The Angklung is a musical instrument from Indonesia. The performance of Angklung has survived 400... more The Angklung is a musical instrument from Indonesia. The performance of Angklung has survived 400 years of colonial rule in Indonesia, as well as endured in host countries by Indonesian migrants thereby it operates as a political, as well as, a social form of public pedagogy that enhances ‘the quality of human togetherness (Biesta 2012, p. 684). This paper outlines a brief history of the Angklung and its role as a unifying symbol of social cohesion. Research on the migration of Indonesian Colombo Plan students in the 1960s to South Australia and the continued performance of the Angklung in South Australia is explored in relation to its role as public pedagogy. Adelindo Angklung was established in 2011 in Adelaide with the aim to maintain and share Indonesian traditional music in South Australia. This paper offers insight into the performance of Angklung as a form of public pedagogy that has an enduring history across continents. We explore how the Indonesian community has embedded a...
International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, 2016
This paper explores how ethics of care informs pedagogical practices in schools. Ethics of care i... more This paper explores how ethics of care informs pedagogical practices in schools. Ethics of care is located within social constructivism that centralises a student centred approach to learning. In so doing, teachers engage students in learning within a relationship of reciprocity. This paper examines the ways in which social reproduction is maintained through normative ethics of care practices that is positioned as culturally neutral in schools. This paper argues for a critical examination of how the teaching/learning nexus is informed by and constrained within the paradigm of white ethics of care in education. There is a particular focus on Indigenous students' "positionality" in the Australian context throughout the paper and it argues for de-colonising strategies in teaching and schooling. These strategies include, negotiating difference within an ethics of care of reciprocity and recognition through the use of standpoint theory as both method and methodology.
... This was often represented in the class room when Anne Jack and other AEWs with whom I worked... more ... This was often represented in the class room when Anne Jack and other AEWs with whom I worked could control a class with non-verbal cues that would direct a seemingly chaotic class into one of quiet attentiveness. ... Flaxton: Post Pressed. ...
In this photo essay I draw on Haraway’s (2016) call to stay “with the trouble” and make “kin in t... more In this photo essay I draw on Haraway’s (2016) call to stay “with the trouble” and make “kin in the Chthulucene” to reflect on emergent community understandings as a result of catastrophic fires on Kangaroo Island (KI) in 2019. The title Immolation with Ashes is a signifier for staying with the trouble and draws on Indigenous ethics of care and understandings of connection to place. I draw on documentary photography that I conducted over several years on KI to unveil the impact of the ecological disaster and use the images as a site for reflection. Through the framing of apocalyptic pedagogies I offer a family vignette to provide insight into the event of the fires and the emergence of community knowledges and networks that arose as a result of the fires. The photos throughout the paper also reveal sites of healing landscapes in the same way in which traumatised communities form solidarity and knowledge in recovery.
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 2012
Since 2001 there has been an increase in migration patterns by Indigenous families from remote co... more Since 2001 there has been an increase in migration patterns by Indigenous families from remote communities to urban and semi-rural locations. Indigenous student emigration from remote Indigenous schools to urban and semi-rural schools is an emerging crisis as there are routinely inadequate service providers for Indigenous émigrés. Migration away from a particular location from which a person's ancestors, kin and Dreamings come (henceforward named as Country) to semi-rural and urban locations raises many complex issues. This article outlines Aboriginal Community Education Officers’ (ACEOs) role as support workers for Indigenous students who utilise an Indigenous ethics of care framework as a support mechanism to aid the transition of Indigenous students into new schools. The article draws on research undertaken between 2000–2008 (MacGill, 2008) in conjunction with current literature in the field (Pearce, 2012) to highlight ACEOs’ border work and ethics of care practices necessary...
