Project Explore what it means to create classroom dialogue in a context where the teacher and students begin with little shared understanding of the topic, or of the academic purposes implicit in the curriculum goals. Material for the enquiry was drawn from a series of four Mathematics lessons about telling the time, which took place in a remote Aboriginal school. Authors Matt Lotherington is a teacher and curriculum coordinator in the school, while Helen Harper and Bronwyn Parkin are researchers. All three were interested in studying teacherled classroom talk, and how this talk could be used to support students to appropriate new language and concepts. Setting The context for this study is a school in the town of Maningrida, in the Northern Territory. At least 11 Aboriginal languages are spoken in this town. The school has an enrolment of about 700 students from Preschool to Year 12, and almost all (95%) are Aboriginal. School attendance fluctuates greatly, averaging around half (50%), particularly during the dry season when many people in the town move back to traditional country. The official language of instruction is English, although many children have minimal English knowledge when they first come to school. Literacy and numeracy levels as measured by the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) are low. For example, in 2016, 94% of Maningrida Year 7 students scored in the lowest Band 4 for Reading, compared with 3% nationally (ACARA, 2016). For the past five years, the school has implemented a scaffolded approach to English instruction through the Accelerated Literacy (AL) program (Cowey, 2007; Gray, 2007). The AL approach is a source of Matt's experience in scaffolding pedagogy. Matt's class, at the time of this study, comprised 12 students across Years 5 and 6. All were Aboriginal, and all spoke English as an additional language or dialect. A high-attending class, they averaged strong (91%) attendance. However, their generally low levels of literacy and mathematics created some challenges for building age-appropriate content.

Indigenous students in the middle-school years who experience difficulties in basic mathematics are a particularly vulnerable group. During these years gaps in performance between educationally disadvantaged students and their peers widen, potentially leading to ongoing economic and social disadvantage. This proposal reports on a teaching intervention referred to as QuickSmart, which has been particularly successful with Indigenous students from rural communities who perform in the bottom 30% of the achievement spectrum in Australia-wide tests. Evidence is drawn from the learning progress of Indigenous middle-school students who completed the QuickSmart numeracy program. These data show, based on effect-size statistics, academic growth for students of up to two years over the course of a 30-week program.

A culturally inclusive curriculum has long been considered beneficial to all students. The national Australian Curriculum set out to be so, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures as a cross-curriculum priority. There is an assumption however that inclusion is an unproblematic good, and is a true representation of the 'reality' of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples' lived experiences and aspirations. Drawing on a Critical Discourse Analysis of the Australian Curriculum policy corpus and key informant interviews with members of an Aboriginal community, this dissertation explores how the aspirations of Aboriginal people are supported in dominant education discourses mobilised within the Australian Curriculum. The study identified a critical gap between the Australian Curriculum's positioning of Aboriginal knowledges, histories and cultures and the Aboriginal community's aspirations for their children's education. Within the Australian Curriculum policy corpus, 'Liberal Multicultural' and 'Inclusive' Discourses were dominant. Such discourses framed Aboriginal students as being vulnerable to marginalisation and in need of support to ensure equality in education. In contrast, community informants advocated for more critical discourses whereby Aboriginal students are seen as empowered, able to actively participate in mainstream society to engage in a process of community revitalisation. In drawing upon different and at times contradictory discourses to articulate their aspirations within a broader 'Community Revitalisation' Discourse, community members engaged in a creative act of bricolage in a highly contextually-dependent way.

This project aimed to enhance the numeracy performance of low-achieving Indigenous students in terms of their basic mathematics competencies. Teachers and teacher aides involved in the project created a rich learning environment which included the use of targeted technology and focused learning activities to improve the automaticity of students' component academic skills in numeracy. The project continued the development of a research-based intervention program and built on successes already experienced with Indigenous students in Northern New South Wales and the Northern Territory. The schools involved were Minimbah Primary School in Armidale, New South Wales and Mirriwinni Gardens Aboriginal Academy via Kempsey, New South Wales.

We believe that the Australian early childhood sector is not performing well. The incidence of poor outcomes for children is increasing, and we believe that current service delivery is not capable of addressing this. We argue that, as a sector, there is an abundance of evidence of the kinds of programs and initiatives that could address our national concerns, and review some of that evidence. We also point out that there is considerable knowledge in Australia, based on Australian programmes and experience, that can be used to build a different early childhood sector with the potential to significantly impact on growing disadvantage. We conclude with the principles or themes around which such initiatives should be developed and a call to advocate for the development of such services. Appropriate services supporting all of our young children, their families and their communities, have the potential to make a huge impact on our society, and we can no longer hide from our responsibilities and avoid providing such services.

