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The Aboriginal Voices Project: What
Matters, andWho Counts, inIndigenous
Education
NikkiMoodie , CathieBurgess , KevinLowe ,
andGregVass
Introduction
Between 2017 and 2020, the Aboriginal Voices (AV) project conducted
10 systematic reviews—examining over 13,000 publications—in the
eld of Indigenous education. Our team crossed 10 Australian universi-
ties and involved 13 researchers, each focused on the critical issue of hear-
ing how the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have
been included in the scholarly literature on education and schooling. e
AV project is one of few studies to apply a systematic meta-analysis of
empirical research in the eld of education, let alone Indigenous
N. Moodie
e University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: nikki.moodie@unimelb.edu.au
C. Burgess
University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia
© e Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
N. Moodie et al. (eds.), Assessing the Evidence in Indigenous Education Research,
Postcolonial Studies in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14306-9_1
2
education in Australia. Whilst the method has its limits, it is useful to
assess and synthesise empirical studies. is allows researchers and prac-
titioners to develop practice guidelines, policy settings or learning oppor-
tunities based on real evidence.
By 2020, the AV project had published ten systematic reviews in two
special issues of leading education journals. e rst collection of reviews
in Australian Education Researcher consisted of six topics, curriculum,
school and community engagement, racism, pedagogy, remote education
and professional learning. e second collection published in the Asia-
Pacic Journal of Teacher Education covered literacy, numeracy, leadership
and cultural programmes. Together, these ten areas represent key con-
cerns for Indigenous families and communities, schools, governments
and researchers. As a result of our meta-analysis, we can draw reliable
conclusions about:
• What counts as knowledge?
• What counts as success?
• What counts as evidence?
In this book, we present all the reviews together for the rst time,
rewritten, updated and focused on interpreting our ndings for families,
schools, researchers and policy makers.
ese questions prioritise Indigenous peoples’ needs, safety and knowl-
edges, as an issue of social justice. ey must be resolved in Indigenous
peoples’ favour, to meet their aspirations, and acknowledge the rights
aorded to them under national and international law. ese questions
also allow us to reect on whose voices count in Indigenous education
research, policy and practice. While systematic reviews of empirical
K. Lowe (*)
School of Education, University of New South Wales,
Kensington, NSW, Australia
e-mail: kevin.lowe@unsw.edu.au
G. Vass
Grith University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia
N. Moodie et al.
3
literature may not always oer in-depth theoretical analyses, they do
allow us to compare ndings and where possible, enable research to be
replicated and conrmed. is provides insight into the types of pro-
grammes that are funded and evaluated, the type of participants that
researchers collect data from, and the nature of policy and programme
interventions in various elds. In short, the Aboriginal Voices project
allows us to see where and how the voices of Indigenous students and
families are reected in the research.
e project reviewed empirical research that claimed to show evidence
responding to one of the biggest challenges faced by education systems in
Australia—why and how has the system continued to fail Indigenous
students. Our conclusion, based on these reviews, oers a critical reec-
tion on that fundamental issue of who counts in Indigenous education.
We consider the limitations and utility of adopting the systematic review
method, one that is more familiar to health researchers. What it does do
well is ensure that researchers disclose biases, sample sizes, ethics, position-
ing and characteristics of researchers, theories and methods, and coding
and analysis strategies (Cochrane Collaboration, 2011). e method
enables a very particular type of ruler to run over the research on
Indigenous students’ experience of schooling. We wanted to listen to and
reect on what parents and communities said in the research, and then
check what evidence was oered about any programmes or approaches
that improved outcomes for their young people (Lowe etal., 2019b). We
found that while some approaches have good evidence, others illuminate
a disconnect between the research and practice. More signicantly, we
found that Indigenous voices are often not heard or counted by teachers,
school leaders or policymakers.
Secondly, we describe competing claims in the research about what
counts as success. Research in the elds of remote education (Guenther
etal., 2019), pedagogy (Burgess etal., 2019), curriculum (Harrison etal.,
2019) and literacy (Gutierrez etal., 2019) highlights how two—often
incommensurate—visions of Indigenous students’ school success exist.