Introduction Ngarrindjeri futures depend on the survival of the land, waters, and other interconn... more Introduction Ngarrindjeri futures depend on the survival of the land, waters, and other interconnected living things. The Murray-Darling Basin is recognised nationally and internationally as a system under stress. Ngarrindjeri have long understood the profound and intricate connection of land, water, humans, and non-humans (Trevorrow and Hemming). In an effort to secure environmental sustainability the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority (NRA) have engaged in political negotiations with the State, primarily with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), to transform natural resource management arrangements that engage with an ethics of justice, redistribution, and recognition (Hattam, Rigney and Hemming). In 1987, prior to the formation of the NRA, Camp Coorong: Race Relations and Cultural Education Centre was established by the Ngarrindjeri Lands and Progress Association in partnership with the South Australian Museum and the South Australian Education Department (Hem...
PurposeThis article explores the childhood, professional life and social activism of Alice Rigney... more PurposeThis article explores the childhood, professional life and social activism of Alice Rigney (1942–2017) who became Australia's first Aboriginal woman principal in 1986.Design/methodology/approachThe article draws on interviews with Alice Rigney along with newspapers, education department correspondence and reports of relevant organisations which are read against the grain to elevate Aboriginal people's self-determination and agency.FindingsThe article illuminates Alice/Alitya Rigney's engagement with education and culture from her childhood to her work as an Aboriginal teacher aide, teacher, inaugural principal of Kaurna Plains Aboriginal school in Adelaide, South Australia; and her activism as a Narungga and Kaurna Elder. Furthermore, the article highlights her challenges to racial and gender discrimination in the state school system.Originality/valueWhile there is an expanding body of historical research on Aboriginal students, this article focuses on the experie...
Debates about what constitutes a socially just education remain a central concern in these comple... more Debates about what constitutes a socially just education remain a central concern in these complex times. Embodied and creative practices in schooling offer a pedagogical approach that can respond to social justice within schooling and classrooms. This paper draws on pedagogies that utilise the body and creative practices as a method for engaging students who have historically been marginalised in schools and the learning process. Transforming classroom practice through a model of engagement is explored in relation to teaching mathematics outlined through a case study involving a Creative and Body-based Learning (CBL) initiative in four classrooms across two schools. This work describes the journey of students, teachers and artists working collaboratively with CBL and how emotion, creativity and embodiment positively impacted student learning in these highly diverse and underprivileged schools.
Aboriginal Community Education Officers (ACEOs) play a critical role in the lives of Indigenous s... more Aboriginal Community Education Officers (ACEOs) play a critical role in the lives of Indigenous students. They provide support in the classroom and liaise between Indigenous communities and schools. Despite the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommendation to recognise the value of ACEOs in schools, they continue to be marginalised in the literature and the workplace. Arguably, the presence of ACEOs on education boards and committees has informed a political body of knowledge that has shaped Indigenous education policy. The South Australian Aboriginal Education Consultative Committee included many ACEOs and was one of the first political bodies to focus on the working conditions of ACEOs. Oral histories of ACEOs, coupled with a review of the literature concerning ACEOs, highlight their significant commitment to Indigenous education and foreground their work within the context of educational policy and workplace change. The significance of these oral accounts cann...
The focus of this paper is on teaching and learning within a Communities of Practice (CoP) model ... more The focus of this paper is on teaching and learning within a Communities of Practice (CoP) model of art education in Early Childhood, Schools and Adult learning centres across the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands (APY Lands) located in the remote desert country on the border of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory. The Anangu, Aboriginal people from the APY Lands, have an approach to pedagogy which is informed by Kulini, a deep listening, spiritual, embodied knowledge system (Osborne, 2014). Western teaching practices built on Socratic teaching methods culminating in Direct Instruction (DI) nevertheless ignore the value of this system. In contrast, Anangu pedagogy which weaves western knowledge through an Indigenous ethics of care offers considerable potential for the development of a culturally responsive pedagogy (SooHoo and Nevin, 2013). This pedagogy needs to be co-constructed by Anangu and Piranpa (Non-Aboriginal people), a collaborative appr...
