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Indigenous students’ language competency ranges from bidialectal to multilingual. However, their rich language repertoire is often neglected since the national, state level and school level literacy tests solely assess them against “non-indigenous monolingual norms” or “Standard Australian English”. Under such hegemonic language curriculum, Indigenous students are often considered to be under-achieving and sometimes even misdiagnosed as having learning difficulties or cognitive impairment. 

The following paper addresses this situation and uses a case study to demonstrate to English/EAL teachers that by embracing students’ mother tongue and the associated first language resources, students can truly engage with language learning, establish self-esteem and cultural identities. 

The Australian Directions in Indigenous Education 2005-2008 provides a wide range of recommendations that aims at mproving Indigenous students’ engagement, educational experience and educational outcomes. In particular, it emphasises the significance of school and community partnerships as well as quality teaching in improving their academic outcomes whilst maintaining their Indigenous identity and integrity. This document also highlights that proactive school leadership is fundamental in creating inclusive learning environment for Indigenous students, that helps them to develop and embrace their Indigenous Identity.

 The aims for teaching culturally relevant content include:

-            Improve Indigenous students’ engagement in school;

-            Facilitate Indigenous students to embrace and develop their cultural identities and self-esteem;

-            Encourage exchange and reconciliation of knowledge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students;

-            Create inclusive classrooms that supports the learning of Indigenous students, and;

-            Fully utilise their cultural repertoire in improving Indigenous students’ learning experiences and outcomes. 

This Padlet provides useful resources for Victorian teachers to incorporate culturally relevant content into four subject areas, namely SOSE, science, English/EAL and Health and PE. Excursion and incursion ideas relating Indigenous content can also be found at the end of the Padlet.

The handbook suggests that rather than seeing “non-Standard Australian English” as a deficit, English and EAL/D teachers should recognise and acknowledge the diverse linguistic resources that Indigenous students bring with them into the classroom. As discussed previously, that the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008) advocates for exchange of knowledge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to develop mutual understanding and create opportunities for cross-cultural communication. This is consistent with ideology of this handbook as it recommends language teachers to generate classroom activities that investigate the differences (divergence) and similarities (convergence) between Indigenous English and Anglo-English. The handbook suggests that this approach improves student engagement by allowing them to see the relevance of curriculum materials and encouraging them to advocate their cultures and languages to mainstream students. 

Moreover, this handbook also provides comprehensive guidance and lists of resources on practicing “two-way pedagogy” in teaching Indigenous EAL/D learners, where “two-way” refers to Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and teachers cross-communicate to perfect strategies that aim at improving Indigenous students’ engagement and enrich their literacy by drawing on existing cultural resources.

Furthermore, the page provides topic ideas relevant to Indigenous students that address various aspects of the curriculum across subject areas from years 7 to 10. Here, teachers, including English and EAL/D teachers, can obtain inspirations on designing lessons/units that are relevant and appropriate for Indigenous students. 

This website lists Indigenous workshops and incursions available for schools. Educators may select relevant workshops and organise incursions or excursions on Indigenous content.

The Melbourne Museum holds numerous school programs that aim at educating students about Victorian Indigenous cultures and Identities from Years 1 to 12.

Excursions at the Museum is both affective and visceral as they promote enquiry-based learning as well as haptic learning --- that is learning through touching the Indigenous artefacts. The Museum currently has Koorie culture learning kits consisting a wide range of artefacts from Victorian Indigenous groups. This type of workshops is appropriate for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous learners to develop a more holistic understanding of the Koorie people through this three dimensional learning experience.  

The purpose of these field learning programs is to re-connect disengaged Indigenous students in our mainstream classrooms. Allowing them to see relevance of school materials helps to build their Indigenous identity and empowers them to justify their position in the curriculum.