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Main Feature: Steven Kolber talks to Al Fricker about Decolonising the Curriculum and using First Nations pedagogies for all students.

Regular Features: Ideology in Education, Tom Mahoney considers how education identifies what it values; Education in the News, Cameron discusses recent changes to NAPLAN.

Timecodes:
00:00 Opening Credits
01:31 Intro
05:52 Ideology in Education
12:35 Education in the News – NAPLAN
21:02 Feature Introduction
23:29 Interview – Al Fricker
01:31:11 Announcements

Links:
– Steven Kolber on Twitter
– Tom Mahoney on Twitter
– Al Fricker’s Profile
– “The Renters” documentary series, email: hello@wedgetailpictures.com

Feature Transcript (Generated by otter.ai – unedited)

Steven Kolber 

Alright, hello, lovely people. Welcome to Kobus corner, we’re sitting down having a discussion with Alaric Fricker, who’s disclosed by Al Fricka. But I feel like it’s too good to name not to say out loud at least once. And we’re going to be talking about kind of decolonizing schooling, indigenous pedagogies, things like that, and sort of seeing where our discussion takes us. First, for some background, I was writing stuff about Socratic circles and thinking that I was, you know, being really ancient in my thinking. And then I had the good fortune to stumble across ELLs work, and we did some stuff together. And then I realized that indigenous pedagogy is is something that it’s, for me, as a teacher, there’s my 12 year owl, and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone talk about indigenous pedagogy at all until just this year. And that’s mostly been me kind of poking around and sort of being curious about it, I guess. But what’s, what do you do on the day to day and kind of give us a bit of an intro into who you are and what you do?

Al Fricker 

Sure. Thank you very much. So my name is Elle, I’m very proud judge Auburn, Maine. So my ancestors come from around the central goldfields region of Victoria, one of the five cooler nations that make up the coronations that were based around near Melbourne prior to colonization. And for many of us, we still live around these regions as well. My oldest documented ancestor was a woman by the name of Mary Medina, who was documented the Franklin Ford mission in the 1840s, early 1840s. And she had a relationship with a European ancestor of mind that arrived. My family originally from Switzerland via Ireland to Australia, in the early 1850s, just prior to the gold rush. We know of her because her name was anglicized to Maria. And so we, we did a bit of digging through the family tree and the genealogy to get to the to find out who she was, and what have her actual name was. So my ancestors stayed in that region for one generation. And then they moved down to Melbourne, where, due to colonial government policy at the time, because this prior to Federation, they, they were at risk of being excluded from things like housing and education and welfare, unemployment, things like that. So they rebranded themselves as black Irish. And that was sort of how my family positioned themselves to next few generations. So it wasn’t until I was a child, that my parents, my father did a bit of a family tree genealogy and started poking around. And we’d always heard whispers, but nothing ever really sort of eventuated from it. And then we reached out to the community, and they got back to us and said, Yeah, we know who you are. And so for much of my adult life has been seeking connections to community to language to culture to country, and also focusing on how I can serve my community and begin to do the work of supporting them and trying to address some of the the entrenched and ongoing issues around colonization and dispossession and recognize that I being very fair skinned and coming from an urban environment have grown up with a lot of privilege that many of my kin haven’t. And so it’s part of my job to make sure I can give back and support them. And one of the ways that I do that is through seeking to explore the context around decolonizing education and what that might look like in a contemporary Australian context. professionally. I’m a former primary and secondary school teacher secondary train, but taught at a prep to Utah school for a few years before I got chewed up and spat out by the system that Oh, so many of us experience. One memorable term, I had a prep to grade two PE class. And immediately following that I had a year 12 History revolutions class. And so that was quite an interesting experience having to change the way that I was talking and acting and speaking and engaging with the kids. And I’d walk into the twelves and do that. Yeah, that classic clap, you know that clap? And they would sort of look at me and go, mate, most of us can drive and we could drink and we get up to mischief on the weekends. And sorry, everyone, but I suppose the vivid memories of being a school teacher, especially with that Peter to class was just so many tears, so much crying and so much of it coming from me, you know, and that was always a challenge. But one of my frustrations when I was a school teacher was experiencing a very close Your system and realizing that, in my practice at the time, I was doing the very best that I could, but didn’t really have the experience or the theoretical knowledge in order to address the aspects of the job that made me feel very uncomfortable. So, from that I moved into higher education initially as a professional staff member, and then embarked on a PhD, which I completed last year, and then started a career as an academic. So did a few years at RMIT. And I’m now currently based at the Nokia Institute at Deakin University. And my research focuses very much around decolonizing, and what decolonizing education looks like in this country. And then, once we begin the process of decolonizing, how we can go about supporting indigenous and non Indigenous educators to include and engage First Nations contexts as part of their daily teaching and learning practice. And that’s, that’s the tricky part. If I had all the answers to that, I’d hopefully be sipping cocktails on a tropical beach somewhere. But this is an ongoing project that that is probably going to be many, many, many years, if not decades, in the making as we go forward.

Steven Kolber 

Wow. That is quite an introduction. That’s amazing. I’m already bubbling with questions that are like, Oh, okay, and right. Take us right back to the start. You said the phrase Black Irish, what is that? I’ve never heard that before.

Al Fricker 

So Black Irish relates to allegedly descendants of the Spanish Armada that were wrecked off the coast of the British Isles. During a big storm in the 1600s. I can’t remember the exact year. So basically, long story short, the Spaniards were ready to invade England, they were halfway there, big storm came a whole bunch of ships got wrecked, invasion got postponed. And allegedly, a whole lot of those shipwrecked sailors washed up on the shores still alive. And their descendants were known as the Black Irish because they had Spanish heritage, allegedly. I don’t know enough of the details to be able to tell you whether or not that is legit or if that’s just stories.