Here, Indigenous families and communities talk about success in terms
that might be understood as civic inclusion and participation. Schools and
governments instead talk about jobs. Whilst not necessarily mutually
exclusive, they highlight radically dierent ontological positions. e
1 The Aboriginal Voices Project: What Matters, and Who…
4
former (success-as-inclusion) sees students as already constituted by fam-
ily, culture and community, bearing considerable responsibility for self
and others. From this perspective, schools bear the responsibility of pre-
paring students for a fulsome participation in a society that includes both
Indigenous and settler peoples. In contrast, schools and governments
tend to see being part of society as only a fortuitous side-eect of having
paid, full-time work. Success in this latter imagining is restricted to
employment, and personhood is limited to employability, namely an
individual’s capacity to achieve private ownership of land (Rowe & Tuck,
2017, p.9). is incommensurability of Indigenous aspirations and set-
tler imaginings of “success” have emerged as a small but essential body of
work describing the shaping of student subjectivities (Osborne et al.,
2017, p.2) and the erasure of Indigenous dierence (Povinelli, 2001).
Finally, the AV project draws conclusions about what counts as evi-
dence. e project sought to recognise the burden of research that consis-
tently asks Indigenous students, parents and communities ‘what works?’
After decades of research, what denitive answers can we give Indigenous
families, and the schools and teachers they entrust their children to?
Indigenous people across Australia have consistently said: teach our com-
plete history, see your place in that history, employ Indigenous people
and talk to community (Behrendt etal., 2012; Schwab, 1995). So, rather
than add to the burden of extractive research, the AV project sought to
hear the voices of Indigenous people through this meta-analysis and con-
solidate the latest empirical research to:
1. reduce exploitation of communities with small relative populations;
2. support the allocation of funding to communities, and their research-
ers in order to drive their own research priorities and
3. clarify public commentary and provide expert advice to policymakers.
e Aboriginal Voices project oers a consolidation of research that
goes beyond an engagement with theory, operating from the position
that there is an emerging burden of evidence regarding issues aecting
the underachievement of Indigenous students in Australia (Lowe etal.,
2019b). Often policy and practice appear to contravene this evidence,
N. Moodie et al.
5
such as in the adoption of attendance strategies that don’t work (Guenther,
2019) or the lack of anti-racism measures in schools (Moodie et al.,
2019), thus functioning to actively harm Indigenous students. In hearing
the experiences of Indigenous students, families and communities, we
hope to demonstrate consistency in their ongoing calls to support more
robust praxis for both education workers and researchers in the eld.
Findings
Key ndings across the ten topic areas highlight a disconnect between
practice and outcomes. is means that what teachers think they were
doing and what was actually happening in the classroom or in their rela-
tionships with Indigenous students were often dierent things.
Occasionally, the research assumes that particular practices lead to par-
ticular outcomes, without disentangling contributing or confounding
factors (Burgess etal., 2019; Gutierrez etal., 2019). Overall though, the
empirical research did not appear to be oriented towards Indigenous stu-
dent outcomes, but rather focussed on ‘engagement and support’ or
reviewing programmes without mapping how these improved or hin-
dered Indigenous student outcomes.
ese insights allow the AV project to explore how assumptions about
Indigenous student needs translation into research design and evidence,
which informs teaching practice and the relational possibilities between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, knowledges and pedagogy. e
voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the research oer
countervailing insights, and it is these voices we aim to centre in our
analysis: voices that oer a nuanced critique on the position of Indigenous
knowledges, and reections on the purpose of learning for young people
who are already citizens (Harrison etal., 2019); voices that provide deep
insights on what it means to trust teachers and schools (Lowe et al.,
2019a); voices that reveal the disconnect between what teachers do and
what they think they do (Burgess etal., 2019); and voices that allow us to
see how thin and partial the research base can be (Miller & Armour,
2019; Vass etal., 2019).
1 The Aboriginal Voices Project: What Matters, and Who…
6
What Counts asKnowledge?
