Our positionality

The diverse authorship team of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous people have a combined long-term engagement practically, academically, and politically with education practices and schooling structures. Working strategically, their collective and diverse experiences of Australian schooling have influenced conceptualisation of the pedagogical framework proposed in this paper. Associate Professor Kevin Lowe is a Gubbi Gubbi man from southeast Queensland. He has been a teacher, education administrator, lecturer, and manager of curriculum development and implementation in New South Wales. He has extensive experience as a teacher in schools, vocational education and universities and has been actively involved in Aboriginal organisations. His work is focussed on establishing collaborative educational projects with Aboriginal communities, schools, and education systems with a particular focus on the development of effective school and community learning partnerships with teachers. Dr. Sara Weuffen is a non-Indigenous teacher-researcher specialist in cross-cultural studies, history, diversity, and inclusion. As a non-Indigenous woman of German, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry she grew up on Gundijtmara Country in Warrnambool, and currently lives and works on Wadawurrung Country in Ballarat. Her research focuses on identifying factors faced by non-Indigenous educators to illicit sustained enhancement of pedagogical practice, specifically within the secondary education space and discipline of History, for the ultimate aim of supporting non-Indigenous educators to develo** more relational and authentic education experiences for students. Professor Annette Woods is a non-Indigenous researcher. She was born on Durug Lands and spent her early years moving before growing up on Dharawal Dhurga Lands. She now works, lives, and plays on the Lands of the Turrbul and Jaggera peoples. She teaches and researches in literacies, digital literacies, school reform and socially just education, and pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. Associate Professor Cathie Burgess is a non-Aboriginal teacher, researcher and parent of Aboriginal children involved in local community sports and organisations on Gadigal Country. Cathie maintains close community connections when coordinating and teaching undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Learning from Country and Leadership in Aboriginal Education, as well as teacher professional learning workshops and research projects. She currently leads the community engagement strategy in the Culturally Nourishing Schooling research project. Dr. Greg Vass was born in Canberra but spent his formative years in Mean** (Brisbane, Australia), where he became a high school history teacher prior to moving into educational research. His early work explored the ways that race and the whiteness he shared with other educators, was reproduced in and through schooling. Currently he leads the curriculum workshop strategy in the Culturally Nourishing Schooling research project.

Promises and failures of settler-colonialism in education

In this conceptual paper, we examine existing scholarship that provides empirical evidence or coherent descriptions of pedagogies that support AboriginalFootnote 1 students ways of knowing, being, and doing in Australian schools to propose a theoretical framework of culturally nourishing pedagogies (CNP). We have identified five core pedagogies that should be observable if this framework was to be implemented in schooling practices. In proposing this theoretical framework, we acknowledge the potential challenges and limitations associated with operationalising it within the current system, namely the ideologies and practices associated with settler-colonialism. These ideologies may seek to diminish and/or silence Aboriginal ways of knowing, being, and doing. Scholars (Burgess et al., 2023; Eley & Berryman, 2020; Page et al., 2020; Weuffen et al., 2023) have argued that such silencing happens via powerful settler-colonial discourses that often masquerade as accepted or even best practices.

While this paper focuses on the Australian landscape, it draws comparisons to international research to highlight how education continues to be a key tool in the State's ongoing efforts to separate Aboriginal Peoples from Country and unique knowledges (Lowe et al., 2021; Rollo, 2022). Despite efforts at inclusion, Aboriginal students have been subjected to overt and covert strategies aimed at eliminating their presence through assimilation policies since 1967 (Armitage, 1995). Each year in Australia, the Commonwealth is required by law to report details the national progress made in improving the socio-cultural, educational, and economic outcomes for Australia’s Aboriginal communities (Australian Government, 2020). Year on year, the Prime Minister of the day has committed a national mea culpa in admitting that even with good will and integrity, the efforts of State and Commonwealth agencies to close or even halve what ‘we so gently call a gap [but that] has remained a chasm’ (National Indigenous Australians Agency, 2022, p. 5). The year-on-year failure to close the gap and provide equitable access to quality education for Aboriginal students, highlights that existing approaches are often unsuccessful or unsustainable to supporting understanding of the unique cultural and educational aspirations of Aboriginal students and their families. As identified by a systematic analysis of Australian research literature (Guenther et al., 2019; Moodie et al., 2021), there is a need to establish informed ways of understanding and delivering appropriate education to Aboriginal students, and for non-Indigenous peoples to be educated about the inherent rights to educational sovereignty. Empirical evidence building upon the findings of the systematic reviews found authentic curriculum inclusion is required to facilitate better understandings of: Aboriginal students’ and families’ educational and/or cultural aspirations (Lowe & Weuffen, 2023; Martin et al., 2013; Osborne et al., 2022); the importance of students’ Aboriginal identities (Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018); constructs of schooling success for Aboriginal students (Burgess et al., 2023; Weuffen et al., 2023); authentic curriculum inclusion (Harrison et al., 2023); and pedagogic practices that facilitate the other points (Bishop et al., 2021).