The announcement of S. Kidman & Co's intention to sell their pastoral business and 11 leases marks a new waypoint in South Australia's progress towards a post-colonial world. From the time when Sidney Kidman first cohabitated the bush with Billy the Aboriginal to the agistment of stock in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara-Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in 2014, Kidman's history has been interwoven with Indigenous Australia. Not surprisingly the announcement has sparked interest across Indigenous social networks. The company's success has generated spectacular interest ever since Kidman's first Kapunda horse sale in 1900. Kidman's biographers Idriess (1936) and Bowen (1987) provide fairly romantic pictures of the man and his early colonial success, which can be corroborated in Aboriginal accounts. Kidman relied on good judgement of people, animals and land. At a time when others in industry were struggling to affirm terra nullius and Social Darwinism as necessities in the settler legal fiction, Kidman was recruiting indigenous "boundary riders" in places with no boundaries, branding cleanskin cattle and ensuring flows of cattle were heading to market.

This chapter reports on part of the evaluation of an Australian government grant (2011-2013) that focused on improving literacy outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students attending four independent schools in New South Wales, Australia. Specifically, the project aimed to increase students' literacy skills, develop positive attitudes to learning, and encourage families and community members to engage more actively with their children's school lives. Of interest in the context of this book is the use of a photovoice activity, Literacy Snapshots, to access authentic voices of the participant children, to see what they thought about their own literacy learning and literacy in their lives. Funding for the overall project was obtained through the Australian Government's Closing the Gap (CTG)- Expansion of Intensive Literacy and Numeracy Programs for Underachieving Indigenous Students Scheme. The original Request for Funding set four objectives related to the three priority reform areas relevant to Closing the Gap literacy and numeracy initiatives.

This qualitative inquiry explores the content, processes, and social functions of personal meanings of specific pieces of music. The inquiry analyses the personal meanings adhering to 390 pieces of music selected by 79 adults aged between 30 and 78 years. An innovative aspect of the inquiry is that its data sample was not collected by the researcher but drawn from an archive of radio interviews conducted by a previous interviewer. Analysis and interpretation of these data was guided by the systematic methods of constructivist, grounded theory methodology. The inquiry reveals that the content of personal meanings of specific pieces of music aligns with meanings described in previous research. However, probing beneath the surface of such descriptions, this inquiry reveals a number of distinguishing characteristics of personal meanings. Firstly, personal meanings adhere to specific pieces of music. In this case, the sounds of a piece of music, its sonic materiality, matter. Secondly, personal meanings are not fixed but are dynamic, cumulative admixtures of multiple meanings. Thirdly, personal meanings adhere to pieces of music via a number of pathways which integrate aesthetic responses to the music, acquired knowledge about the music or its performance, and biographical associations into the ongoing story of informants' lives. Fourthly, personal meanings constitute social action simultaneously engaged in the reflexive project of self and ongoing reproduction of expectations and assumptions about the role of music in social life. The inquiry suggests that previously collected qualitative data can provide trustworthy samples for later research. It also highlights the need for scholars of music to reconsider the potential of subjective meanings as sites for investigating the human experience of music.

A federal report released by the Department of Families and Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA, 2009), entitled 'Closing the Gap on Indigenous Disadvantage: The Challenge for Australia', highlighted the inequality that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students based on a restricted access to resources, issues of isolation, staff and student retention, and cultural differences and challenges. In New South Wales (NSW), the Department of Education and Training (DET) and the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) in 2003/2004 undertook their own review of Aboriginal education in NSW Government schools that revealed significant concerns about the outcomes being achieved by Aboriginal students in NSW DET schools, confirming the more recent FaHCSIA (2009) findings. In 2006 the NSW DET implemented the Enhanced Teacher Training Scholarship Program (ETTSP) to empower 20 final-year education students to successfully engage with Indigenous students in schools and their wider community during their internship period. Using themes, this article explores the experiences of 10 University of New England scholarship holders at the end of their final year of teacher training and immersion/internship experience in 2010. The article puts forward useful recommendations for both teacher universities and students intending to teach in schools with high Indigenous student populations.