Background: Cultural Competency in Higher Education

University graduates with a better understanding and greater appreciation of the challenges facing Indigenous Australians are better able to contribute to addressing and overcoming racism, thus having the power to change the nature of Australian society and the quality of service provision to Indigenous Australians and the broader society (Universities Australia, 2011). It is for this reason that Universities Australia (2011) exhorts universities to take on the responsibility of ensuring that continuing generations of professionals have knowledge and understanding of Indigenous people's cultures and histories. These knowledges and understandings will prepare students with skills and strategies and the ability to critically analyse their specific profession's history and assumptions, and the socio-political contexts of the roles of their profession in shaping Indigenous peoples’ lives. The objective is to prepare these new professionals to become agents of change and work more effectively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients, agencies and communities. To ensure this occurs, systemic cultural competence training of university staff aligned with the inclusion of Indigenous content into all university programs is essential not only for these future professionals, but also for the university sector to define itself as a global leader and agent of social change in contemporary Australia (Universities Australia, 2011).

In recognition of the significance of cultural competence skills, many Australian universities are endeavouring to improve the way in which Indigenous people are viewed, whether it is through improved visibility, participation and awareness of Indigenous people, or through the curriculum in Indigenous education or studies (University of Sydney, 2012, p. 2). The focus for Australian university initiatives has been on heightening cultural competence through governance, community and stakeholder engagement, and research. The aim is to create improved standards, particularly in teaching and learning, to recognise and encourage connections with cultural, historical and symbolic representations, to challenge assumed realities; and to provide an opportunity for Indigenous people to share, think, learn and contribute within the university.

While the construction of cultural competence in this way is not without its problems, the development of cultural competence in university students can provide an opportunity for many non-Indigenous people who are unaware of Indigenous narratives and cultural ways of being to learn directly from Indigenous people themselves (Behrendt, Larkin, Griew, & Kelly, Reference Behrendt, Larkin, Griew and Kelly2012; Rose, Reference Rose and Price2012; Universities Australia, 2011). Acquiring such awareness will provide real learning, knowledge and skills that will inform action in many fields of endeavour and disciplines across academic arenas, and for engagement in public service. It also assists in breaking down many stereotypes and generates greater understandings for improved engagement and communications with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their communities.

While spaces for the teaching of Indigenous studies, including Indigenous knowledge systems and culture, have existed for some time within higher education institutions in Australia, the broader promotion of mainstream learning of Indigenous culture and knowledge from an Indigenous standpoint in Australian higher education is a more recent phenomenon (Universities Australia, 2011). In the Australian context of Indigenous education, the higher education landscape is predominately focused toward improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander accessibility to tertiary education. Teaching Indigenous studies to enhance the prominence of Indigenous culture and knowledge has been secondary on campuses across Australia. The reason it has been secondary is due to inherent difficulties faced by non-Indigenous staff to effect this change, although this focus has been strengthened at the federal level in recent years (Universities Australia, 2011). This is in part attributed to the work of the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council, which recommended that institutions should enhance the prominence and status of Indigenous culture, knowledge and studies on their campuses (Universities Australia, 2011). It is generally believed that by enhancing the prominence and status of Indigenous culture, knowledge and studies on campuses around Australia, this would provide non-Indigenous students with an understanding of and respect for Indigenous knowledge and worldviews, to prepare them to live harmoniously in a land shared with Indigenous peoples (Phillips & Lambert, Reference Phillips and Lambert2005; see also Craven et al., Reference Craven, Halse, Marsh, Mooney and Wilson-Miller2005a, Reference Craven, Halse, Marsh, Mooney and Wilson-Miller2005b, Reference Craven, Halse, Marsh, Mooney and Wilson-Miller2005c). Hence, one of the key project objectives was to develop a pedagogical framework that takes into account Indigenous epistemology both in methods and content.

We did this so that the learning process builds on Indigenous cultures and identity, as was an original intention of the NAEC (1985) in the Australian educational landscape; further, the Australian Higher Education Support Act 2003 (AHESA; Australian Government, 2012) decreed that universities are expected to reflect the whole community and not simply one social or cultural sector. In Indigenous education this provides relevancy, rather than simply trying to fit Indigenous culture into Western ways of teaching. Price (Reference Price and Price2012) comments on this as a ‘window’ into Indigenous lives, while providing a ‘mirror’ for Indigenous students to see themselves reflected in the educational landscape. Currently and most often, teaching Indigenous Studies takes a very defensive stance informed by and based around colonisation, cultural loss and maintenance (Nakata, Reference Nakata2006). The Kinship Module is a cultural education teaching tool providing a more positive position in challenging stereotypes and perceived understandings of Indigenous culture, and moves the learner from an awareness of issues to assessing how they can use the knowledge gained to become more competent in working with people from different cultural backgrounds (Sefa Dei, Reference Sefa Dei2008).

The project as outlined in this article was developed in line with the government objectives of the promotion of excellence in learning and teaching in higher education programs, whereby the Office for Learning and Teaching aims to promote and support enhancement of learning and teaching in higher education institutions. In this project, we have aimed to promote excellence by developing a framework for augmenting cultural competence with high Aboriginal community involvement in the provision of an e-learning teaching tool. For example, Aboriginal people's stories are linked to the face-to-face presentation, which has been modified for an online environment. Hence, the e-learning tool provides an opportunity for teachers and lecturers to embed Aboriginal cultural learning in mainstream courses of study and provide an opportunity to listen to Aboriginal voices.

