Presentation to the 3rd International Symposium for Innovation in Rural Education (ISFIRE), Perth, WA.

1. Red dirt thinking on power, pedagogy and paradigms:
De-limiting the dialogue in remote education
Sam Osborne, UniSA and CRC REP
John Guenther, Flinders Uni and CRC REP
Presentation for The 3rd International Symposium for Innovation in Rural Education (ISFIRE)
13th – 15th February 2013 Perth, Western Australia

2. Areas of RES activity
Elcho Island
The Remote Education
Systems project is part
of the CRC REP Kimberley
(Cooperative Research
Centre for Remote
Economic Participation). Tanami
There are five initial focus
regions. Pathways to Southern NT/APY Land
Employment is a project
closely linked to our work
Ngaanyatjarra Lands
and has two focus areas
currently.
2

3. Where do Anangu live?
*note – the term Anangu is also used by
Pintupi/Luritja communities, for
example, which spreads further to the
North and West of this map.
Source: Ara Irititja archive website
http://www.irititja.com/the_archive/audi
ence.html

4. Remote Education Systems approach:
• Reference group from
Indigenous academics
to systems
representatives, NGOs
etc
• Aboriginal Community
Researchers
• Community
conversations as well
as engaging remote
educators at the
academic level.

5. The Remote Education Systems project has four main questions
that local research teams can work on. They are:
• What is education for in remote Australia and what
can/should it achieve?
• What are ‘successful’ outcomes for education from
Anangu standpoints?
• How can teaching change in order to achieve these
successes?
• What would an effective education system in remote
Australia look like?

6. 6

7. It’s Simple, right…?
‘Blue sky thinking’
The utopian
Often ‘externally imagined’
‘Red dirt thinking’
The pragmatic
– taking steps ‘in context’ –
place based Aralya, SA

8. The knowledge interface
The contested ‘middle space’
Western (scientific) Indigenous
Community engagement Knowledge(s)
Nationally valued/measured
failure Place-based ‘Decolonised’ space
learning
‘Mickey Mouse’ Closing the Gap
Co-constructed knowledge Politically, socially,
Typically the limits of
contextually constructed
teacher’s experience Strength based
Derived from eternal
Derived from Western/Greek behind
axioms (dreaming)
philosophy – accepted axioms
of our education system

9. The values interface Yapa
Kardiya
• Being • Giving
Responsible unconditionally
• Individual • Collective
• Education • Learning
Where does the • 3 ‘L’s; Look,
• 3 ‘R’s; Reading, inspired/inspiring
wRiting, Listen, Learn
educator begin? • Respect: country,
aRithmetic
• Respect: knowledge,
authority, relationship
property, • Relationship (no
achievement such thing as
• Friendship ‘friend’) and
reciprocity

10. The knowledge interface
Nakata et al 2012:
Pedagogy proposal
• understanding the limits of
How we position their own thinking
remote • engaging in open, exploratory
and creative inquiry
educators, not • building language and tools for
where… describing and analysing what
they engage with
• engages the politics of
knowledge production and
build critical skills

11. Who can benefit from this more nuanced ‘positioning’?
• Remote systems
• Remote educators
• Remote Service providers
• Remote Employers
• ‘The bourgeois brotherhood’ & the ‘easy answers’ gang.

12. What are Aboriginal remote educators and communities saying?
• Children need to be competent in both western and Yolngu teachings. Yolngu culture
is paramount and western education must be embedded in a learning context that
respects and affirms traditional Yolngu cultural knowledge, traditions and practices.
• Mainstream education at all levels is essential if Yolngu children are to have the same
life chances as other Australians.
(Wearne & Yunupingu 2011)
Aspiration and the future is viewed through the lens of family, not through the
modelling/coaxing of white educators. (Tjitayi, Minutjukur, Burton)
‘We want the power that education offers, but we have our own power that we must
retain’ (Minutjukur & Osborne 2013 – in press)

13. The knowledge interface
Red dirt thinking:
Can we re-imagine and
begin to step outside the
Western-Indigenous
binary and support a
liminal space for the co-
generation of ‘codes of
power’? (Delpit 1993)

14. How do we move
beyond the
limitation of the
lived experience of
remote students
and step outside of
the limits of remote
educators’ lived
experience?

15. A remote education
that empowers rather
than constrains?

16. • Builds confidence (open
Red dirt thinking… spirit) to acquire new
knowledge
A remote education that: • Lays footprints for aspiration
• Takes account of and
empowers traditional
knowledge
• Essential mainstream
education