Steven Kolber 

Fascinating. Okay, no, no that before. And so you mentioned decolonizing in this country, it was something you sort of emphasized? I assume that means that there’s other approaches in other countries and they don’t necessarily fit and all those sort of things or is

Al Fricker 

look for sure. I mean, the challenge that we have is that Australia is certainly not the only decolonize country. And so, broadly speaking, we’ve got scholarship that talks about post colonial in some places, and Neo colonial in others. And postcolonial implies that a colonial colonizing force has been there, has occupied that that territory for a while and then has left. So places like that might be sort of India, lots of Sub Saharan Africa, and a couple of places in the Americas neocolonial relates to places where the colonizers have turned up. And although extensively, they have declared independence from the original colonial power. Culturally, the systems and structures of colonization is still very much present in those places, or things or places like Canada, the United States, Australia, and altro New Zealand, as well. In addition to that, the Australian context is also slightly different because we’re the only colonized nation in the world, in our continent, that sort of Neo colonial context that doesn’t have a treaty with their first nations people. So for that reason, the work that we do in the education context is very much often at the large s of the various state and territory and federal government departments of education because they’re really under no legal obligation to support this work because there isn’t a treaty that enforces it. So we’ll often cite things like the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples, specifically, article 14 That speaks to the rights of indigenous peoples to control education systems to suit us and also various University and state and territory policies around First Nations education and, and of course, in Victoria as well. We’ve got the negotiations around Treaty, which is very important. And I have a feeling that if the voice to Parliament gets up in the next 12 to 24 months, that too will have an impact in the education space as well which are and unwelcoming that very much. So.

Steven Kolber 

Iran, okay. Yeah. And so the lack of the treaty law Yeah, okay. Because, yeah, changes everything. I feel like yeah, it’s sort of like As you know, it’s kind of like we, me and my colleagues write about democracy. And it’s like, yeah, you have to look at kind of like the, the the national statement on what students should be. And I feel like yeah, the further away you get from the further away you get from policy, the harder it is to make the case. And if you have to go, as you said to the UN Declaration, like that’s a long way from not, you know, not spatially but a long way from Australia. And so have the you mentioned federal and state policies there any that’s kind of like, worth reading anything that’s kind of his gold standard, or do you think kind of leave space for exploration?

Al Fricker 

Look, definitely, I think, probably one of the better ones is the Victorian Indigenous education policy known as Merle. And that has been constructed in partnership with the state government and Victorian Aboriginal education association incorporated VI, which is the peak Indigenous Education body in the state. And that’s a 10 year strategy that has bipartisan support from both sides of politics. And we’re about halfway through it. And it’s been part of the policy, it’s informed the implementation of the cultural understanding and safety training across all government schools of Victoria. In addition to that, it also is very important, because it’s quite explicit in stating that it’s not just about supporting Aboriginal, Tasha and learners specifically, but actually, it’s supporting all learners in Victoria, to know about First Nations contexts. And that’s something that in much of the literature is a bit limiting, because there’s this expectation that there’s one way to teach the First Nations kids, there’s one way to teach the non Indigenous kids. But there’s more and more research, which some really interesting research coming out of South Australia, which talks about the super diverse First Nations child that may have multiple First Nations identities and cultural contexts as well as non Indigenous ones, too. So they’re quite a patchwork of cultural identities that all reside within the individual child. And so that’s certainly not something we can take for granted.

Steven Kolber 

So super diverse, means explain that, again, you lost me.

Al Fricker 

So we talk about diversity in a classroom around the idea that you’ll have 25 kids, and you might have a diversity of say, 11 different cultural backgrounds. Super diversity refers to the multiple cultural backgrounds that may be within a single child. So to give you an example, I did my PhD research in papunya, which is in the central deserts region of Australia. And the two main language groups, pintupi and literature. But I would have children who would have backgrounds in r&d, woodfree, and a couple of other cultural communities around that area. And they will just be the individual children. So most of the children would know four or five different languages, and then they’d speak Aboriginal English and then it would be standard straight English. So I would be trying to converse with them in their sort of fifth or sixth language. And each of those languages would consist of a particular cultural context that was part of their identity and cultural makeup, and they were quite super diverse in that sense.

Steven Kolber 

And I mean, Australia is like very much a mono lingual sort of place, generally speaking, like, you know, like, you think of official any language teachers in Australia would say that, like, you know, they’re basically pushing shit up hill because Australia just assumes there’s one language. So yeah, it’s probably uncommon for teachers to experience bilingual, let alone poly lingual. They’re the word as you said, super

Al Fricker 

multilingual. Multilingual.

Steven Kolber 

There you go. Yeah. That’s yeah. So that’s yeah.

Al Fricker 

And we also have a growing number of First Nations kids with with the various migration waves since colonization, who may not necessarily have used to be fairly common for them to have first nations and then Anglo Australian heritage. But we’ve got more and more kids that will have Muslim backgrounds. You know, it’s quite a vibrant Muslim Aboriginal community in central desert, so descendants of the valachi couple years who used to apply the trade routes to the central deserts, and run the camels. But of course, in many, many urban areas where the majority of our kids live, they may have Japanese or Chinese or Indian or Greek or Italian heritage based on their family makeup. So and that adds to the diversity within those children too.

Steven Kolber 

Right. Yeah. And then so earlier, you made the distinction between that you said teaching indigenous and non Indigenous students That’s a good distinction or bad distinction or hell. How should we handle that? Well,

Al Fricker 

I suppose the, the, what I’m trying to articulate here is that often First Nations contexts are positioned as a deficit. In that many teachers would say, Well, look, I don’t have any First Nations children in my classroom. So therefore, I don’t have to engage in any First Nations contexts, because my non Indigenous kids aren’t going to get anything out of it. And that’s very much deficit positioning. But where my research sort of challenges that is saying, well, at the end of the day, what we know, it’s an undisputed fact that First Nations cultures, the oldest continuous cultures in the world, we stretch facts 70 plus 1000 years. We know that culture is not innate, we know that you’re born into culture, you’re not born with culture. So therefore, it means that culture is something that is taught and learned. So therefore, finally, it stands to reason that First Nations teaching and learning practices and villages and pedagogies are therefore the oldest teaching knowledges practices and pedagogy is in the world, older than the last ice age. So the question then becomes, given that we’re the oldest continuous cultures of the world, and therefore the oldest continuous teachers in the world, why wouldn’t we want all students in Australia to benefit from accessing that knowledge, those pedagogical approaches, those processes, those experiences, those learning activities, the the, the emotions that come with that? Why wouldn’t we want our kids to have access to not only a world class Western education system, but in my opinion, and acknowledging that I’m super biased here, but the oldest and therefore the best education processes in the world at the same time, and these are not mutually exclusive, despite how colonization has impacted on Australia?

