bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Developing Educational Guidance and Counselling Services for Urban Aboriginal Students
Authors: Clark R. , Daanen P. , Geelen M. , Hand V. , McIntyre L. , Schloss L. 
Published: November 2015

(Readers are referred to an earlier report on this project – The Aboriginal Child at School, 4,5,1976.. Ed.)In February 1975, Inala High School was selected as the location for a project to develop guidance and counselling services for Aboriginal students. The source of funding was the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Inala was chosen because of the relatively high concentration of Aboriginal families in what is, essentially a working class district of approximately thirty thousand people. There are also significantly high proportions of migrants from non-English speaking countries and single parent families. Staffing has grown from a part-time guidance officer and and full-time Aboriginal counsellor based at the High School, to a guidance officer, a guidance counsellor, two Aboriginal education counsellors, a Secondary teacher and a teacher aide working from a centre within the community and serving all of the primary and secondary schools.The development of the project has been guided by the philosophy of such educationalists as McConnochie (1973) that the failure of Aboriginals to succeed at school is primarily a result of factors associated with our social institutions rather than the Aboriginal child himself. McConnochie suggests that our institutions tend to debase the black child’s concept of himself and the group with whom he identifies; and it is the child’s consequent lack of self-esteem that contributes significantly to his low vocational aspirations and academic achievement. However, low vocational aspirations and achievement themselves interact, reinforcing the child’s negative self-concept and he becomes caught up in a self-sustaining cycle of increasing school failure and worthlessness.
Family Disease of Alcoholism
Authors: Hunt H. 
Published: November 2015

To speak of alcoholics and alcohol abuse is one thing, and we quite often tend to stick to that area, perhaps because, among other things, it is easier to see and treat. Here I wish to speak of alcoholism, the disease, as it affects the family, mainly the children, and also highlight the early age at which the children are affected. I ask you to try to keep an open mind right from now, because I may not be saying what you expect, but, what you will identify and understand.We all know a lot about alcoholism, although we do not always identify it. We find comfort in diagnosing and treating its symptoms, whilst the disease itself continues to run wild, often to the extent of mental and physical injury, as well as insanity and death.We often overlook alcoholism in a family because there is no obvious drunkenness. Drunkenness is only a symptom of the disease. It is the alcoholic’s attempt to ease the pressures of the illness, which is, briefly, the inability to cope with irregular but constant periods of emotional conflict.
Selecting Books for Aboriginal Children
Authors: Jaunay G.R. 
Published: November 2015

This article stems from several requests by teachers and librarians, following our April article (Vol. 6 No. 2) for information about books that are popular with Aboriginal children who use the facilities of the Oodnadatta School library.In our two and a half years of operating this library, we have gained a reasonably clear insight into the likes and dislikes of our readers. While the supply of lists is useful because, obviously, books successful in one libarary are usually popular in another library, the librarian must take into account the local factors which will probably influence the type of book the borrower will favour. While I don’t wish to labour this point for the readers who may be well aware of these factors, there are several people who have written to me, who would be interested.Most factors are inter-related and readily fit the socioeconomic situation of the borrower. For example, the Aboriginal people of Oodnadatta are very much fringe dwellers with respect to western society, although they easily outnumber the non-Aboriginal members of the community. Their mother tongue is a version of Pitjantjatjara (Yankuntjatjara), though most speak sufficient English to be able to communicate with Europeans. The school teaches only in English with an emphasis, in the lower classes, on standardizing grammar, using the Queensland Van Leer Foundation Language Project.
Conference Report : “The Aboriginal Child at School”
Authors: Kartinyeri P. , Anderson R. 
Published: November 2015

On Friday, June 23, 1978, between 9 a.m. and 4.30 p.m., an Education Department Staff In-service Conference, organised by Port Augusta’s Central Primary School, was held at the Davenport Aboriginal Adult Training Centre (DAATC), on Davenport Aboriginal Reserve, Port Augusta.The conference was called, and largely organised by the principal of Port Augusta’s Central Primary School, Mr Ian Westley, with the co-operation of the students and staff of the DAATC, and the Davenport Cultural Club. It was chaired by Ms Catherine Guinness, Lecturer in Aboriginal Studies at Torrens College of Advanced Education. Attending were the staff of Central Primary, the students and staff of DAATC, the students of the Aboriginal Pre-vocational Course at Port Augusta College of Further Education, representatives of all public primary and secondary schools in Port Augusta, representatives from the Adelaide Head Office of the Education Department, as well as visitors from Hawker and Adelaide. In all, between 50 and 60 people were present.The conference was divided into parts, separated by lunch provided by the Davenport Cultural Club. The first part was taken up by talks given mainly by Aboriginal people, and the second part was for the teachers present to discuss the problems they had teaching Aboriginal pupils, with a summing-up by Mr Ian Westley and Ms Catherine Guinness.
The Eric “Joe” McGuinness Study Centre
Authors: Whyman K. 
Published: November 2015