Central to understanding the variability of Indigenous achievement in
schooling is the uneven representation of Indigenous perspectives in cur-
riculum and resistance to embedding Indigenous ways of working. e
impossibility of epistemic equity for Indigenous people and knowledges
and colonial systems has long been an area of concern for scholars
(Martin, 2003; Osborne, 2016; Povinelli, 2001), and the ndings of the
AV project reinforce this long-standing work on the impact of unequal
power and unequal representation in schooling systems. Whilst this
denotes the incommensurability of education policy and Indigenous
aspirations (Osborne, 2016; Tuck & Yang, 2012), the ndings of the AV
project demonstrate the possibilities of curriculum designed by and for
Indigenous peoples in reshaping relationships between teachers and stu-
dents, and families and schools.
National and state approaches to literacy highlight decades of policy
failure (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2020; Yunupingu,
1995). Research by Gutierrez etal. (2019) demonstrates that while pro-
grammes that focused on teaching the mechanical and code-breaking
aspects of literacy often demonstrate good outcomes, they simultane-
ously betray government and school leaders’ decit assumptions about
Indigenous learners. is manifests in a reluctance to involve local com-
munities, ignoring what Indigenous students need to know and be able
to do to navigate both worlds. Hence, literacy programmes often do a
good job of teaching about language, but not necessarily a good job of
developing literacy skills for a broader participation in life. Literacy and
numeracy needs are therefore conated in problematic ways with the
Closing the Gap targets (DPMC, 2020), and consequently, teaching
practice assimilates Indigenous students to the settler language, rather
than valuing and working with the language assets that students arrive at
school with.
Curriculum is a contested area attracting national attention about
what should and should not be taught. In the Australian curriculum, the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cross-curriculum priority is repre-
sented as an add-on, a potential engagement strategy, and/or is simply
N. Moodie et al.
7
ill-dened and often misinterpreted. As representational practice, the
cultural politics of curriculum (Vass, 2018) reveals the unequal and
racialised power relations that shape Indigenous and non-Indigenous
subjectivities through schooling (Hogarth, 2018). What counts as knowl-
edge often does not align with Indigenous notions of relational, place-
based understandings of what knowledge is. ese knowledges tend to
disrupt western narratives of individualism, personal achievement and
self-suciency in favour of other ways of connecting to the world and
each other (Harrison etal., 2019). Indigenous knowledges are thus seen
as less rigorous and less relevant than settler knowledges (Scantlebury
et al., 2002). In the systematic review on curriculum, Harrison et al.
(2019) nd that curriculum models based on a “funds of knowledge”
approach challenge decit assumptions by recognising that students
bring with them, historically and culturally embedded knowledges that
are in fact the foundation for their wellbeing and healthy functioning in
any society (p.243).
It is perhaps unsurprising that the systematic reviews on pedagogy by
Burgess etal. (2019), community engagement by Lowe etal. (2019a),
and teacher professional learning by Vass etal. (2019) all also draw atten-
tion to the role and import of moving towards schooling eorts that open
up pathways to ask critical questions about knowledge making practices.
What Counts asSuccess?
e vision from the settler colonial state, its agents and apparatus, is that
success at school equates to participation in the economy as a future employee
(Apple, 2006). Counter to this runs the vision that emphasises how suc-
cess is synonymous with participation in society as an extant citizen—as an
agent of cultures that have survived and agentic regardless of age or
achievement (Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2014). e role and
inuence of the schools in raising young people with responsibilities to
people and Country take precedence over an emphasis on jobs and eco-
nomic mobility (Guenther etal., 2013). is means that culturally spe-
cic land and stewardship, values regarding the knowledge held and role
played by teachers, and an appreciation of history that acknowledges the
1 The Aboriginal Voices Project: What Matters, and Who…
8
power that individuals play in shaping our shared experiences, are criti-
cal. As Harrison etal. (2019, p.242) note, “Aboriginal and western cur-
ricula are largely irreconcilable because of the ways in which concepts
such as success are dened and applied in Aboriginal and western con-
texts”, then schooling success depends in large part on student and family
perceptions of what education is for (Harrison etal., 2019, p.243).