Steven Kolber 

Yeah. I mean, from my perspective, so a couple of weeks ago, I spoke at the English teachers conference. And I was basically saying, like, indigenous pedagogy is question mark, maybe we could, and my my cell, and you know, it was not a well thought out cell and removed from you’re much more sophisticated, but I sort of said, I put up the article that found indigenous memory techniques was superior to, you know, all of this as air quotes, Western memory techniques. And then I said, similar to what you just said, then, because I probably stole it from you to be honest, you know, oldest living educational system, blah, blah, blah, again, not as precisely as you said it, but sort of, you know, this is it’s, it’s, it’s passed the test of time, maybe maybe we should look at it question mark. And obviously, like I said, That’s not as not as forcefully or as powerfully introduced, but sort of just raising it as a topic. Like, why why isn’t this something that we’ve talked about? And I said, you know, has anyone ever done any of these things? That eight ways pedagogies. And those sorts of things in one or two people sort of hesitantly went, Yeah, I’ve done one or two of those things. But, yeah, it’s not. I was not impressed. Including myself very much into that group. But yeah, what other arguments would you say like if I’m, if we’re, if someone’s listening in and they’re also the firebrand of their school is saying, you know, pushing for these things? What, what errors would you put in their quiver to sort of further justifies that, or is that enough?

Al Fricker 

In a perfect world, I would love to say that’s enough. I suppose the only hours I could really provide would be to point them in the direction of some absolutely deadly research by First Nations and non Indigenous researchers who are looking at effective first night engagement with effective First Nations pedagogy in the classroom. And there’s there’s a fantastic project that’s being led by Professor listed Arabic, Arabic Rigney at in South Australia, looking at cultural responsive pedagogies. And then it’s another project being led by Dr. Kevin Lowe around set one called I’m Jeff seven, a mind blank one second culturally nourishing schooling. And so these are really important research projects that are happening at the moment where they’re working very intensively with groups of teachers to support them to become more culturally responsive in the classroom, which allows for the engagement with First Nations contexts and so they These are projects that are happening. But of course, you’ve got other research in education. Research has been published by Tyson, Jakob Porter, Dr. Tyson and Porter, who documented the eight ways. We’ve got some absolutely deadly research by Professor Martin acheter, who talks about the cultural interface. And that is very important as well. In higher education, we’ve got people like Associate Professor Nicky moody, who has been doing some fantastic work in sort of a higher education context. But this is all research, which is very much from a Western perspective, emerging in that sense that it’s not well known in a mainstream context yet. But of course, from a First Nations perspective, it’s not emerging, we’ve known about it the whole time, it’s just a matter of sharing it with as many different people as we can. So I wouldn’t encourage them to engage with some of the literature around that. But again, I’d like to think that, you know, be able to access the oldest continuous teaching in the world, which has been tried true and tested as survived, and allowed us to thrive through, you know, huge changes around ice ages and mega droughts and extinction events and things like that. I’d like to think that, you know, it’s probably done the hard yards on that one, and is, you know, the efficacy of that approach is, is without question,

Steven Kolber 

definitely. And so I’ve read a fan talk, and I read a link out one of Lind Kelly’s books, he sort of covers similar ground. And there’s that real distinction between the oral oral culture and the written culture and kind of insights out of that, to me, it’s almost like, from my perspective, like the, we’ve swung too far in one direction, in the sense that, like, you know, writing is I’m taking notes as we talk self consciously, like, you know, writing is the only way we, you know, do anything, memorize things, take notes, do anything. And so it’s almost like bring bringing in the, you know, the old, not gonna say old fashioned, but like the the oral techniques of memory and recall,

Al Fricker 

fish, for sure. And I think one of the things that we have around that is memory, in a western context is often positioned as something that wholly exists within the mind, or can only be can only exist beyond the mind in terms of a written document that’s downloading memories, so we can come back to them later and reengage. But in some of the reading that I’ve done, I’m certainly not an expert in sort of the neurological aspects of this. But the role of country in supporting memory is, is quite important. So rather than writing down something, there’s a particular process where you place memories upon the landscape. And so as you walk across the landscape, you’re also engaging with memories at the same time. And I think that’s what some of the research you mentioned earlier sort of started to explore how that works. So in that sense, when we’re learning in partnership, or in solidarity with country, countries, both our classroom, it’s our textbook, it’s also our hard drive. And it’s also our teacher. So it fulfills a whole bunch of roles in that sort of teaching and learning cycle, that are all specifically designed to support the outcomes of children now, prior to colonization, and and it still happens today, we would have experienced country often curated by others, so So elders might take us out to a particular place at a particular time of the year. And they might do things like say, right, all you need to do is sit and observe. And once you’ve figured out what you need to see, you come back and tell us and if you’re correct, if you’ve seen what you need to see, we’ll be like, yep, spot on. If you haven’t, we’ll send you back until you figure it out. And so in those instances, of course, in the child, there might be some fairly full on experiences of frustration. But the ultimate outcome is not only learning that new information that one needs, but having the opportunity to sit with country and have country speak to you. And that’s something that is, you know, quite visibly absent from Western pedagogical contexts because what we have is pedagogies, which are often positioned at a binary of student focused or teacher focused and they will shift from very rote, memorizing repetitive things to that sort of teacher focused social aspects, problem solving, inquiry based. And two huge blind spots in western pedagogy is is. pedagogy is based on relationships, both between the students and between the students or the teacher. And pedagogy is based on country and engaging with the environment. Because even school classrooms are colonial constructions, because we taught our children very, very well for 10s of 1000s of years and didn’t have a single classroom didn’t have, we didn’t have a single Blackboard, we didn’t have a single school uniform, or detentions or whole passes or toilet permission slips or anything like that. And so the question then becomes why are these things supposedly necessary? And what value do they add? And how do they actually support student learning? And that’s where my research sort of six to unpack some of those questions. And so broad,