One of the key elements of assimilation to settler-colonial ideologies occurs at the coalface of education; pedagogy and associated classroom experiences (Shay et al., 2023). This is not to place blame on educators, but rather, to expose the subtle and pervasive ways that settler-colonial ideologies negate culturally responsive and/or nourishing schooling practices. There is mounting evidence that speaks to the positive impact when educators go beyond tokenistic recognition to deep pedagogical engagement with Aboriginal students’ identity, connections to Country and communities, and desires to be engaged in ways that speak to sovereign educational aspirations (Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018; Hunter, 2015; Thorpe et al., 2021).

It is well established that there is a broad lack of pedagogical knowledge about Aboriginal Peoples and perspectives in Australian initial teacher education (ITE) programs, save for one mandated course, and within in-service professional development (Bodkin-Andrews et al., 2018; Page et al., 2020). For the bulk of the 300,000 + teachers across Australia (95% who identify as non-Indigenous), there is a recognised need to develop critical knowledge in applying socio-cultural pedagogies that connect and nourish Aboriginal students’ lived experiences and worlds to education and schooling (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Howard & Rodriguez-Minkoff, 2017). The need to shift towards culturally aligned pedagogies is important because schooling practices and pedagogies that acknowledge and support students’ identities, and facilitate authentic relationships with families and communities, there is an observable positive impact on student learning (Burgess et al., 2019; Harrison et al., 2023).

As a means of decolonising Australian schooling and shifting pedagogies toward approaches that are beneficial for Aboriginal students, the literature clearly demonstrates that pedagogies rooted in relationality and socio-cultural critical consciousness are critical to centring Aboriginal sense of Country (Bishop et al., 2021; Eley & Berryman, 2020). These pedagogies are foundational to the task of develo** sustainable practices that disrupt settler-colonial world views and affecting the educational trajectories of Aboriginal students and their affirmations of sovereignty, hope, culture, and local connections (Johnston-Goodstar et al., 2010; Lowe et al., 2020a, 2020b; Paris & Alim, 2017). For decades, scholarship has reinforced the importance of learning and teaching practices being culturally centred, grounded in a socio-political framing, provocative, explicit in application, and nuanced so that Aboriginal identities are not essentialised into static views and assumptions about individuals or cohorts (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Lynn, 2022). Harrison et al. (2023) argue that to meet the educational needs and aspirations of Aboriginal students and orientate relational pedagogies, schooling needs to embrace and embed localised constructs of Country. Over the past twenty years, relationality has been argued as the foundation of quality pedagogies for culturally diverse classrooms. While conceptual work suggests the factors at play in culturally responsive pedagogies dominate the field (see Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Howard & Rodriguez-Minkoff, 2017; Hunter, 2015; Sarra et al., 2020; Yunkaporta & Shillingsworth, 2020), empirical research provides weight to the transformational impact of such pedagogies (see Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018; Bishop et al., 2021; Brown, 2019; Donovan, 2015; Hynds et al., 2011).

