Jen Millea @ education.au

The current Australian Government has made a commitment to reducing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous learning outcomes. Indigenous education is not an area of expertise of mine (disclaimer) but it does seem to me that the issue is bigger than just indigenous education in itself, and may require some very creative thinking. There’s a thoughtful 1997 paper ‘Aboriginal Ways of Learning and Learning Styles’, by Paul Hughes at Flinders University and Arthur J More at The University of British Colombia in Canada, which is worth a read. There may be new research that builds on this work, but of particular interest to me was 5 ways of learning that are different between indigenous and mainstream learning styles that it describes. The authors don’t present these in opposition to each other, and are at pains to stress that there is a continuum and that non-indigenous learners may have ‘indigenous’ preferences and vice versa.

Learning style of Aboriginals: Observation and imitation
Mainstream learning style: Verbal and oral instruction

Learning style of Aboriginals: Personal trial and feedback
Mainstream learning style: Verbal instruction accompanied by demonstration (see my post on the flight simulator)

Learning style of Aboriginals: Real life performance
Mainstream learning style: Practice in contrived settings

Learning style of Aboriginals: Mastering context specific skills
Mainstream learning style: Abstract context-free principles that can be applied in new, previously inexperienced situations

And finally, the paper says that indigenous learners are (paraphrasing) person oriented rather than information oriented (ie there is no institutionalised office of teacher). This means that Aboriginal children and adults will assess, respect or ignore white teachers more on the basis of how they relate as persons, rather than according to how they perform as teachers.

For people who do a lot of reading in the field of how people learn there’s probably nothing particularly revolutionary about this. But for me it got me thinking about a whole range of issues in relation to reducing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous learning outcomes, the national curriculum, and the Australian Government’s initiative to ensure that every child of pre-school age gets 15 hours of “play-based learning” (amongst other things).

Firstly, it suggests to me that reducing the gap is not just about delivering specific, targeted programs to the identified group (which is what governments tend to do). It suggests that really we need to do a lot of deep thinking and rethinking about the HOW of teaching. I’m not suggesting that teachers don’t already try and do that, but realistically, most teachers are trying to survive the day rather than having an opportunity to rethink everything they currently do, and everything they have been taught to do, and they largely work within systems that have expectations of ’standards’ and do testing on things like literacy and numeracy. It is difficult and dangerous work to experiment on other people’s kids.

We have definitely put teaching using ICT on the agenda in terms of recognising that new pedagogies need to be developed that acknowledge what technology is doing to us and what we are doing to technology, but we haven’t really grappled with re-thinking the whole box and dice of teaching and learning. That is, reducing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous learning outcomes may give us the opportunity to rethink the whole thing - and that may be good for everyone as it’s not just indigenous kids who have issues with schools or having their learning styles accommodated. There’s a long list of others who are alienated from current schooling practice for various reasons.

Secondly, this brings into question how a national curriculum works (I’m a supporter of this concept) when you are trying to apply one curriculum and one set of standards across a diverse community of learners, in an environment that is learner-centred. Learner centredness and a standardised curriculum are in tension. How does one accommodate the other?
Thirdly, I question play-based learning, and I’ve been doing so for some time. This is personal experience rather than anything gleaned from papers or research - I have 2 and half year old twins. What they absolutely love is doing something useful. Not pretend play, but something really useful that matters, and which they can see matters to the overall functioning of the house. It can be hard to find things for them to do (where they don’t demolish or destroy ) but simple things like turning lights on and off, opening blinds, getting the brush and shovel etc all makes their day.
From that point of view it seems to me that the Hughes and More research that describes Aboriginal learning styles describes a way of learning that makes people from the earliest age authentic members of the community. The concept of ‘childhood’ as we now perform it is a relatively new phenomena. I’m not suggesting returning to child labour and chimney sweeps but perhaps instead of play-based learning as our focus, we need to be looking at opportunities that make young children important and authentic contributors to community life rather than just spending their time playing at life.

There is something not quite right (and this is not a judgement of anyone as I do it myself three days a week) about dropping of the kids at childcare, to be looked after by people you don’t know, who are paid to do it (that doesn’t mean they don’t care - all the people who have looked after my kids have been, and are, legends), and who then spend their day pretending to do real things in an environment built and established and staffed so that they can do exactly that.

It’s not real life. The descriptions of Aboriginal learning styles describe a way of learning that is related to the way the community is living. I’m not suggesting one is better than the other, just that it is worth looking at alternatives and rethinking our current ways of doing things.