Steven Kolber 

broadly speaking, is there. Is there like a liminal step where you say, Well, before we decolonize, we have to make indigenous practices fit within the the awful structures that you just described? Or is like, how do you sort of

Al Fricker 

So my approach, and I’ve got a paper that will hopefully be coming out next year with a colleague of mine who’s based at RMIT. So look out for Fricker and Hughes, sorry, Hughes and forget she’s, she’s first of all, using Flickr 2023, we’re not sure which Gen is going to publish yet, we’re still sort of hunting around for one that we think will be suitable. But when in that paper, we’ve proposed a particular model of decolonizing. So what we what we sort of argue in our paper is that decolonizing is a process. It’s not a metaphor, and that’s based on the work of Eve tuck and Reuben, guest and Peter Fernandez, which are two international scholars who do a lot of work in decolonizing education is so based on the fact that it’s not a metaphor. We look at decolonizing as a beginning step as a critical self reflection. So that is our reflection, that everything we experience in our teaching and learning contexts in Australia is a colonial construction. And many, many teachers are inhabiting those sort of colonial structures, without even realizing it. Now, it’s only through a process of critical self reflection, where teachers can have an opportunity to engage in whiteness as a concept, privilege as a concept, and power and understand how the nexus of those three aspects, essentially group students and teachers into the haves and the have nots, and the will dues and the won’t dues. There’s some really interesting research coming out by a non Indigenous scholar called Sarah, Dr. Sarah boyfriend, who is looking at the concept of threshold concepts. So what is the particular knowledge that teachers require to be exposed to, in order to help facilitate that critical self reflection? Now what we argue is that critical self reflection is a vital first step, because what that therefore does, is allows for a recognition of the existence of First Nations sovereignty. Now, to give you a different example, here, it’s like I could be walking across the road against a red man in the busy streets of Melbourne and a police officer come out with a with a baton and start beating me to hell with it on the ground, which has been known not to me, thankfully, but to others. And I could be rolling around on the ground screaming at the top my lungs, I’m a sovereign Aboriginal man, you don’t have the right to do this. I am sovereign. Now, of course, if they haven’t undergone a process of decolonization, that’s meaningless, because the the recognition of the existence of First Nations sovereignty doesn’t manifest for them. So once we have critical self reflection, which allows for the recognition of the existence of First Nation sovereignty, we then have a process where non Indigenous teachers can begin to make space within their education context that allows First Nation sovereignty to manifest as self determination. Now, the tricky part here is, and this is the part that often we sort of fall at the first hurdle is because there’s an expectation that then First Nations people have to come in and have to do all the work and have to construct all the correct curriculum and provide all the pedagogies and be the guest speakers that come in and do all those sorts of things. But there’s not that many of us and we are crazy busy. So the model that we have put forward is by sort of dividing the labor and saying that it’s the work of non Indigenous people to decolonize their spaces to make some So First Nations contexts. And it’s the work of indigenous people to indigenize these spaces, because non Indigenous people can’t indigenous anything, you can only do that if you’re more. Now, the the extension of that is also to save that for First Nations, people and stakeholders as part of this process, we have to be providing the leadership. And it’s the non Indigenous stakeholders that need to be providing the labor. So the model that we found works for us is that my colleague, my non Indigenous colleagues that are out, well, we need to have a conversation I said, Alright, so here’s some ideas you can run with, what I need you to do now is go off, Google them, research them further find out more about them, craft a lesson plan or a series of activities or a unit around that. And then once you’ve done that work, you come back to me and then I’ll give you some feedback. So I’m essentially stepping away from the project, after I’ve provided that initial input in that leadership, which means that I’m then not having to provide all of my labor within that to try and construct that and because it then becomes co constructed, it means that the non Indigenous stakeholders have a better concept of wear their lane is so so what is decolonizing and appropriate. And when it becomes cultural appropriation inappropriate, they have an idea of what are the appropriate ways of working with First Nations people to try and sort of achieve those projects and achieve change in the classroom. And recognizing that, you know, there’s a lot of cognitive labor that gets in cultural labor that gets placed upon the shoulders of First Nations people, which we don’t necessarily have to do. Because we can just provide a few insights, some, some leads, some, some ideas, and then allow non Indigenous people to do that. And so and then, I think, most importantly, because it’s been co constructed, it means that we have buy in from all the key stakeholders, and those non Indigenous educators can then move forward, teaching those those lessons using those resources using those unit plans, with confidence, because it’s got the tick of approval from community, and they know that they’re not going to get into any sort of hot water. And and one of the ways I sort of articulate that with my students is to sort of say, you know, if you’ve got community that sort of come at you because they feel like you’re not doing it, right, primarily, take their advice on board and do what they say straight up, don’t argue. But if they have a real issue, please feel free to pass on my details, and I’ll cop the heat. Thankfully, it hasn’t happened yet. Because there’s few things worse than having an elder on on the phone, or in having a cup or over yarn. And they’ve sort of letting you know, you haven’t done the right thing. I’ve copped a few acts over the years, and it’s not pleasant. But yeah, and that just gives, you know, my non Indigenous colleagues opportunities to relax in that space and really do some cool stuff. And I think the final aspect that is super valuable is giving us the space and the opportunity to demonstrate our leadership. And again, challenging the deficit positioning of First Nations people, which often manifests in that sort of paternalistic approach where we don’t know what’s good for us, we can’t make good decisions, we’re terrible with money, we’re irresponsible with children, all these sort of racial tropes, which are super duper racist and superduper harmful to the community. And so we can have opportunities to demonstrate our leadership chops, and get that respect for that. And that’s, again, super important considering the negotiations around treaty and voice which will, again, allow us to show our leadership and so we need non Indigenous people to trust us that we, we know our business, and we know what our kids want, and what they need. And we know what non Indigenous kids want and need as well. You’re

Steven Kolber 

right. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So it’s sort of, I guess, when you say leadership and labor, so in the non Indigenous, I assume all of this would preferably be kind of before, you know, before you did it, so like, you know, I’ve sent off to do the labor. And I’ve said, here’s my plan, and I come back and you, you would make notes on that rather than me say, while I went out and I you know, did these things that you then say alerts a bit cultural appropriation, and then, you know, that would be bad, I assume?