A most important aim is to bring our people our cultural history because, without it, we will be spiritually dead.The study centre at 108 Smith Street, Collingwood, was established because of the urgent need for such centres within our Aboriginal communities.One aim is to have a community controlled centre of which our people can feel a part. We encourage our people to participate actively in programs that they feel are important for our survival in today’s society.Our people today are much more aware of the education system and see it as negative and racist towards not only our Aboriginal people, but also other races.A most important aim is to bring to our people our cultural history because, without it, we will be spiritually dead. Our history did not start in 1770 but was alive, full, and rich thousands of years before the invasion.
Aboriginal Culture in a Victorian School
Authors: Barry G. 
Published: November 2015

On Friday July 7, Jungai Day was held at Bell Primary School, Preston, to mark the beginning of N.A.D.O.C. week for 1978. Bell has an enrolment of just under 500 and has a high and expanding migrant population.In early 1977, the first Aboriginal child arrived at the school, to add to the already complex nature of the school’s ethnic structure. Children from other Aboriginal families soon followed as the Housing Commission pursued its policy of providing houses that would match the finances of Aboriginal people.The Aboriginal children made an immediate impact on the school. For some teachers and children, it was their first encounter with Aboriginal people. The children also brought their own problems, apart from those usually faced by any child starting at a new school.It would hardly be overstating the case to say that the Aboriginal families would not have accepted the houses that they did, if they had not been in dire straits financially. The houses generally were small, cold, and inadequately furnished.During their first winter at the school, the children were absent for much of the time, due to illnesses that were almost certainly related to the quality of the housing. The long breaks in the children’s attendances, however, were also indicative of a negative attitude to school, an attitude that proved very difficult to change as the children were away so often.The situation didn’t really begin to improve until Pam Pederson arrived at the school to work as a teacher aide. Pam filled a crucial liaison role between the school and the Aboriginal families, as well as being a focal point of support for the Aboriginal children within the school.
Trendy Experimentation or Cultural Enrichment?
Authors: Buschenhofen Paul 
Published: November 2015

An evaluation of the principles and aims of bi-lingual education, with special reference to Yuendumu School, Northern Territory.Having sat himself down excitedly, Johnny, a little European pre-schooler, waits expectantly yet somewhat apprehensively for his teacher to appear. It is the first day of school, and Johnny has not met his teacher yet, but he knows she is a Warlpiri.
Here she comes –“Ngurrju mayinkili jalanguju! Wardinyi jarri kamanyarra. Ngajurna Nangala, ngaka marda kapurna nyarra yirdiji miliapinyi nyurrurlaju. Ngaka marda kapunkulu pinarri jarrimi nyampuku walyaku kijankulurla palkajarrija.Kala kanpa marda kanyirni wita turaki manyu karrinjaku, kala kapunpa yijardu pinarrijarri nyampurlaju warrki yijardu.Thus little Johnny is confronted and bombarded with an unknown, incomprehensible language which only receives a vestige of meaning through the teacher’s reassuring gestures and prompting voice inflections.How is it that Johnny finds himself in this position? Some years ago, when the view was still widely accepted that Johnny, being English (European), belonged to a race of such low intelligence that he was impossible to educate, he would not have been here at all.
What Trainee Teachers and Teachers Should Know About Aboriginal Children.
Authors:   N.S.W. Aboriginal Education Consultative Group
Published: November 2015

The New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Group feels that more emphasis needs to be placed on the training of teachers in regards to Aboriginal education.Many first year teachers are sent to country areas with a relatively high percentage of Aboriginal students. In the main, these teachers have had little or no contact with Aboriginal children or parents.
S.C.F. Kindergarten, Robinvale
Authors: Merlin M. 
Published: November 2015

The Aboriginal people in Robinvale do not want separate schools, classes and housing. Some of the more dependent ones need extra help, but the capable ones are proud of succeeding on their own merits as people.However, the children do have problems at school. For this reason the Save the Children Fund has set up a kindergarten for three-year-old children. All the Aboriginal children attend four days a week; even itinerant families and visitors bring their three-year-olds along. They may stay with the children, leave them, come back early, join in the program, or just watch, any day and every day. Two Aboriginal aides take a major part in running the program, with a kindergartner.Non-Aboriginal children are welcome. They attend one or two days a week, and their families are also welcome. Visiting parents are introduced to one another, and encouraged to act as guests to whom all the children play host.As the Aboriginal children attend more often, they get to know the program routines, the songs, stories, puzzles, games and equipment better. They are the confident ones, the helpers, the messengers.
Petrol Sniffing I: What You Should Know About It
Authors: Brady M. , Morice R. , Swift H. 
Published: November 2015