Internationally, educational theories about culturally responsive and relevant pedagogies and schooling practices assert that priority should be afforded to Aboriginal students’ cultural capital and intelligences in learning relationships (see Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018; Bishop et al., 2021; Delpit, 2014; Gay, 2000; Hunter, 2015; Hynds et al., 2011; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Morrison et al., 2019). Rigney (2023) argues that advocacy is important: advocacy of student learning linked to tangible outcomes and advocacy by individual educators to encourage colleagues to learn and integrate Aboriginal perspectives across curriculum endeavours. As this realm of study has gained popularity, a range of synonyms have emerged. Responsive schooling practices have been conceptualised as pedagogies that value and connect real-world elements of Aboriginal students’ lives—for example, community, language, axiologies, and knowledges—and creating collaborative learning centred on high expectations (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Hynds et al., 2011; Morrison et al., 2019; Samuels, 2018). Similarly, relevant pedagogies have been described as practices that build learning bridges for students by connecting the schooling environment to communities’ knowledges and ways of being (Brown, 2019; Howard & Rodriguez-Minkoff, 2017). Sustaining cultural pedagogies have been argued as actions that reorientate and privilege Aboriginal knowledges for sense-making, empowering and facilitating an emerging critical consciousness for students, and promoting diversity as a means for speaking back to a persistent downfall of schooling (Marin & Bang, 2015; Paris & Alim, 2017). Essentially, such pedagogies have been conceptualised as practices that sympathetically and appropriately strengthen and support students’ learning experiences in schools. Regardless of the term, Broughton (2019) cautions about focusing solely on finding the right fit because students and educators are always situated in relation to each other and stakeholders in every element of schooling.

While Morrison et al.’s (2019) review outlines the genealogy of different terminology and underpinning principles associated with cultural pedagogies, a critical review of scholarship indicates that descriptions of observable characteristics of what such pedagogies look like in action is largely absent. This is not to say that such detail does not exist across the published research repertoire, rather, there is a certain degree of ambiguity. Concentrating on empirical scholarship as research that represents real-life experiences compared to theories, relational pedagogical practices have been described as such:

  • Authentic relationships that are whanaungatanga (family like) or girrwabugany (mob like) are predicated on trust, understanding identity, humour, and social connections (Donovan, 2015).

  • Dialogic sense-making that is interactive and ongoing between students and teachers in ways that assist in evidence-informed decision-making and classroom practices (Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018).

  • Commitment to cultural competence and positioning for both learners and educators to choose appropriate resources and establish high expectations that promote student agency in respectful learning environments (Samuels, 2018).

  • Cognitive learning about cultural responsiveness in making pedagogical adjustments that incorporate students’ cultural and linguistic heritages (Brown, 2019).

  • Employment of inquiry-based approaches and willingness to push the boundaries of the traditional educator role to implement localised knowledges in reciprocal collaboration with communities (Bishop et al., 2021).

Scholars argue broadly that if educators are to move towards more culturally—appropriate pedagogies then there needs to be a rethinking of power relations beyond the transactional and investment in positive and respectful relationships linked to the cultures (relationality) of Aboriginal students and their communities (Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018; Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Morrison et al., 2019). At this point, we caution readers not to see the descriptions provided above, and those provocated in this paper, as a prescriptive recipe that can be adopted in any context. Doing so would discount the pre-eminence of relationality to Country (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Lowe et al., 2020a, 2020b; Rigney, 2023) and the pervasive impacts of the normative neo-colonial schooling system in Australia.

Conceptualising a culturally nourishing pedagogy framework

In 2021, Lowe et al. declared that a long-term reform project was needed to rethink the roles and responsibilities within Australian schooling to support the needs of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students. This claim was based on findings from a two-phase study; Phase One was a large-scale empirical qualitative study of 186 participants across six sites in New South Wales, Australia (Burgess et al., 2023; Weuffen et al., 2023), and Phase Two was a compilation of ten systematic reviews of Australian Indigenous education (Guenther et al., 2019; Moodie et al., 2021). The two-phase study revealed that there is not one singular pedagogical approach that should be employed to meet the educational needs and aspirations of Aboriginal students (Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018; Bishop et al., 2021; Gay, 2000; Shay et al., 2023).

Our conceptualisation of a culturally nourishing pedagogies (CNP) framework, presented below, is a continuation of the long-term reform project that seeks to better support Aboriginal student learning that is inextricably centred in Aboriginal identities forged in relationships and ways of knowing, being, and doing on and with Country (Burgess et al., 2023; Thorpe et al., 2021; Weuffen et al., 2023; Yunkaporta & Shillingsworth, 2020). The Culturally Nourishing Schooling (https://www.culturallynourishingschooling.org.au/) project is, in essence, Phase Three of this long-term reform agenda. The project aims to investigate ways of providing equitable and sustainable quality schooling for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students by engaging educators, leaders, Cultural Mentors, and other stakeholders in a suite of whole-school and whole-year professional learning strategies. However, while thinking about the specific educator-focused strategies that would be useful for enacting these aims, the project team reflected on the previous phases and general need for more description detailing what these might look like in practice. Thus, there was a need to accumulate both conceptual thinking and empirical evidence from the corpus of existing research into a coherent framing of what CNPs look like in everyday schooling practice.