Al Fricker 

Yes, yes. No, you’re spot on. It’s about sort of having those conversations going away. You know, the non integer stakeholders, rolling the sleeves up, doing the work, bringing back the draft, and then just letting us cast her over and make sure it’s, it’s good to go and then yeah, plug and play away you go. Wash, rinse, repeat. And so

Steven Kolber 

you know, Because I because I do a do a lot of thinking in the technology space. Is there a way that you could do that? You know, at scale like is would you ever if government came to you with a bag of money and said we want to make indigenous pedagogy app or an indigenous lesson plan suite? Or you know what I mean? Like, is that antithetical? Or is this?

Al Fricker 

Not? Look, I think there is definitely crossover. And of course, I would absolutely love government to throw a big pile of money, that’d be, that’d be great. If they did, I’d also request that they give it to me canvas bags with a big dollar sign painted on the side of just like the cartoons, but that look, there’s already a few organizations that are doing that work. Dr. Molina Hoggarth over at the University of Melbourne has just announced an amazing partnership with philanthropic organizations. And so they’ve got a huge Curriculum project that they’re about to get started on. So watch that space. I’ve done a bit of work with an organization called Matilda education, which Australian textbook publishers, and we have been working with them on the good humanity series for a couple of years now. And also the year 10. Chapter in the year 10 history book on rights and freedoms, which is the civil rights movement, Australian and in the US. And so they were incredibly trusting in me, because they sent they basically gave me a clean slate and said, Look, you know, your business, you know, what you’d like to see in that year 10 History curriculum, you know, how it could be, you know, how we could construct a US market leading textbook. Just go for it. And I said, Well, look, if I’m going to put my name on it, and I’m going to be responsible to community, I’ve got to make sure that I’m going to be able to do what I need to do. And there’s not going to be that sort of editorial control. And they said, Look, if you could at least let it like, link into the curriculum, we’d really like that. But otherwise, go for it. So we produce this textbook and this chapter specifically, which is, it’s absolutely fine. I’m incredibly proud of it. It’s not perfect, but it is a huge improvement on the previous offerings in the market and in this country. And so we are we have, you know, what are the challenges we have that that part of the curriculum is that it doesn’t really address racism, which, of course, is one of the catalysts for the civil rights movements in Australia, US. So we have a spread in that book, which ask the question, well, what is racism, where we sort of unpack in language is appropriate for yourself. So you 10s nines and 10s, I should say, around what Critical Race Theory is and what it means. So that’s a huge, that’s a huge and to have that, especially given the right wing pushback in Australia, the US around teaching of critical race theory. We also go beyond the curriculum in many ways. So we explore. You know, because the the curriculum positions civil rights move as a struggle that happened was successful and is no longer needed. But our final sort of spread is sort of saying, well, what’s the legacy? So let’s look at the, the successes and the struggles that are still occurring. And so we look at that through the lens of health, justice and land rights and sort of say, well, because as far as we’ve come, we can’t be complacent, there’s still a lot more work to do. And the final aspect that I’m also incredibly proud of is being able to push the history further back into the past of that particular section. Because the Civil Rights Movement doesn’t appear in a vacuum. And it certainly is, in some key events are inspired by what happens in the US. But there’s actually a lot more cross-pollinate polarization between the two movements, because they’re often quite parallel, which is completely ignored in the curriculum. And so we were able to sort of unpack that a little bit more, and look at the Australian civil rights movement as an extension of resistance to colonization, because there’s a clear context of that. And then, of course, look at some extra stuff like the role of the trade union movement in the civil rights movement, which is often ignored as well, and how important that was to build that sort of cross cultural and cross sector solidarity there. So things like the the pill Restrikes in the wafer walk off, which was originally a strike around pain conditions, that became the first land rights case. So there’s a lot in there. And of course, we also dispel a few myths around 67 referendum and how it actually wasn’t, I mean, yeah, okay. It’s great to celebrate, and I’m not going to do that, but it’s really not as good as everybody reckons it was. It wasn’t as as impactful. And so, I suppose finally, as for the last organization I’ve been doing a bit of work with is an organization called Australians together that have a big projects happening, and you can just Google them. It’s entirely free but what they’ve got is a teams of writers and teams of cultural collaborators and reviewers. And we actually have that same model. So we’ll sit down with a writer will say, Alright, so what’s your theme? What’s your topic? They are to this topic for this year level, what do you think it will give them some advice, give them some ideas, send them a few papers or, or few URLs and things like that they go off, they write the resource, and then we sort of check over at the end, and that’s all free. So all you need to do is log into the website, make an account, and start downloading resources, which you can literally plug and play. So there’s already quite a lot of work going on in that space. But I and I suppose the the caveat that I put on all this is, it’s a really great start to plug and play with these resources. But that we can’t dust our hands off and say, right, we’re done. We’ve decolonized we’ve included stuff here. Because it requires over time, a far more authentic engagement with knowledge and considering our relationships with knowledge as well.

Steven Kolber 

It to me when when I speak to people about it’s sort of, in Victoria, at least cultural understanding is a big thing. So we have cultural understanding officers cut, I think they’re called cast or something, and they’ll come out. And so

Al Fricker 

cast cast is the cultural understanding and safety training. And that’s usually being implemented by Caz O’s, which Cree engagement support officers. And they are usually looked after by kicks, which are cre education coordinators. And so they are part of the Career Education Workforce that work within the Victorian Department of Education, but often very closely aligned with VI as part of that context as well. So they have been implementing the cost training, and at that spin an outcome of the mailroom strategy in Victoria. Gotcha. So, just joining us,

Steven Kolber 

good to have all the acronyms because I was like, Yeah, I can’t remember exactly what they were. Especially. But yeah, to me, like, yeah, the verb, the verb is interesting. So like, to me understanding, like, if your goal was only to have indigenous understanding, that’s almost like what you’re saying, which is like, well, we’ve put it in the curriculum. As an English teacher, you know, we’ve taught deadly Anna or now we teach a new, you know, we’ve taught rabbit proof fence or whatever it is, like, we’ve we’ve ticked off understanding. I don’t know what what kind of, would you I tend to grapple with understanding being? Alright, whereas curiosity being maybe a bit better, but sort of what, what verb would you aim for for kind of teachers, all those sort of things? Well,