In the systematic review on pedagogy, Burgess etal. (2019) nd a cor-
relation between Indigenous student numbers and the prevalence of
defensive teaching practices in schools, thus signalling a focus on behav-
iour management rather than learning. Not only does this reduce oppor-
tunities for culturally relevant curriculum and pedagogy, it belies the
extent to which schools invest in Indigenous success or are able to give
eect to Indigenous students and families educational aspirations. Burgess
etal. (2019) found that many of the pedagogical interventions focussed
more on changing non-Indigenous teachers’ attitudes and behaviours
rather than improving Indigenous student outcomes. ese ndings
reinforce the value of recognising dierent standpoints on the purpose of
education (Guenther etal., 2013); and therefore, prioritising Indigenous
peoples’ denition of successful schooling.
Counterposed against Indigenous values of students-as-already- citizens
and success-as-inclusion in Indigenous and non-Indigenous communi-
ties are long-term economic priorities of settler colonial societies enacted
through schooling as preparation for the job market. Whilst the illusion
of full-time employment still holds potency for many policymakers, edu-
cational systems remain geared to a representation of citizenship that pri-
oritises those modes of production dened by individual entrepreneurship
(Apple, 2006). In this rendering, schools bear responsibility for preparing
citizens who work, not citizens who belong or indeed already belong. e
incommensurability of Indigenous aspirations and settler colonial imag-
inings of success therefore become rendered as behavioural problems to
be managed (Burgess etal., 2019; Rowe & Tuck, 2017; Purdie & Buckley,
2010). In the Lowe etal. (2019a, b) review on eect of culture and lan-
guage on Indigenous students and families, the central role of identity
built on strong culture and language programmes that are valued more
broadly in the school community is critical to not only engaging
N. Moodie et al.
9
Aboriginal students in their learning but foreshadowing their success on
their own terms as well as in the western sense of the term.
What Counts asEvidence?
Whilst mapping the quality of empirical research led to the exclusion of
important theoretical work, and other empirical research that did not
meet current reporting benchmarks (e.g. Cochrane Collaboration, 2011),
our approach did enable some insight into the quality of research used to
inform policy and practice in Indigenous education. For example, in the
eld of Indigenous numeracy, many researchers make strong claims for
the importance of relationships between schools and communities, but
“few captured data indicating how this is fostered” (Miller & Armour,
2019, p.13). Miller and Armour (2019) identify only two important
longitudinal studies that assess changes in Indigenous numeracy over
time. Burgess etal. (2019) note that in the eld of pedagogy, while the
overall quality of evidence appears veracious, in those studies where
strong evidence of improved outcomes emerge, Indigenous students are
only a subset of a larger sample. In the case of literacy, Gutierrez etal.
(2019) also report that those studies that suggest success typically retain
decit views of Indigenous learners and communities. is suggests that
eective teaching and learning activities fall short of being intellectually
challenging or rigorous.
is line of thinking sits alongside the reviews on racism (Moodie
etal., 2019) and teacher professional learning (Vass etal., 2019). In the
former, it was evident that the schooling sector and education researchers
are aware of and acknowledge the ongoing impact of racism. e evi-
dence shows that racism matters, impacting many Indigenous learners’
schooling experiences. However, this understanding has not yet seriously
addressed issues of representation, institutional/systemic discrimination
or theorising of race/Whiteness in ways that meaningfully address the
ongoing harm of discrimination. In this instance then, the evidence
about race/racism is marginalised or dismissed in ways that ensures the
maintenance of the status quo, where non-Indigenous decision-makers
continue to implement untested remedies to ‘x’ schooling for ‘problem’
Indigenous learners.