In develo** the CNP framework in the CNS project, we have diverted from the traditional focus of pedagogical theory—educator practices—to focus on what culturally nourishing pedagogies might look like from a student perspective. Our diversion is based on the reality that while pedagogy is a tool employed by educators, it’s activated in the service of student learning. Yet, at the same time, we acknowledge that the Australian education system is a western-centric organisation with mandated reporting and professional development requirements in which knowledge is separated into disciplines with their unique ways of thinking and doing. Therefore, it was important to conceptualise a framework that didn’t replace existing pedagogies but rather worked with them to support and encourage a rethink about learning outcomes for encultured students.

Building upon the scholarship that has preceded this paper, we propose that the CNP framework seeks to cultivate the health and vitality of cultural identities in the schooling journeys of Aboriginal students, which is primarily based on educators’ pedagogical practices. We argue that the framework prompts educators to think differently about schooling and classroom interactions while not denying the professional realities of the role, reporting requirements, and professional learning directives. While the framework may appear to primarily serve Aboriginal students’ learning, we maintain that the five pedagogical elements support all students and educators. It must not be viewed as a prescriptive ‘tick-the-box' activity or another thing educators are not doing well. Rather, the framework offers a relational way of thinking about Aboriginal students and urges educators to critically reflect on and adapt pedagogical models aligned to unquestioned western-centric assumptions of schooling. For example, instead of stating that ‘relationships’ are central to CNPs, by pragmatically visualising observable characteristics of pedagogy, the framework encourages educators to prosecute a different relationship with their Aboriginal students in ways that facilitate the nourishment of unique identities and cultures while ensuring full access to the curriculum. In this manner, the framework operates between traditional discipline-based thinking and pedagogies by challenging educators to think differently about student behaviours and learning outcomes. However, to do this effectively and authentically, it must be consistently built into everyday schooling practices.

Our analysis of Australian and international scholarship was conducted using deductive thematic analysis processes outlined by Braun and Clarke (2012) to uncover how the culturally responsive/nourishing practices were described. Undertaking this process, we synthesised that five core elements, and their associated observable pedagogies, underpin CNPs. These elements are; Inclusive understanding, Self-determination and power sharing, Aboriginal identity and inclusion, Socio-political consciousness, and High expectations and connectedness (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

The five core elements of culturally nourishing pedagogies

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These core elements are best understood as lenses through which to examine and envision nuanced thinking and doing about pedagogy. Akin to the Australian Professional Standards for Teaching (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2017), we put forth that these core elements would be useful to assisting pedagogical understanding and development that nourish the cultural identities and values inherent of Aboriginal students and materials. We argue this is because the framework critically prioritises the primacy of Country, Aboriginal axiologies, ontologies, and epistemologies, foregrounds the necessity of relationality to support strong identities, communities, and schooling interactions, all-the-while being aware of the necessity of curriculum work in the contemporary teaching role (Bishop et al., 2021; Thorpe et al., 2021). As Moodie et al. (2021) state, this is essential to supporting ‘robust professional learning [where] families and communities are meaningfully involved in the life of schools and decision-making [to] improve outcomes for First Nations students’ (p. 14). To support the necessity of curriculum work in the contemporary teaching role, the framework is aligned to mandated policy requirements for Australian teachers to demonstrate evidence of inclusive and sustained practices that prioritise these knowledges (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2023; AITSL, 2017).

Inclusive understanding

Morrison et al. (2019) argue that schools should give Aboriginal students the tools and language to explicitly identify, understand, and actualise cultural knowledges, connections to Country, and respect for communities. They suggest that this might be achieved by providing explicit opportunities for local knowledges to be explored, while also examining how dominant western knowledge and ways of thinking are taken-for-granted norms (Morrison et al., 2019). If these dominant epistemic structures are not challenged, Aboriginal students are left with the conundrum of either resisting or accepting their positioning as outsiders and/or remaining silent against assimilatory processes that sever them from their Countries, histories, and cultures (Delpit, 2014; Lowe et al. 2020a, 2020b, 2021; Luke et al., 2013). Instead, we reason that authentic and inclusive pedagogical practices should offer all students opportunities to challenge western constructs of learning and knowledge production, align learning to the cultural wealth of individual experiences, and meet the broader social and cultural of Aboriginal students within the school community (Eley & Berryman, 2020; Morrison et al., 2008, 2019; Perso, 2012).