Al Fricker 

I think that’s a great question. And I think the key thing we’ve got to recognize here is that the cost training is only a couple hours long. And so there’s only so much we can do in that time now. Now, the challenge that we have is back in 2012 2010, we had the AITSL standards come out for the very first time for professional teacher standards, we had standard 1.4, which talks to how First Nations, you know, knowing how First Nation students learn. Sorry, no. 1.4 is knowing about First Nations histories and cultures, to support reconciliation, and 2.4. I think he’s knowing how Aboriginal Torres Strait students learn, but I might have flipped, swap them around by mistake. So do forgive me if I’m but basically, those are the two standards which relate to First Nations contexts. Now the challenge that we have is that they came out, so they have suddenly become policy. We’ve had a raft of First Nations policies, First Nations education policies that have been published since it’s only just in the last sort of three or four years that we’ve seen First Nations education, become a core subject, in many initial teacher training courses, and even then there’s some universities that still only have it as an elective. And then you have this real binary of the teacher workforce, we’ve got an influx of grads who’ve done those subjects at university, but you’ve got a whole lot of experienced teachers who’ve been in around the traps for years and years and years, who, when they did their qualifications, didn’t actually engage with anything First Nations at all. And I feel bad for them, because it’s kind of like, right, you’re teaching, congratulations, well done. Welcome to the classroom. By the way, now you have to do all this extra stuff, which you weren’t trained to do. Good luck. And the challenge that we have, so the cost training is very much around this, that initial step and saying, Alright, this is about winning over hearts and minds. This is about recognizing that, for us to be acting ethically in our classrooms as ethical teachers, we need to be engaged with First Nations contexts and making a case for that. But the challenge we have the cost training from and this is purely my own editorializing here is that it doesn’t really answer the question. How do we go about that? So lots of the professional development that I do as a consultant and working directly with schools or with the union or with the department or with V Car is around. How do we operationalize? Yeah, we’ve one of the hearts of minds. We know teachers know they need to be doing something here. But there’s a lot of anxious hand wringing and anxious sort of hopping from foot to foot, because we’re not sure what to do. And so the PD that I sort of rollout is around sort of answering the question, well, how do we do this? So in terms of the verb to get back to the original question that you asked, look, I don’t know if there is one, to be honest, I think cultural understanding and safety is a great starting point, because many of our teachers just aren’t aware, aren’t equipped, don’t even consider it as a thing. And then I suppose the next stage would be to look at sort of, once you’ve got understanding, we move towards competency. Once we’ve got competency, we move towards responsiveness. And then once we’ve got responsiveness, well, that’s where we’re actually working in a space where we can support the cultural contexts of all of our students, and First Nations contexts as well. So if I had to give you verbs, that would be sort of the continuum that I would be moving towards, and the challenges that we talked about safety, we talked about competence, we talked about understanding, we talked about responsiveness. And they’re often positioned as once you’ve reached that point, we can dust your hands off, and you’ve done it. But the reality is, that is going to be a career long process, it’s going to be a marathon, it’s going to take years. And the challenge will be of course, with the oppressive workloads, and the lack of funding coming from state and federal bodies, giving teachers the time and space to actually dedicate to this work. And that that’s something that I’m having fairly spicy conversations with many policymakers and purse string holders to make sure we can actually set people up for success in this space.

Steven Kolber 

And so when you said the AITSL standards, so again, we’re who cares which number is which, but so how indigenous students learn is that roughly the dot point,

Al Fricker 

yeah, and that’s and full respect to the mob who fought tooth and nail to get that put in the AITSL standards, originally, I think credit and respect where that is due, and it of course, is due there. But it is limiting because it again implies that there’s one way to teach the First Nations kids and one way not to teach them and, and as diverse as all students are those same diversities are reflected in First Nations students as well. So what we need to be doing, I think, more importantly, is considering how we decolonize our pedagogy is a move away from this sort of, or not necessarily move away, but certainly make space for First Nations pedagogical approaches that can often will be very similar to Western pedagogies. But also will often cover those sort of pedagogical blind spots, like learnings, learning with emotion, learning or country learning through eight ways and, and yawning, and all those amazing ways of engaging.

Steven Kolber 

I mean, I’m not gonna I’m probably gonna do make a hash of this, but I was talking, brought up this topic with some pre service teachers. And they said, obviously, in the contract, you just set up between the old teachers like me, that not that I’m that old, but and they kind of knew new pre service teachers who have been exposed to it. So I’m I was basically, I did a bit of a warm up for what I would say to the old teachers at the English teachers conference, indigenous pedagogies, maybe we should look at it. And they were like, I Yeah, we had a lecture talk to us about eight ways. And they said, it’s a bit like, it’s basically they had a negative view of it, because it assumes what you just said, which is that the indigenous students learn differently. And that, therefore, this is the pedagogy to teach only those Indigenous students. And honestly, that was the first I’ve thought of it that way. Because I was just like, for me, basically, I’m a pedagogical, like, you know, whatever, Magpie or something, collecting different things from everywhere and go, Oh, that’s interesting, what an interesting way of framing it or approaching it or whatever. So I’m just coming, unlike, look, what I just found this, you know, different way of framing it. And they were looking at it as in that sense of like, well, you know, I’d look at my classroom and say, Well, okay, there’s a, there’s a flag next to that student’s name. So then I’ll bring out this, you know, blow the dust off this pedagogical system that we talked about in uni and bring it in? I don’t know. Do you feel? I don’t know. Is that a common opinion? Or because it was the first I’ve heard of it. But

