A Share in the Future . . . Only for Those Who Become Like ‘Us’!: Challenging the ‘Standardisation’ Reform Approach to Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory

Abstract

The global standardization reform movement in education has seduced many Indigenous education policy makers in Australia, providing a powerful neoliberal discourse to further consolidate their focus on Indigenous educational deficit. A Share in the Future, the latest review of Indigenous education in the Northern Territory is an exemplar in this regard. This paper offers a brief exposition of this review, highlighting how an exclusive focus on comparative statistics and standardised testing of English literacy and numeracy works to maintain the coupling of ‘Indigenous’ and ‘deficit’, reifying colonial power relations and justifying technical and bureaucratic educational approaches, administered and monitored from afar. Such an approach is unable to adequately respond to the relational, cultural and linguistic complexities and nuances of local Indigenous education contexts. The educational assumptions and propositions of A Share in the Future will be juxtaposed with those of the Cross-Cultural Collaboration Project, undertaken in the Northern Territory in 2008, to consider alternative ways of successfully engaging these local educational complexities.

High-Expectations Relationships: A Foundation for Enacting High Expectations in all Australian Schools

“…‘A Share in the Future’, the latest review of Indigenous education in the NT, offers one example (Wilson, 2014). This review positions Indigenous children and families from an entirely deficit perspective, and focuses exclusively on ‘catching them up’ to mainstream western educational benchmarks (Fogarty, Lovell & Dodson, 2015; Spillman, 2017). What is exemplified here is the way a system dominated by Anglo-Australian, middle class educators and policy makers generally favours students with the same cultural background as those responsible for the creation and design of the system.…”

“…We need to look deeper at what schools are doing to recognise the strengths and values that Indigenous students and their families and cultures bring to the classroom. Fogarty et al (2015) and Spillman (2017), in their critiques of ‘A Share in the Future’, argue for a strengths-based focus as the dominant educational paradigm. High expectations of Indigenous children are clearly more likely to be enacted and realised from such a paradigm.…”

Bilingual Education vs English-only Approach at Australia’s Northern Territory Schools

“…Later, with only five hours of instruction per day, this may impact the implementation of the language and cultural-based programs (Godinho et al, 2017). In response to that, Spillman (2017) contended that the English-only policy led to the abandonment of support for bilingual literacy agendas that had received a policy authorisation since 1972.…”

Is Indigeneity hidden in the shadow of Australian national school reforms?

“…We focus on one important element of these reforms, the “metapolicy” of standardised, high‐stakes testing regimes, which is driven not only by the idea of a competitive global education marketplace, but also by the promise of raised standards and economies (Spillman, 2017: 139). This has been described as “global panopticism,” where global oversight of educational outcomes directly impacts on national education policy, which then “facilitate[s] a form of neoliberal governance in terms of the ranking and marketing of education systems” (Lingard et al, 2013: 543).…”

“…This has been described as “global panopticism,” where global oversight of educational outcomes directly impacts on national education policy, which then “facilitate[s] a form of neoliberal governance in terms of the ranking and marketing of education systems” (Lingard et al, 2013: 543). This “governance at a distance” has the result that accountability between schools and communities, as well as reducing the weight given to the professional judgements of teachers (Spillman, 2017: 139). The result is that performance dominates the policy discourse.…”