Global neoliberal imperatives that numerically measure student success through standardized testi... more Global neoliberal imperatives that numerically measure student success through standardized testing undermine the educational outcomes of students, in particular Indigenous students, and construct a seemingly fixed reality that avoids State responsibility to address structural inequality in Australia. Achievement gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous school students in mathematics have become an urgent international problem. Although evidence suggests that culturally responsive pedagogies (CRPs) improve student academic success for First Nations peoples in settler colonial countries such as the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, less prominent is a focus on how CRP is enacted and mobilized in Australian classrooms. Although some initiatives exist, this article explores how creative and body-based learning (CBL) strategies might be utilized to enact CRP. Using an ethnographic case study approach, we examined how two early career teachers serving Indigenous and et...
Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 2019
A conceptual framework for looking and listening operates within aesthetic and affective moments ... more A conceptual framework for looking and listening operates within aesthetic and affective moments when crafting objects. Assembling and modifying Sea Balls into arranged composition is my craft process that I use to access a state of mind play. Each found and modified object represents a key theoretical framework that I connect and re-organize in relation to each other to produce new ways of perceiving. Considerations of Massumi, Fish and Jameson’s (2002) notion of perception and how I experience affect through embodiment in the moment of re-crafting and re-assembling items is central to the practice. Emergent ideas occur through re-crafting found objects in conjunction with broader considerations of relational aesthetics.
This paper wrestles with the possibilities of a new representational field emerging through stree... more This paper wrestles with the possibilities of a new representational field emerging through street art in Australia. It highlights the intersections between public space, curated space, street art and representations of Indigenous culture in order to contribute to conversations concerning public pedagogy. The Geelong Powerhouse site is used to examine how the public engages with Indigenous political narratives in contact zones. This is juxtaposed with museums and text mediated sites in order to examine the possibility of an emerging visual and digital literacy in Australia. Considerations of how context shapes meanings for audiences are explored with the aim of moving beyond the tensions that set limits on dialogic intercultural understandings of intersectionality.
The Angklung is a musical instrument from Indonesia. The performance of Angklung has survived 400... more The Angklung is a musical instrument from Indonesia. The performance of Angklung has survived 400 years of colonial rule in Indonesia, as well as endured in host countries by Indonesian migrants thereby it operates as a political, as well as, a social form of public pedagogy that enhances ‘the quality of human togetherness (Biesta 2012, p. 684). This paper outlines a brief history of the Angklung and its role as a unifying symbol of social cohesion. Research on the migration of Indonesian Colombo Plan students in the 1960s to South Australia and the continued performance of the Angklung in South Australia is explored in relation to its role as public pedagogy. Adelindo Angklung was established in 2011 in Adelaide with the aim to maintain and share Indonesian traditional music in South Australia. This paper offers insight into the performance of Angklung as a form of public pedagogy that has an enduring history across continents. We explore how the Indonesian community has embedded a...
International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, 2016
This paper explores how ethics of care informs pedagogical practices in schools. Ethics of care i... more This paper explores how ethics of care informs pedagogical practices in schools. Ethics of care is located within social constructivism that centralises a student centred approach to learning. In so doing, teachers engage students in learning within a relationship of reciprocity. This paper examines the ways in which social reproduction is maintained through normative ethics of care practices that is positioned as culturally neutral in schools. This paper argues for a critical examination of how the teaching/learning nexus is informed by and constrained within the paradigm of white ethics of care in education. There is a particular focus on Indigenous students' "positionality" in the Australian context throughout the paper and it argues for de-colonising strategies in teaching and schooling. These strategies include, negotiating difference within an ethics of care of reciprocity and recognition through the use of standpoint theory as both method and methodology.
... This was often represented in the class room when Anne Jack and other AEWs with whom I worked... more ... This was often represented in the class room when Anne Jack and other AEWs with whom I worked could control a class with non-verbal cues that would direct a seemingly chaotic class into one of quiet attentiveness. ... Flaxton: Post Pressed. ...