Al Fricker 

have you experienced that? Yes. I mean, I can really only speak to the anecdotal experiences I’ve had because I don’t have statistics around the instances of that, but there’s still a huge amount of time. Kids who will say, you know, I don’t have any First Nations kids in my classroom. So I don’t need to cover any of this stuff, I don’t need to engage in this stuff. And the challenge that we have is that you know that diversity of First Nations learners so there’s some First Nations learners who are very, very strong in their culture and their culture has supported a very I don’t know really how to describe it but but the the the ontological worldview and epistemological or how we how we consider knowledge view of the world has been shaped by their cultural contexts from a First Nations perspective, in ways that are quite different from a Western context. So to give you an example of what that might look like, in a western context, we largely conceptualize that we live in a marketplace of ideas, where you your only limitation for engaging with information and ideas is how much money you have to spend. And we know that as you go up the chain further in your schooling and education gets more and more expensive. I mean, that’s, and that’s done for a reason. Now that the challenge that we have, in that context is that it means then that you can access whatever information you want, for how much money you have. And the parallel of that is that all, all ideas are created equal, they have just as much merit. But it depends on on where you want and how much money you want to spend. Now, the issue that we have is that that way of engaging with knowledge means that that’s how you get conspiracy theorists, Kuhn on, nutters, flat, earthers, anti vaxxers, all of that nonsense, because all of that information you can find for free, because their catch cries, always do your own research. And so you go down all these rabbit holes, and it’s all free. And because all ideas are created equal, because it’s a marketplace, then you get this nonsense, where you’ll have people say, Well, I’m, I’m I did my research on Google, and the earth is flat, and there’s no evidence to suggest it’s round. And then you’ll have someone who’s a NASA scientist who like No, dude, it’s actually round. And here’s all the evidence, and they’ll go, well, that’s just your opinion, because I have my opinion, you have your opinion. And that’s, you know, as right as it is. And there’s also the nefarious aspect around how that information is used. So that’s when you get the ultra right wing, the fascists or the Neo Nazis, who will leverage off that information and use it in quite violent ways to fulfill their political ideologies. Now, as a First Nations context, we don’t have a marketplace of ideas. We’ve never had a marketplace of ideas, our our ontological and epistemological. And again, I cannot speak for all First Nations context. So let me be very clear about that. And I would never presume to, but generally speaking, there’s that idea that it’s not so much the marketplace of ideas, it’s important, it’s their relationship with knowledge. So in First Nations context, there’s a particular concept known as restricted knowledge. So this particular knowledge that only men will know, this particular knowledge that only women will know, there’s particular knowledge that only elders will know. There’s initiation rites and ceremonies, and all those sorts of things. And unless you’ve been through it, you’re not allowed to share that knowledge with those who are not privy to it. So when we start talking about teaching and learning in that sort of knowledge, what we’re actually doing is we’re asking the question, are you not only intelligent enough to gather this knowledge, but are you mature enough to receive it appropriately, and do have the correct disposition, which means that you will support the relationship you have with knowledge, so you don’t spread it to the wrong people, and then apply it appropriately. So in many contexts, you can be an old Aboriginal person. But if you’re a bit of a prick, you’re probably not going to be given that elder knowledge, you have to demonstrate note, both maturity and suitability to hold that knowledge. And that means that we don’t have the prescribed system in a western education system where right you’ve turned 12, you go to the next class, you go to the next class, you go to the next class, based on your birthday. That means that you’ll have boys and girls who will go through the rites of adulthood as part of initiation. And they will do that once they’ve demonstrated their maturity. So it’s not a particular arbitrary age. It’s when they’re ready. So you’ll have kids that will do it younger, you’ll have kids that will do it older, but it will be based on the individual characteristics of the child who then becomes an adult. So when we think about that, in those ways, we apply that to the class Truth that really challenges how we’re actually supposed to teach and learn what we’re teaching the kids how we’re teaching the kids, the methods that we’re using around that. And being able to engage in that relationship with knowledge and show our respect for that knowledge by treating it appropriately. And that’s often absent in that sort of Western context. So when we talk about knowing how Aboriginal Torres Strait students learn, it’s about recognizing that there are particular ways of engaging with teaching and learning in particular ways that engaging with knowledge, which are quite different ontological and epistemological II from a Western perspective. But again, I would also argue that we could actually gain a lot from that approach by applying that for our non Indigenous students as well, because part I think of and again, this is my editorializing here. But I think a huge part of what has contributed to such a terrible system of capitalistic exploitation and extraction, which has put us in the midst of a climate emergency is the fact that we, the West, Western cultures don’t recognize that there’s actually relationship that they have with country. And if they stopped looking after country, if they stopped caring for country, country can’t possibly care for them. And you see that through the factory farming, you see that through pollution, you see that through mining, you see that through exploitation, you know, and there’s gonna get to a point where the waters not going to be clean enough to drink, the food’s going to have died out, you know, there’s going to be no plants, there’s going to be nothing and and you can’t eat dirt. So, you know, we need to have these conversations with our students to start to get them to think beyond the extractive capitalist way of engaging with knowledge, but more on the relational way. And to give you a really stark statistic, a few years ago, the UN did some research, and found that indigenous peoples globally control about 20%, or back then control 20% of the Earth’s landmass, which contained 80% Of the remaining biodiversity. And what we know is that maintaining biodiversity is going to be a key key factor in avoiding the next great extinction event, which we’re right on the cusp of at the moment, which is actually terrifying. So we need to have opportunities for for re rethinking how we engage with knowledge and how we engage with teaching, learning, removing ourselves from that sort of colonial capitalist extractive teaching and learning model that we have. Which is Yeah, cuz it’s all based on control. It’s all based on productivity. It’s all based on, you know, future payoffs. And we see that in the language that we use, we talk about school as work, your schoolwork homework, we see that manifest in the places and spaces. So you’re expected to wear a uniform, like, why would you want a child to wear a tie? Oh, my goodness. No one should wear a tie. Like, how Oh, my God. Leather shoes, what’s with that? But look, that’s that’s a mini rant here. And even the language that we use for the children? Yeah, what do you want to be when you grow up? And that’s very much around that. Yeah, what occupation Are you going to have, as opposed to what kind of a person would you like to be? Which is a far more holistic way of asking that question where they can not have their whole world defined by the work that they do, but rather the person that they are. And these, this is where decolonizing allows us to start really thinking long and hard about what kind of schooling system we have. And the way that I describe it to my students, and full disclosure, here, I am one of those lefty Marxist academics. But schools are specifically designed to train children, and to teach them just enough not to get sucked into the machinery in the factory, because it’s bad for business, but not taught so much that they seek to, to seize the means of production. Because that too, is bad for business. And look, it’s writ large in the Australian system, you’ve got a huge number of private schools, which are funded federally, and at a far greater rate of public money than the public schools. You’ve seen bucket loads of money being shoved into TAFE. Because that’s designed to teach children or young people trades and how to run a business. And then you’re seeing even within the higher education system changes the fee schedule. So humanities degrees, which are the ones that teach you how to think critically and seek to seize the means of production have had the price jacked up, and the applied degree Trees have had their prices dropped, because again, they’re not teaching students to want to think critically about the world. And this has been done very intentionally under the guise of productivity. But the reality is it’s under the guise of control. And decolonizing seeks to challenge those ideas of control and productivity in the schooling system.