Analysis of the literature suggests that CNP practices of inclusive understanding would see the engagement of local languages and cultures to explicitly identify, understand, and actualise cultural knowledges, connections to Country, and respect for communities. Practices associated with inclusive understanding provide Aboriginal students with the knowledge and skills to enact agency by drawing on their cultural wealth to link with linguistic, historical, and cultural connections to Country (Burgess et al., 2019, 2023; Harrison et al., 2023; Lowe et al., 2020a, 2020b). When inclusive understanding is actualised in the culturally nourishing framework, we argue that the following quality pedagogical practices should be observable:

  • Creating conduits to students’ learning through genuine cultural understanding, engagement, inclusion, and sense of belonging in ways that acknowledge, utilise, and privilege Aboriginal ways of knowing, being, and doing (Bishop & Vass, 2021; Burgess et al., 2019);

  • Understanding of a strengths-based perspective on the socio-cultural lives of Aboriginal families and communities, including agency and self-determination, and incorporating resources that reflect such knowledges (Armstrong et al., 2012);

  • Understanding, planning, and establishing support for families to ensure identity is centralised in learning via the co-construction of expectations and engagement (Sarra et al., 2020);

  • Providing opportunities for the genuine inclusion of Aboriginal knowledges in conjunction with the interrogation of the socio-political and historical experiences of colonialism (Krakouer, 2015); and

  • Embedding student and community knowledges, identities, and cultural wealth into a strengths-based approach through high expectations (Perso, 2012).

Self-determination and power sharing

Lowe et al., (2020a, 2020b) and Perso (2012) argue that Country is central to Aboriginal Peoples self-determination and power sharing practices. The centrality of Country is linked with sovereignty, which necessitates a critical foundation for the ontological presence and authority in matters that directly affect identity (Burgess et al., 2023; McKnight, 2016; Shay et al., 2023; Weuffen et al., 2023). In schooling, centring Country requires a rethink around notions of power in ways that recognise the inherent jurisdiction, authority, and regulation that Aboriginal Peoples should have in the education of their young people (Morrison et al., 2019). It requires a move above and beyond what is required to ensure Aboriginal students experience success as Aboriginal People (Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018).

We propose that CNP practices of self-determination and power sharing provide space for Aboriginal students, families, and communities to have a voice in expressing aspirations of success that should be facilitated by schools. When notions of self-determination and power sharing are taken up as an element of culturally nourishing pedagogies, we suggest the following teaching practices would be observable:

  • Establishing authentic protocols that underpin productive and positive relationships with students, families, and communities and are predicated on processes of intercultural communication (Lowe et al., 2020a, 2020b; Morrison et al., 2019);

  • Understanding and critically analysing micro and macro notions of power sharing in relationships to prioritise self-determination that acknowledge communities’ cultural wealth, knowledges, and rights to share or not (Burgess et al., 2019);

  • Establishing and implementing sustainable inclusion of locally designed and/or approved languages and cultural programs that value and resonate with local community knowledges and aspirations (Disbray, 2016);

  • Redefining and/or reconceptualising schooling success to meet the holistic, cultural, and social needs of families/community (Guenther et al., 2019); and

  • Empowering students to develop high expectations for themselves by encouraging risk taking in a context of connectedness and belonging (Sarra et al., 2020).

Indigenous identity and inclusion

In a comprehensive early review of culturally responsive pedagogies, Castagno and Brayboy (2008) identified a strong connection between identity and the interest and ability of individuals to work with local communities in reclaiming sovereignty. Genuine cultural inclusion that attends to Aboriginal students’ identity in education programs, particularly in curriculum and schooling structures, has been argued as critically important for impacting schooling outcomes (Guenther et al., 2019; Moodie et al., 2021). This is evidenced by Berryman and Wearmouth (2018) who found a positive association between students’ sense of identity and their ability to challenge the discursive effects of deficit theorising so readily espoused by the settler-colonial systemic acceptance of student underachievement. Furthermore, Morrison et al. (2008) highlighted that when schools facilitated Aboriginal student access to their cultural knowledge, greater engagement with Elders and local community members occurred, often translating to greater engagement in their learning. The facilitation of Indigenous identity and inclusion is critical to nourishing Aboriginal students because, too often, schooling success for Aboriginal students is seen to be at the expense of identity and cultural knowledge (Donovan, 2015).