In this photo essay I draw on Haraway’s (2016) call to stay “with the trouble” and make “kin in t... more In this photo essay I draw on Haraway’s (2016) call to stay “with the trouble” and make “kin in the Chthulucene” to reflect on emergent community understandings as a result of catastrophic fires on Kangaroo Island (KI) in 2019. The title Immolation with Ashes is a signifier for staying with the trouble and draws on Indigenous ethics of care and understandings of connection to place. I draw on documentary photography that I conducted over several years on KI to unveil the impact of the ecological disaster and use the images as a site for reflection. Through the framing of apocalyptic pedagogies I offer a family vignette to provide insight into the event of the fires and the emergence of community knowledges and networks that arose as a result of the fires. The photos throughout the paper also reveal sites of healing landscapes in the same way in which traumatised communities form solidarity and knowledge in recovery.
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 2012
Since 2001 there has been an increase in migration patterns by Indigenous families from remote co... more Since 2001 there has been an increase in migration patterns by Indigenous families from remote communities to urban and semi-rural locations. Indigenous student emigration from remote Indigenous schools to urban and semi-rural schools is an emerging crisis as there are routinely inadequate service providers for Indigenous émigrés. Migration away from a particular location from which a person's ancestors, kin and Dreamings come (henceforward named as Country) to semi-rural and urban locations raises many complex issues. This article outlines Aboriginal Community Education Officers’ (ACEOs) role as support workers for Indigenous students who utilise an Indigenous ethics of care framework as a support mechanism to aid the transition of Indigenous students into new schools. The article draws on research undertaken between 2000–2008 (MacGill, 2008) in conjunction with current literature in the field (Pearce, 2012) to highlight ACEOs’ border work and ethics of care practices necessary...
Introduction Ngarrindjeri futures depend on the survival of the land, waters, and other interconn... more Introduction Ngarrindjeri futures depend on the survival of the land, waters, and other interconnected living things. The Murray-Darling Basin is recognised nationally and internationally as a system under stress. Ngarrindjeri have long understood the profound and intricate connection of land, water, humans, and non-humans (Trevorrow and Hemming). In an effort to secure environmental sustainability the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority (NRA) have engaged in political negotiations with the State, primarily with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), to transform natural resource management arrangements that engage with an ethics of justice, redistribution, and recognition (Hattam, Rigney and Hemming). In 1987, prior to the formation of the NRA, Camp Coorong: Race Relations and Cultural Education Centre was established by the Ngarrindjeri Lands and Progress Association in partnership with the South Australian Museum and the South Australian Education Department (Hem...
PurposeThis article explores the childhood, professional life and social activism of Alice Rigney... more PurposeThis article explores the childhood, professional life and social activism of Alice Rigney (1942–2017) who became Australia's first Aboriginal woman principal in 1986.Design/methodology/approachThe article draws on interviews with Alice Rigney along with newspapers, education department correspondence and reports of relevant organisations which are read against the grain to elevate Aboriginal people's self-determination and agency.FindingsThe article illuminates Alice/Alitya Rigney's engagement with education and culture from her childhood to her work as an Aboriginal teacher aide, teacher, inaugural principal of Kaurna Plains Aboriginal school in Adelaide, South Australia; and her activism as a Narungga and Kaurna Elder. Furthermore, the article highlights her challenges to racial and gender discrimination in the state school system.Originality/valueWhile there is an expanding body of historical research on Aboriginal students, this article focuses on the experie...
Debates about what constitutes a socially just education remain a central concern in these comple... more Debates about what constitutes a socially just education remain a central concern in these complex times. Embodied and creative practices in schooling offer a pedagogical approach that can respond to social justice within schooling and classrooms. This paper draws on pedagogies that utilise the body and creative practices as a method for engaging students who have historically been marginalised in schools and the learning process. Transforming classroom practice through a model of engagement is explored in relation to teaching mathematics outlined through a case study involving a Creative and Body-based Learning (CBL) initiative in four classrooms across two schools. This work describes the journey of students, teachers and artists working collaboratively with CBL and how emotion, creativity and embodiment positively impacted student learning in these highly diverse and underprivileged schools.