Aboriginal communities all over Australia from time to time have to deal with their young people sniffing petrol. It seems to be a ‘craze’, like playing knucklebones or yo-yos. Suddenly everyone is doing it, and all the parents get worried. Then, sometimes, it suddenly stops happening – the kids get more interested in going out bush with the older people, or perhaps someone gets sick, or they might burn themselves with the petrol, and this frightens the others.When kids sniff petrol they see ‘pictures’, feel dizzy and funny in the head, a little bit drunk, and they like to have those feelings. Young people (and older people) everywhere sometimes take drugs or drink alcohol to help them feel ‘high’. They do this sometimes when they feel depressed or angry, and it seems to help those feelings. Kids use petrol because it is available everywhere and is easy to get. But there is a big problem with petrol which makes it different from other things. It has LEAD in it, to make car engines run better – and lead is very harmful to people, especially children.
Elliott Health Program
Authors: Dowd T. , Sharp G. 
Published: November 2015

Elliott is a small township in the Northern Territory situated on the Stuart Highway 260 kilometres north of Tennant Creek and 415 kilometres south of Katherine. It is on a flat tableland in a generally arid region. The town clusters around a police station, post office and store, clinic, school, supermarket, hotel, roadhouse and three petrol stations. The local church is the Australian Inland Mission.About 50 non-Aboriginal people live in the town. Most of these are employed by government departments. While some Aboriginal families also live in Elliott, most of the Aboriginal population, which varies from 200–400 people, has settled in one of two villages to the north and south of town.One hundred children attend the local school; more than 90% of these are of Aboriginal descent. Attendance figures for 1979–1980 indicate that mean attendance rates are 83% and 85% respectively; thus attendance at Elliott Primary School is uncharacteristically high when compared with the rest of the Northern Territory (Shimpo, 1978). Two Aboriginal teaching assistants and five non-Aboriginal staff teach combined classes from pre-school to year 7.In this setting the Elliott Health Program developed out of the concerted and co-ordinated efforts of the school and local community health centre.
The Secondary Mathematics Program at St Therese’s School, Bathurst Island, N.T.
Authors: Kelly S. 
Published: November 2015

At St Therese’s Girls’ School we have initiated a transition from a post-primary program to a secondary program. Part of this change has been a re-thinking and reorganization of the mathematics program.There are 40 students in the secondary section. In the past they were taught in three different classes – Grades 8, 9 and 10. One teacher taught each class and the secondary section was organized like a primary school. Now the secondary section is organized along different lines, but it is not the purpose of this paper to explain the organization of the secondary section. The purpose of this paper is to explain the philosophy, approach, and some of the content of the secondary mathematics program.It would seem that in the past the philosophy behind most post-primary programs prompted teachers to engage their classes in one of two activities. Either the class would spend the bulk of its day engaged in some sort of manual study, or else the teacher would engage the class in studies that were aimed at catching up with the Aboriginal students’ non-Aboriginal counterparts. The philosophy behind both approaches saw the Aboriginal students as inferior.The philosophy behind both the mathematics program at St Therese’s, and the secondary program in general, is based on what I believe to be a far more truthful reality. I believe that it is not acceptable to infer that Aboriginal students are inferior and to organize their schooling around either manual studies or alternatively academic studies aimed at catching up to their European-Australian counterparts.
Aboriginal Educator – Swan Hill Technical School
Authors: Bugeja L. 
Published: November 2015

I am an Aboriginal educator based at the Swan Hill Technical School. I started work as an Aboriginal educator in the first term of school in 1982.My duties involve liaising with Aboriginal students, parents, teachers and the community. I liaise with the students to find out if they have any problems at home or school. If they have problems we discuss them and think of ways to overcome them. I like to walk into classes such as Home Economics, and Woodwork – it is easy for them to talk and I don’t interrupt them too much. I also like to speak to the students out of class, usually in my office or in the school grounds.
My New Lifestyle
Authors: Dixon P. 
Published: November 2015

It is twenty-five years since I left school. At the moment I’m doing an eighteen month training program to be an Addiction Worker. As part of the evaluation of the training program I have been asked to write down my thoughts and feelings about my training.Some people involved in the program have suggested to me that teachers might be interested in my early childhood experiences – growing up on a reserve and going to an all Aboriginal school.As I look at it now, I think that education is so important to Aboriginal people. I have one son attending primary school and one has just left high school. I hope my story will help teachers understand why it is hard sometimes for Aboriginal parents to communicate with them.I was born in Kempsey and raised on Bellbrook Reserve. I lived there with my family (eight sisters and three brothers) and most of my aunts and uncles also lived there at that time. I had a good, happy upbringing, my family were all very close. In my school days my teachers were kind but didn’t really teach me much. A lot of what I’m learning now I should have learnt then. The teachers in those days were getting paid for doing nothing. That makes me angry now – the teachers, especially on the reserve (unless the government had a policy not to teach us) didn’t think it was worth teaching Aboriginal kids.The teacher on the reserve was also the manager, and his wife the matron. They didn’t want to let us learn anything – we had to do everything for them (washing, cleaning, carting wood) but they never wanted to show us how to do things for ourselves.
Do Aboriginal Pupils have Negative Self-Concepts?
Authors: Chadbourne R. 
Published: November 2015