1 The Aboriginal Voices Project: What Matters, and Who…
10
Collectively, this has the eect of producing the circular claim that, for
example, literacy and numeracy programmes work for Indigenous stu-
dents because this is what has been tested. In reality, these programmes
are the only ones being evaluated using strategies that comply with evi-
dence hierarchies recognised by decision-makers (Centre for Education
Statistics & Evaluation, 2020). Such studies don’t reect the needs of
Indigenous students or collect and analyse data in alignment with
Indigenous methodologies (Smith, 2012). Similarly, Burgess etal. (2019)
note that many studies did not establish the construct validity of ‘peda-
gogy’ and use the term without denition. Whilst recognising theoretical
diversity and the necessity of critique, this does create some diculty
comparing studies that ostensibly explore the same phenomenon.
Methodological Limitations
Although the systematic review method is useful for conducting meta-
analyses, we note that it is not always able to specically include research
from Othered perspectives. e method was originally designed to assess
large numbers of quantitative studies and provides a robust framework
for analysing specic elements of research design. However, in the search
for rigour, we are conscious that this method represents qualitative and
Indigenous research in particular ways. Established strategies for com-
parative work tend not to include a specic mechanism for including
Indigenous methodologies, ethics or narratives and this is evident in the
Long and Godfrey (2004) appraisal checklist. We consider this an impor-
tant next step in the renement of this type of research and add a deeper
consideration of these questions in Chap. 2.
In the process of conducting our review we found huge diversity in
research design, which speaks to the strength of innovation in the eld.
However, many of those publications were excluded when they did not
identify details of that research design, such as describing how many peo-
ple were included in the sample, the authors’ positionality or the specic
type of data collection and analysis techniques. Acknowledging that the
‘evidence movement’ has a sizeable critique, we nonetheless agree that
guidelines such as those established by the Cochrane Collaboration
N. Moodie et al.
11
(2011), JBI (2017) or the COREQ checklist (Tong etal., 2007) oer
useful strategies not only for writing up research, but also for comparing
and synthesising large bodies of literature.
Who Counts?
e ndings of the AV project encourage a critical reection on
Indigenous agency and power in education research and practice. As a
rhetorical device, and to invoke Indigenous methodologies (Walter &
Andersen, 2013), the question of ‘who counts?’ is deliberately disruptive
to prejudicial assumptions about the validity of Indigenous perspectives
as well as decit design in empirical research. Centring Indigenous voices
is one way this project has attempted to revise how Indigenous method-
ologies are applied. But this question extends to deeper issues in the
research on curriculum, numeracy, literacy, racism, remote education,
leadership and engagement. When Harrison etal. (2019) and Guenther
etal. (2019) discuss curriculum and remoteness, both call into question
the ways in which Indigenous students are not seen as citizens or are oth-
erwise represented as uneducable.
Perhaps one of the most important points raised is by Lowe et al.
(2019a, b) in their paper on engagement. It is something of an accepted
critique that school-led engagement strategies primarily aim to reduce
student resistance and increasing student compliance by encouraging
families to adopt enforcement behaviours at home. ese authors, how-
ever, suggest that Indigenous families conversely understand engagement
as a means by which to deliver the transfer of decision-making power to
them. In this synthesis, it would be inaccurate to view engagement as a
continuum ranging from information-provision through to shared lead-
ership. For Indigenous families, either engagement is authentic—enabling
new partnerships, pedagogies and curriculum based on the transfer of
real decision-making power and the creation of stable partnership struc-
tures—or it is simply not engagement. Either families are partners bear-
ing decision-making authority, or they are not. Osborne discusses the
scale of change that would need to occur for “the current power-laden
methods of cursory consultation on pre-existing institutional priorities”
1 The Aboriginal Voices Project: What Matters, and Who…
12
to lead to new ways of working that recognised Indigenous rights
(Osborne et al., 2017, p.258). Osborne suggests this work would lead to
fundamental changes in the very denitions of ideas like education and
employment (Osborne et al., 2017, p.258).
Engagement is therefore not only justied by other possibilities of suc-
cess, but because it is an equitable state of Indigenous-settler relations.