Analysis of the literature suggests that Indigenous identity and inclusion is associated with promoting positive self-esteem, enabling healthy identity formation, facilitating agency and productive engagement, and develo** socio-political consciousness. The capacity to engage with local (and broader) community activities in ways that draws on cultural funds of knowledge to support autonomy and contribute to sustaining socio-cultural vibrancy and well-being, is an inherent human right for First Nations Peoples (Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018; Castagno & Brayboy, 2008). It is indisputable that Aboriginal learners’ cultural knowledge forms the basis of their identity, facilitates the development of relationships with peers, schooling staff, Elders, and communities, and significantly impacts their success at school (Burgess et al., 2023; Eley & Berryman, 2020; Johnston-Goodstar et al., 2010; Weuffen et al., 2023). When Indigenous identity and inclusion is prioritised as culturally nourishing pedagogies, we argue that the following the quality practices should be observable:

  • Engaging with students to build inclusive whole-class engagement that links task behaviours and facilitates intellectual investment in learning (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008);

  • Centring the role of well-being and culture by develo** authentic integration of cultural perspectives that work towards self-determination and make connections between identity, empowerment, power sharing, and collaborative meaning-making (Rigney, 2023);

  • Implementing community-led sustainable inclusion of authentic language and cultural programs that connect students to individual and collective identities (Lowe et al., 2020a, 2020b);

  • Embedding deeper levels of understanding about identity and cultural inclusion to develop socio-political consciousness that challenges problematic representations of Aboriginal Peoples, histories, cultures, and knowledges (Krakouer, 2015); and

  • Scaffolding learning to encourage risk-taking strategies which deepen knowledge and connection to learning (McLaughlin & Whatman, 2015).

Socio-political consciousness

The socio-political consciousness element CNP elements turns to the Freirean concept of consciousness for students and educators alike, and seeks to raise socio-political matters as a purposeful act to interrogate power, decision-making, and positionality as the basis for naming the world, reflecting on it, and actively transforming the conditions and arrangements that impact people (Amazan et al., 2023; Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018). To envision a possibility of speaking back to deficit discourses surrounding Aboriginal peoples and cultures, and invoking genuine standpoints, knowledge-making practices that engage with contestations and interrupt the reproduction of knowledge hierarchies are required (Harrison et al., 2023, Rollo, 2022; Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009). In the schooling environment, the implications are clear; where power is shared between self-determining individuals within non-dominating relations, culture and identity are venerated, and a sense of connectedness and responsibility for co-learning is fostered (Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018; Gay, 2000; Lowe et al., 2020a, 2020b).

We propose that CNP practices of socio-political consciousness centre on develo** pedagogical skills and understanding of authentic, reciprocal, inclusive, dialogic, interactive, and participatory relationships between teachers, students, families, and communities (Bishop et al., 2003). When learning relationships are fostered on this basis of interactive collaboration, an environment of co-inquiry is promoted and used as a vehicle to support problem-based, integrated, and holistic pedagogies (Marin & Bang, 2015). Such interactive collaboration may be thought of as a spiral discourse where family-like relationships underpin re-storying to enable processes of shared sense-making and deeper understanding on the world (Bishop et al., 2003). Having articulated this, CNPs, where socio-political consciousness is activated, would be observable as:

  • Develo** students’ critical understandings and analysis of positioning discourses to understand the significance of their socio-political, cultural, and knowledge learning needs (Bishop & Durksen, 2020);

  • Collaborating and dialogically engaging with socio-political cultural knowledges as central to self-determination by designing and implementing content that develops understanding of Aboriginal identity, self-determination, empowerment, and power-sharing (Amazan et al., 2023);

  • Embedding and discussing the significance of identity, language, and culture, and including family and communities' educational aspirations, in students’ socio-political, cultural, and knowledge learning journeys (Lowe et al., 2020a, 2020b);

  • Collaboratively and dialogically engaging with students, within culturally safer learning environments that are cognisant of complex issues, narratives, and lived experiences, to articulate and meet their socio-political, cultural, and knowledge learning needs (Bishop et al., 2003); and

  • Articulating high expectations within the context of students’ socio-political cultural and knowledge learning needs to build connectedness and belonging with local communities to speak back to misrepresentations of Aboriginal peoples and cultures to foster critical consciousness (Krakouer, 2015).