Steven Kolber 

Gotcha.

Al Fricker 

I think you’ve seen he got, I don’t really know where to go from here. That was intense.

Steven Kolber 

I’m just thinking like, we’ve been talking for almost an hour, and I haven’t gone to any of my questions, but board and ground. Alright, well, let’s, I’ll try and close it off with so like, I read a really good piece you wrote in the a news about the five ways to decolonize schooling policy, curriculum, pedagogy, places and spaces and community engagement. Let’s try and narrow the focus to curriculum we’ve mentioned. And I’m conscious that both you and I are a little bit familiar with the aways, pedagogies. And maybe other people are not. So let’s, let’s try and set that up as kind of something worthy. In addition to all the extra things. I’ve got a page full of notes of other scholars and things to chase up. But if I’m a, I’m a teacher, and I’m thinking some of these sounds alright, some of these sounds good. Maybe not the leftist Marxist stuff, you know, that’s too flat, though. Just kidding. But if I’m thinking, Yeah, I’d like to have a play in this space in, you know, try and decolonize a bit, how might they go about some of the pedagogical sort of first steps? How might they look into that sort of space?

Al Fricker 

So in terms of pedagogy, specifically, I think. So three, three main pedagogical approaches that I sort of encouraged my student teachers to engage with his yarning circles. Because it’s a really authentic way of being able to engage students in and that’s, in my research, I sort of described it as a slow pedagogy, because it’s designed to allow students to respond to a particular question, problem, provocation, whatever it might be. But it’s all about supporting thinking time. So you’ll have Yes, as I’m sure you and your teacher listeners will have had, you’ve got kids that are prepared to throw their hand up almost straightaway and give an answer to a question. And then you’ve got the children that you barely hear from. And then when they put their hand up to respond, it might be to a question that was sort of five questions ago. But their response is going to be heaps more thoughtful and much, much deeper than than the the students who went first. And so this is an opportunity to give them a chance to have their voices in the classroom heard as well, because they’re able to engage with the yarning circle, at their own pace. For the younger ones, it’s a great way of teaching turn taking. So I usually use a ball of yarn, and we unroll run Ravel it as it goes around the circle, but you could use an object or something like that. And it means that you don’t speak unless you’ve got the object or the yarn in your head. And so supports that sort of turn taking. But what it also does is it the way that I run them, it allows teachers to begin to break down the hierarchical hegemonic structures within the classroom. And it relies on sort of the concept of mutual vulnerability. So we expect teachers to model how to engage with the yarn, by sharing their authentic selves with their students and sharing something that you know, which it could could in theory be used against them in a court of law. And I’m not being like, we don’t want to know your deepest, darkest secrets or your skeletons in your closet. But one of the provocations that I use most commonly when I’m introducing students to yarning is what is your special place? And why is it special to you? And that allows for a whole range of responses. And it’s very common for people to talk about, look, I don’t have a place per se, but it’s where my family is that makes it special. I’ve had people talk about holiday destinations. I’ve had people talk about childhood homes. I had one student talk about their Minecraft server, which I thought that was like super deadly. And so there’s there’s a whole range of things. And once the teacher models that and shares that quite personal part of themselves. It allows students then to opt into that. And once they feel comfortable to share that part of themselves. So there isn’t that strict hierarchical stuff. And once you share that, that sort of make yourself vulnerable. And you respond to everybody else making themselves vulnerable. You have a beautiful opportunity to build a really supportive empathetic learning community. And that should never ever be underestimated because that can really set the scene for a really beautiful school year. We’ve touched on the eight ways as well, I mean, that’s about getting students to engaging with those different ways. And the context here is that comes from Western New South Wales from Wordery mobs. And there is a whole bunch of other work and research going on around the place. But unless you have something in your local area, that’s probably a good starting point. And then the old country learning stuff, and that’s about going beyond getting out to nature, or, or experiencing the exotic, it’s about recognizing that it doesn’t matter where your school is, you’re always on country, you’re on somebody’s country. And that can often be facilitated really, really beautifully through partnerships with local community organizations or local elders, and paying them for their time and expertise. And actually having them take students out and sharing the landscape with them and sharing the stories and getting them to think and experience and feel. But of course, those experiences should always be set up with some really solid context setting. And some really good debriefing afterwards as well to avoid that sort of tokenistic superficial engagement. So those would be sort of three areas to look at. So if you go to Google and you Google lightwaves, or yarning, circles on country learning, you’ll find a few websites that if you hit that will get you started, for sure.

Steven Kolber 

And so and then, if they have run into any problems there, they’ve got you on speed dial is that is that how that works?

Al Fricker 

It looks more than happy to answer any questions. If you Google me, you can find me at Deakin University and my email details can be found there and you’re welcome to and I often will work directly with schools and provide professional development as well as as a consultant. So if your your school are interested in engaging with this sort of stuff, do look me up and I’d be more than happy to slot you in and do some really deadly PD with you. Go 23 Three or beyond.

Steven Kolber 

Beautiful. That’s still quite a nice natural clothes. they’ll really appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us.

Al Fricker 

No worries at all. And look, if you want to go through your questions another time we’ll have to come back to you