Engagement is power-sharing and integral to delivering internationally
recognised rights of Indigenous peoples in the design and management of
their education systems (United Nations, 2007). Our reviews suggest
that to engage is to enter ethical and just relations with Indigenous peo-
ples; a more fulsome recognition of international rights, legal standing
and educational entitlements as sovereign peoples (McMillan & Rigney,
2016). Whose needs count, whose partnership matters (Trimmer etal.,
2019, p.13) and whose safety is prioritised (Moodie etal., 2019) are
urgent questions that must be resolved in Indigenous peoples’ favour, if
outcomes for Indigenous children are to improve.
In the Leadership review, Trimmer et al. (2019) noted that school
principals who actively engaged in a relational leadership approach with
their local Aboriginal community were able to identify improvements in
Aboriginal student outcomes (Riley & Webster, 2016). Moreover, the
development of dynamic and exible educational policy and organisa-
tional structures to support Aboriginal community engagement, student
retention and academic and social outcomes was considered a key to
shifting power from school-led educational reform to community-led
improvements. However, these shifts are undermined by government
policy that moves towards decentralisation and deregulation of school
governance. Bureaucratic accountability is seen to negatively impact on
principals being able to meet the learning needs of students and the local
community and engage in ‘both ways’ leadership.
In important elds like pedagogy and numeracy, the voices of
Indigenous students, families and communities are often excluded from
the research (Burgess etal., 2019, p.313). Miller and Armour (2019)
nd that most of the research on numeracy was conducted on teachers’
cognition and content knowledge, and often examined only teachers’
perceptions of Indigenous students’ learning. Empirical research on
numeracy tends not to be designed from Indigenous methodologies,
N. Moodie et al.
13
conducted by Indigenous researchers, or include Indigenous students;
and, it certainly does not assess change in student numeracy over time.
Similarly, the location of empirical studies tends not to disclose that “the
fastest growing population of Aboriginal students, those in urban areas,
rarely appear in the literature” (Burgess etal., 2019 p.313) or simply that
dierences in remote and non-remote Indigenous educational needs and
practices (Guenther etal., 2019; Lowe etal., 2020) are more visible.
Conclusion
We know that racist discourses about Indigenous peoples’ intelligence
have long dominated in Australia, and education systems have been a
primary vehicle for the reproduction of those discourses (Burridge &
Chodkiewicz, 2012). Indeed, the purpose of colonial schooling systems
has never been to articulate a fuller expression of Indigenous peoples’
rights, and teachers are rarely supported to embed successful and rights-
based practices (Vass etal., 2019). e assimilatory function of schools
can still be seen in the surveillance of students and families (Llewellyn
etal., 2018), streaming children towards prison, domestic and/or manual
labour (Gillan et al., 2017, p. 5) and ongoing challenges in adopting
culturally responsive teaching (Llewellyn etal., 2018; Vass etal., 2019).
Discourses of ‘engagement’ appear as euphemism for attendance and
behaviour management (Purdie & Buckley, 2010) and rarely involve
deliberative processes that support the transfer of decision-making power
or collaborative decision-making (Cavaye, 2004) to community. When
we ask whose voices count in policy and whose are heard in schools, it is
plainly not the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
e Aboriginal Voices project has helped us reect on the quality of
empirical research, particularly where that work is used to justify policy
interventions in the elds of literacy, numeracy and attendance (Burgess
etal., 2019; Guenther, 2019; Gutierrez etal., 2019; Miller & Armour,
2019). We can more clearly point to the benets of including Indigenous
perspectives in the curriculum (Guenther etal., 2019; Harrison etal.,
2019) in decision-making (Trimmer etal., 2019), and of recognising the
dierent aspirations and purposes of schooling that Indigenous students
1 The Aboriginal Voices Project: What Matters, and Who…
14
and family hope for (Guenther etal., 2019; Moodie etal., 2019). e
project has highlighted what is working well; teachers supported to
engage in robust professional learning, families and communities mean-
ingfully involved in the life of schools and decision-making, and the evi-
dence base on how these improve Indigenous student outcomes. e
systematic review method allowed us to pause and review what has gone
before, to consolidate our advice to families and teachers and to think
again about the orientation of scholarly research and practice. We oer
this work in the spirit that future research more eectively engages
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and their family’s voices
across Country.
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