High-expectations and connectedness

One of the biggest challenges for teaching practice is the enactment of high expectations while concurrently building positive learning environments in socially complex classrooms (Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018; Hynds et al., 2011). In settler-colonial societies, deficit stereoty** of Aboriginal Peoples and other marginalised communities is reflected in curriculum and disciplinary pedagogical practices that are rarely recognised, let alone sought to be rectified (Gay, 2000; Sarra et al., 2020). Furthermore, research clearly identifies that schooling expectations of students’ interests and capacities markedly influences outcomes and beliefs about themselves accumulated over the schooling journey (Morrison et al., 2019).

In line with the four earlier elements of CNP, scholarship has repeatedly argued that learning relationships are the key to setting and maintaining high-expectations and connectedness. Bishop et al. (2003) argues that when care and acknowledgement of students’ spiritual connectedness to community and Country are pedagogically enacted, the capacity to anchor learning outside traditional transmission modes becomes possible. This requires a broad recognition, respect, and operationalisation of students’ identities and lived experiences as the foundation for develo** meaningful and situated learning and prompting high expectations (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Gay, 2000). Existing scholarship in this field is clear, the quality pedagogical practices that should be observable if high-expectations and connectedness are flourishing within the learning environment are:

  • Implementing inclusive models of learning that connects with and supports students’ interests while scaffolding capacities through sharing roles and responsibilities for learning (Morrison et al., 2019);

  • Develo** student understanding of how high expectations builds self-determination via high-level communication strategies that discuss complex and challenging issues (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008);

  • Making clear connections between community and cultural contexts and high expectations, evolving learning opportunities, and the role of identity and culture in develo** powerful and empowering learning skills (Bishop et al., 2003);

  • Demonstrating how connectedness and belonging builds socio-political consciousness and maintaining high expectations in develo** collaborative meaning-making (Amazan et al., 2023); and

  • Implementing inclusive learning models learning environments built on connectedness and belonging that focuses on high expectations of student confidence and capacity (Britton et al., 2020).

Impact of culturally nourishing pedagogical practice?

In recent years, there has been a disturbing push to reduce the intellectualism of teaching and promote an implicit questioning of who has the right to do pedagogical work. The reductive rhetoric around teaching manifests in dialogue about the educator’s role as primarily translating curriculum statements to learning activities (Lowe et al., 2021; Mills et al., 2021). As this narrative takes hold, education institutions demand, and commercial organisations typically produce, best-practice examples and ready-to-teach resources that can be purchased and implemented without critical analysis (Australians Together, 2023; Langton & Barry, 2021; Hogarth, 2022). This is not to say that such resources are not important in schooling, rather that they should be, at best, considered supplementary tools supports to critical pedagogical practice. While cognitive work is useful for opening doorways to new ways of thinking, without integrating the application of these practices, whole-of-school reform and impact will be limited to the current hyper-fixation of curriculum as pedagogy. Thus, the core work of education has been disrupted by systematic processes of accessing and defining knowledge according to predetermined parameters.

We maintain that to have observable, effective, and sustainable pedagogical changes across an entire school, attention should be paid to relational interactions between educators and students, as well as curriculum content, to connect learning with the realities and experiences that students bring to school. Therefore, we propose the five CNP elements as an avenue for making impactful changes in Aboriginal students’ learning journeys. It is clear from the literature reviewed in conceptualising the CNP framework that Aboriginal students—their learning, experiences, and outcomes—have largely been absent in pedagogical framings (Lowe & Weuffen, 2023; Luke et al., 2013; National Indigenous Australians Agency, 2022). The absence of student learning in pedagogies is perhaps a glaring oversight given that the entire ideological purpose of education is geared towards providing learners with opportunities to acquire knowledge and skills that enable them to develop their full potential to participate in society. Yet, perhaps the poverty of current thinking around pedagogy as a relational and cultural practice is one of the reasons there has been a systemic failure in Australian education to have a sustainable impact on Aboriginal students’ outcomes. As has been repeatedly presented, relationality is a fundamental way of being for Aboriginal students, and, arguably, all human interactions (Yunkaporta & Shillingsworth, 2020). However, pedagogy has overwhelmingly been conceptualised as practices tied to disciplinary traditions steeped in Eurocentric western ideologies.

The five elements at the heart of the CNP framework are proposed from an accumulative gathering of descriptions about what works for Aboriginal students in mainstream classrooms from existing conceptual and empirical research. We have sought to build upon broad descriptions of practice to postulate descriptive attributes that may be associated with each element in Australian schools. However, we note that these attributes remain in flux until empirical research is undertaken to validate the efficacy and capacity of this pedagogical framework and provide opportunities guided by research to refine further iterations of the framework.