In this article I would like to question one of the explanations offered to help account for the relatively low academic achievement of Aboriginal pupils, namely that they are handicapped by negative self-concepts. The connection between self-concept and school success itself seems plausible enough. For instance, students with negative self-concepts may tend to adopt low occupational horizons which, in turn, can undermine one type of motivation for academic achievement. Similarly, if pupils perceive schooling as a race then lack of self-confidence could lead them to take the attitude, “Why bother, I’m not good enough to win a place to university anyway.” Moreover, as Jackson (1960) points out, classrooms are very judgmental places where the behaviour and work of children is constantly evaluated by teachers and peers. As a result in many learning situations the student “is risking error, judgment, disapproval, censure, rejection and, in extreme cases, even punishment” (Canfield and Wells, 1976:7). If insecure and defensive, pupils may find such an atmosphere very threatening and consequently be inhibited by a fear of failure. Also, it may be suggested, unless children are self-sufficient they may experience difficulty coping with cold, distant, formal teacher-pupil relationships.What is more open to dispute, however, is whether or not Aboriginal children have negative self-concepts. Fanshawe (1976) observes that there is insufficient experimental data to enable this issue to be resolved conclusively on empirical grounds. And within the literature on the education of socially disadvantaged children there are opposing views that can be related to differences in ideology.
How Effective is Tutorial Assistance for Aboriginal Students?
Authors: Rendall P. 
Published: November 2015

AbstractThis report is a limited evaluation of the Tutorial Assistance program within the Aboriginal Secondary Grants Scheme.Achievement of Aboriginal secondary students receiving tuition was analysed according to several criteria, including sex and the type of school attended. The major findings were:
Tutored Aboriginal students had significantly higher achievement than untutored students, in both English and Mathematics.Aboriginal students in boarding schools had significantly higher achievement than those in state schools, regardless of tutoring.There were no significant differences between male and female students.It could not be concluded that tutorial assistance caused the superior performance of tutored students. Student motivation was a highly possible intervening factor, and there are probably many others.In addition, various solutions to the problem of underachievement by Aboriginal students were ranked according to their effectiveness as perceived by people in the tutorial program. Three solutions were judged equally preferable and viable:
Employing more Aboriginal teachers, aides and counsellors.Providing tutorial assistance to Aboriginal students.Sensitising non-Aboriginal teachers to the problems faced by Aboriginal students.
The Irrelevance of Literacy
Authors: Fesl E. 
Published: November 2015

A research report published last year has shaken the very rationale for Aboriginal literacy programs. Eve Fesl says that for the first time, Aborigines have had the chance to say what they want, and that their views are very different from those who have sought to educate them.Copies of the report, Bala Bala: Some Literacy and Educational Perceptions of Three Aboriginal Communities are available from Australian Government Publishing Service bookshops in all States.There was incredulity in education circles late last year when Bala Bala: Some Literacy and Educational Perceptions of Three Aboriginal Communities reported that many Aborigines rejected literacy.The project, instigated by Anglo-Australians, began with the assumptions of an Anglo value system. There was an assumption that, just as literacy in English had aided, for example, the peasant classes of England in their efforts towards upward social mobility, it would also be the panacea of Aboriginal social ills. That Aborigines might not concur was never questioned.Even non-Aborigines on the steering committee, who had some inkling that literacy would not be warmly embraced by all Aborigines, were surprised at an overall rejection of English literacy per se.Yet Aborigines were not surprised, and if one cares to look closely into the past, one sees many abandoned literacy programs – testimony that Aborigines have never wanted them.
‘Action and No Action’ – Aboriginal Children’s Classification of Films in an Isolated Community
Authors: Thompson D.H. 
Published: November 2015

Films are a significant social event in many isolated Aboriginal communities. It has been argued, however, that they are a disruptive influence on the transmission of traditional culture (Shimpo, 1978) and provide inappropriate models for behaviour (Thompson, 1983).This paper examines a small group of Aboriginal children’s perception and understanding of films in an isolated, traditionally oriented Aboriginal community. It focuses on the way in which a small group of Aboriginal informants classify films and attempts to examine the basis for some of the classifications. Finally, some conclusions are drawn about the extent to which the use of particular types of film classification can give an insight into the isolated community audiences’ knowledge and understanding of the social realities in the wider world outside the isolated community.