Aboriginal Community Education Officers (ACEOs) play a critical role in the lives of Indigenous s... more Aboriginal Community Education Officers (ACEOs) play a critical role in the lives of Indigenous students. They provide support in the classroom and liaise between Indigenous communities and schools. Despite the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommendation to recognise the value of ACEOs in schools, they continue to be marginalised in the literature and the workplace. Arguably, the presence of ACEOs on education boards and committees has informed a political body of knowledge that has shaped Indigenous education policy. The South Australian Aboriginal Education Consultative Committee included many ACEOs and was one of the first political bodies to focus on the working conditions of ACEOs. Oral histories of ACEOs, coupled with a review of the literature concerning ACEOs, highlight their significant commitment to Indigenous education and foreground their work within the context of educational policy and workplace change. The significance of these oral accounts cann...
The focus of this paper is on teaching and learning within a Communities of Practice (CoP) model ... more The focus of this paper is on teaching and learning within a Communities of Practice (CoP) model of art education in Early Childhood, Schools and Adult learning centres across the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands (APY Lands) located in the remote desert country on the border of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory. The Anangu, Aboriginal people from the APY Lands, have an approach to pedagogy which is informed by Kulini, a deep listening, spiritual, embodied knowledge system (Osborne, 2014). Western teaching practices built on Socratic teaching methods culminating in Direct Instruction (DI) nevertheless ignore the value of this system. In contrast, Anangu pedagogy which weaves western knowledge through an Indigenous ethics of care offers considerable potential for the development of a culturally responsive pedagogy (SooHoo and Nevin, 2013). This pedagogy needs to be co-constructed by Anangu and Piranpa (Non-Aboriginal people), a collaborative appr...
Global neoliberal imperatives that numerically measure student success through standardized testi... more Global neoliberal imperatives that numerically measure student success through standardized testing undermine the educational outcomes of students, in particular Indigenous students, and construct a seemingly fixed reality that avoids State responsibility to address structural inequality in Australia. Achievement gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous school students in mathematics have become an urgent international problem. Although evidence suggests that culturally responsive pedagogies (CRPs) improve student academic success for First Nations peoples in settler colonial countries such as the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, less prominent is a focus on how CRP is enacted and mobilized in Australian classrooms. Although some initiatives exist, this article explores how creative and body-based learning (CBL) strategies might be utilized to enact CRP. Using an ethnographic case study approach, we examined how two early career teachers serving Indigenous and et...
Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 2019
A conceptual framework for looking and listening operates within aesthetic and affective moments ... more A conceptual framework for looking and listening operates within aesthetic and affective moments when crafting objects. Assembling and modifying Sea Balls into arranged composition is my craft process that I use to access a state of mind play. Each found and modified object represents a key theoretical framework that I connect and re-organize in relation to each other to produce new ways of perceiving. Considerations of Massumi, Fish and Jameson’s (2002) notion of perception and how I experience affect through embodiment in the moment of re-crafting and re-assembling items is central to the practice. Emergent ideas occur through re-crafting found objects in conjunction with broader considerations of relational aesthetics.
This paper wrestles with the possibilities of a new representational field emerging through stree... more This paper wrestles with the possibilities of a new representational field emerging through street art in Australia. It highlights the intersections between public space, curated space, street art and representations of Indigenous culture in order to contribute to conversations concerning public pedagogy. The Geelong Powerhouse site is used to examine how the public engages with Indigenous political narratives in contact zones. This is juxtaposed with museums and text mediated sites in order to examine the possibility of an emerging visual and digital literacy in Australia. Considerations of how context shapes meanings for audiences are explored with the aim of moving beyond the tensions that set limits on dialogic intercultural understandings of intersectionality.
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Papers by Bindi MacGill