The Ganma (Marika 2000) metaphor can be used to underscore Yolŋu approaches to education that incorporate both Western and Aboriginal epistemologies. Ganma is the point where saltwater (non-Aboriginal knowledge) and freshwater (Yolŋu knowledge) meet to form a lagoon. The different bodies of water churn beneath the foam-striped surface, and this 'great sharing' supports a 'rich habitat of its own' (Bat and Guenther 2013:128), thus revealing the benefits of the collaborative approach to knowledge generation. This metaphor can be used as a foundation for negotiating culturally contested knowledge arenas. This paper reports a study that extended an existing dialogic process to the field of gifted education in an endeavour to realise Ganma. Three Yolŋu elders and three teachers collaborated in a facilitated dialogue to develop an appropriate talent development model for gifted Yolŋu youth at the study site, a boarding school in Darwin. The participant satisfaction with this process demonstrates that the dialogue protocol used is an appropriate tool to facilitate Ganma.

Australian Aboriginal learners have a long history of underrepresentation in gifted and talented education. Numerous frameworks have been proffered to explain this lack of participation. These include deficit theorising, involuntary minority status, identification issues, and epistemological differences. A number of initiatives have sought to redress one or more of these issues in an effort to increase Aboriginal participation in gifted education. These programs; however, tend to focus on intervening to redress perceived deficits that prevent Aboriginal achievement, thus overlooking important epistemological questions. In effect, they make little attempt to account for the contested nature of giftedness and are framed exclusively around Western understandings of the gifted construct. Where Aboriginal culture and knowledge have been incorporated, it has often been derived from a pan-Aboriginal perspective and usually included as a tool to aid engagement. Ideally, gifted education should move beyond such approaches to harness students’ existing knowledge by engaging with local conceptions of the gifted construct.

This two-phased mixed methods case study sought to develop a talent development model that would bridge the “contested knowledge space” of gifted education for Yolŋu learners. This model was to be a realisation of the Yolŋu Ganma metaphor where new knowledge is generated at the intersection of two different knowledge streams. Thus, in Phase 1, a facilitated dialogue protocol was used to support teachers and Yolŋu Elders to co-construct a talent development program that would be suitable for use with gifted Yolŋu youth. To support this work, a qualitative interview was conducted with eight Yolŋu Elders to canvass their views on giftedness, talents and talent development, and to compare these understandings with Gagnés Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talents (DMGT 2.0), a popular model used in Australian schools. A short quantitative exit survey was also conducted in this phase to determine participant satisfaction with the facilitated dialogue process. In Phase 2, the coconstructed talented development model was implemented at the study site. Stakeholder views of the program were collected using simple qualitative surveys alongside a Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis.

Three overarching conclusions were developed from this research. First, for the Yolŋu people, gifts, talents and talent development are deeply entwined with their foundation law (Djalkiri Rom ). This meant that the talent development model developed in this research needed to be built with the Djalkiri Rom as its base, which enabled the model to support both intellectually gifted Yolŋu students and those who were deemed culturally gifted. This could not be done without the support of the Yolŋu community and it is not surprising then, that the second conclusion relates to meaningful engagement with Aboriginal peoples. Dialogue emerged as the key to achieving Ganma ; however, to ensure new knowledge development, this dialogue needed to tackle difficult questions of contested epistemology. The facilitated dialogue protocol was found to be an effective tool for shifting dialogue into the realm of knowledge generation in the contested arena of gifted education. The third conclusion in this research held that a Funds of Knowledge approach within gifted education is able to enhance the student experience.

This study explored the influence of the postgraduate study experience in Australia on the professional and personal lives of returning faculty members in the two colleges of education in Bhutan. Education has been the central pillar of friendship and cooperation between Australia and Bhutan for more than five decades, and many Bhutanese education faculty members have travelled to Australia to study. They returned to their country to contribute to the development of the education system. How the returning faculty members contributed in terms of professional practice was explored using a primary research question: How has the Australian postgraduate educational experience influenced the professional practice of faculty members working in the two colleges of education in Bhutan?

In most cases, the faculty members were accompanied by their family members to Australia" hence, the study also explored to understand how the faculty members and their families coped with challenges while studying, and how their enhanced capability and transformations impacted on their personal and professional lives and contributed to human capital in Bhutan. Thus, the researcher explored the secondary question: How did the Australian experience of the faculty members and their families influenced them personally?

This case study conducted two stages of data collection and employed qualitative methods. An online open-ended questionnaire was responded to by 25 participants and the subsequent face to face semi-structured interviews were carried out with 12 participants. The online questionnaire responses and interview data were analysed using both manual coding and Leximancer text-mining software.

The first part of the findings from the manual thematic and Leximancer analysis identified teacher education, research, and leadership as the three most dominant themes relevant to professional lives. In response to the second research question about personal lives, the study revealed that the faculty members and their families faced challenges of coping with language, culture, technology demands, time management, financial issues, and study. Faculty members' frames of reference for the views that they had prior to going for study abroad changed as they gradually became immersed in the new culture. These personal transformations as a result of challenging experiences allowed the faculty members to integrate personal and professional development, and consequently, the faculty members were able to bring new dimensions to their professional practice upon return to their respective colleges of education. The study has also shown that the Australian postgraduate study abroad experiences have had profound influences not only on the individual faculty members and their families, but also on their workplaces and on the wider university and education system in Bhutan.

The implications of this study are to do with the Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) curriculum, Royal University of Bhutan human resource rules and regulations pertaining to promotion, Ministry of Education and schools in Bhutan support in learning Dzongkha for returning school students, the support of higher education institutions in Australia for international students including Bhutanese, and Australian (federal and state) immigration policies, regulations, and incentives for international students. For these faculty members, Australia should be considered a preferred destination for higher education.