
    Cubillo, Joshua ( 2019)
    Since its conception, Australia’s national education curriculum has heeded little progress toward embedding Indigenous cultures and experiences as an essential foundation of learning for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and educators. Historically, Australia’s education curriculum and its associated policy writers continue to promote biases of low expectations by primarily locating Indigenous students within a deficit framework. This thesis shares the findings of a research project focused on understanding how Indigenous cultures and perspectives are embedded in curriculum. The use of critical discourse analysis to explore historical and current curriculum literature reveals that the use and positionality of language have privileged ‘settler thought’ which marginalises and silences the perceived other (i.e. Indigenous). The research also examines Australian and Alaska approaches, using a critical discourse analysis to highlight the way in which Native Alaskan people are practicing their educational sovereignty. This examination includes understanding the way the Alaskan context has strengthened the quality of Native Alaskan education and the Indigenous content being taught in schools by embedding a Culturally responsive standards framework. In Australia, the accountability and quality of teaching Indigenous knowledges relies on teacher’s discretion of using the cross-curricula priorities. The findings of this research are presented within a sovereignty lens relating to article 14 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2008) which calls for local Indigenous control of education and pedagogy. Additionally, Foucault’s power/knowledge theory has been used to demonstrate how ‘settler colonial mandates’ remain a core tenet of Australia’s education system which promotes biases of low expectations by primarily locating Indigenous students within a deficit framework.