We do not propose that the five elements are a lock-step and/or hierarchical framework. Rather, the elements should be considered a tool for schools and educators to draw on to locate points and moments for facilitating relational pedagogy as the basis of everyday practice. It may be used as a instrument for professional development by educators, either as an individual process of critical reflectivity, or in collaboration with other educators/local Aboriginal experts to orientate future practices in the primacy of place and space (Berryman & Wearmouth, 2018; Burgess et al., 2023; Johnston-Goodstar et al., 2010; Rigney, 2023). We aruge that using the framework as a professional development tool is useful to orientating pedagogical thinking in ways that consider success from the perspective of an Aboriginal student through an Aboriginal lens (Burgess et al., 2023; Luke et al., 2013; Weuffen et al., 2023). We reason that to envision real change, all students, across all levels of schooling need to be educated about Aboriginal histories and cultures in ways that centre curriculum and pedagogies within coherent, authentic, relational, and holistic concepts of Country. The scholarship produced to date reveals that strengthening Aboriginal students’ sense of belonging and being within schooling environments, in conjunction with more appropriate pedagogies, foregrounding localised experiences, and facilitating genuine community engagement, is required for long-term change (Harrison et al., 2023; Lowe & Weuffen, 2023; Marin & Bang, 2015; Morrison et al., 2008).

In conceptualising the CNP framework, we are not arguing that curriculum and assessment do not have a place in teaching practice. The reality is, learning and teaching work is guided by educational policies—such as curriculum and assessment—and teachers are required to report on student progress according to these pre-determined markers of success (AITSL, 2017; Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Mills et al., 2021). Rather, we suggest that operationalisation of a CNP pedagogic framework provides a vehicle for educators to (re)think understandings of pedagogy away from practices designed to explain and assess disciplinary concepts to processes of relationality, socio-political consciousness, and epistemic inclusivity which view Aboriginal knowledges as equal—rather than in contrast or deficit—to western knowledges. In line with other scholars (Bishop et al., 2021; Lynn, 2022; Morrison et al., 2008; Rollo, 2022), shifting understandings of pedagogy in this way challenges responsiveness to broader issues and viewing students as individuals with agency and particular educational aspirations. Essentially, we argue that our conceptualisation of a CNP framework encourages critical reflexivity of professional pedagogical practices and supports the development of deeper and meaningful engagement with Aboriginal students.

Having conceptualised this CNP framework, we recognise the potential limitations surrounding actualisation. As repeatedly stated by a range of authors (AITSL, 2017; Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Mills et al., 2021), the contemporary Australian schooling space is orientated towards building and assessing academic capacities and metrics. While policies and statements declare support for Aboriginal students, this is often conveyed under the smoke and mirrors of reconciliation, where there is stark misalignment to on-the-ground lived realities. Furthermore, previous research has indicated the significant ontological and epistemic shifts required by the vastly non-Indigenous teaching workforce to move beyond western-centric ways of thinking and doing education, especially for students whose heritages are not aligned with settler-coloniality. Given this, there is further scholarship needed to determine what might constitute an optimum schooling context for the sustained uptake of CNPs, in addition to, empirical studies to evidence whether our conceptual thinking is trustworthy and feasible.

Conclusion

While there exist policy requirements to embed Aboriginal knowledges, histories, and perspectives in Australian schools, dominant pedagogical practices associated with disciplinarity fragment these knowledges across the western curriculum, which results in many Aboriginal students continuing to experience harm in and from schooling. Furthermore, while pedagogical practices suggest ways in which schooling may be orientated towards being more responsive and sensitive to Aboriginal contexts, there is virtually no evidence of impactful or sustainable change. Scholarship indicates an absence of pedagogies that challenge settler-colonial understandings of Aboriginal students’ educational and/or cultural aspirations, identities, and notions of success. Our rendering of a culturally nourishing pedagogical framework clearly articulates that relationality and power-sharing are central to systematic change. We hope that our framework offers educators and schools a tool by which to engage with local communities and co-design curriculum and learning that can be adjusted to support Aboriginal students in reaching their full potential and fulfilling the social justice goals of the recently renewed (Alice Springs) Mparntwe Education Declaration (Education Council, 2015).