This focus in higher education also needs to be viewed in conjunction with the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy (Australian Government, 2010), which has four major goals with 21 aims. Hence, it is imperative that knowledge of Indigenous communities and their cultures are embedded in university teachings. This project is reflected under Major Goal 4 — ‘Equitable and Appropriate Educational Outcomes’ — within Aim 8: ‘To enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students at all levels of education to have an appreciation of their history, cultures and identity’ and Aim 9: ‘To provide all Australian students with an understanding of and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional and contemporary cultures’. We are therefore meeting the government's aims through the provision of a positive cultural e-learning teaching tool that provides an understanding of Aboriginal kinship but also highlights the importance of kinship systems in contemporary society.

Additionally, a key process in gaining cultural competence is one of challenging colonising assumptions concerning Indigenous cultures (Nakata, Reference Nakata2011; Moreton-Robinson, Reference Moreton-Robinson2004), which involves creating decolonising opportunities in an Australian educational context: hearing, recognising, and accepting the experience of Indigenous people (Green, Baldry, & Sherwood, Reference Green, Baldry and Sherwood2008). This project also addresses the concerns raised by Craven et al. (Reference Craven, Halse, Marsh, Mooney and Wilson-Miller2005a), who in their study of Primary Teacher Education Courses noted:

The project is therefore committed to conveying Aboriginal cultural knowledge not only to pre-service teachers but to the broader student body, many of whom will graduate and work with Aboriginal employees or clients during their professional life. In the process of gaining this knowledge, participants gain an opportunity to question their knowledge of Aboriginal people and the role of the colonising processes in disenfranchising Indigenous peoples in Australia. It provides a small window to allow participants to question their knowledge base and start them on the path towards improving their cultural competency in understanding and working with Indigenous Australians in the future.

The project was a vehicle to ensure engagement between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators and researchers, with Aboriginal people setting the parameters of what was required to be taught and researched and how this would occur, taking into consideration Aboriginal protocols of knowledge transference and participation timeframes. In addition, Aboriginal communities around Dubbo were invited to be involved in the development of the teaching tools by providing their stories; that is, ‘Community narratives’. These stories were incorporated into the website, and give teachers and students a better understanding of historical and cultural issues. It is also hoped that this resource will provide non-Indigenous students an opportunity in their course of study to hear Aboriginal voices and perspectives that they may never have had the opportunity to hear if not for the creation of this website.

We suggest that the validity of this project would be in question without the contributions of Aboriginal people of their ‘translation’ of their experiences into the new context (Ramsey & Walker, Reference Ramsay and Walker2010). In undertaking this project, we set out to reverse the previous, as Yunkaporta, (Reference Yunkaporta2009, p. 105) so aptly states, ‘systemic undervaluing of local knowledge and Aboriginal culture, a deeply ingrained unwillingness to “see” more sophisticated Aboriginal knowledge and processes’. Yunkaporta (Reference Yunkaporta2009) argues for the need to ensure that Aboriginal participants’ voices are heard, while Battiste (Reference Battiste2002) argues that integrating the voices and experiences of Aboriginal people into mainstream education creates a balanced centre from which to analyse European culture and learning. Due to the teachings in the Kinship Module, this project has proven to be effective, as teachers and students using the site have contacted the project leaders to say just how much they have ‘learned’ and how much it had improved their understanding of Aboriginal cultural knowledge.

The Kinship Module is a modified version of the face-to-face presentation, which uses digital technology to introduce new material alongside a recording of the face-to-face Kinship presentation. The website repository contains the Kinship workshop, so that the participants can view sector themes when they reach various points in the Kinship presentation video. This also allows the project team to continually update resources into the future. The final collection of the website repository is the Kinship presentation: ‘vox pops’ by participants from the face-to-face presentation, community stories, and additional resources that provide further material. The aim was to create an engaging online environment via the incorporation of, for example, Aboriginal narratives into the Kinship Module. The contributors have given their permission for their images and narratives to be used for teaching others, and this has the benefit of validating their expert knowledge and identity (Mooney & Craven, Reference Mooney and Craven2006; Willmot, Reference Willmot2010).

While we recognise that Aboriginal kinship systems vary throughout Australia and it is not possible in one presentation to examine the differences between them all, what this project does is give participants an introduction to Aboriginal kinship systems and the basic concepts within those systems. Hence, people who participate in the presentation gain a new and deeper understanding of how kinship systems operate. The introductory online presentation is designed to provide information for non-Indigenous students on how Aboriginal kinship systems work and how this affects reciprocal responsibilities and relationships within their cultures. Non-Indigenous participants are then presented with situations experienced by Aboriginal people after invasion, when kinship systems were ignored and their culture devalued and/or denigrated. Students are then asked to consider the various effects of European culture and introduced to ‘Pidgin English’ language on Aboriginal systems and culture.

The project enables educators to teach in a way that respects and allows Aboriginal voices to be highlighted (Healy-Ingram, Reference Healy-Ingram, Doecke, McLean Davies and Mead2011, p. 70). Pedagogically it involves the inclusion of Aboriginal people's first-hand accounts of their knowledges, issues, concerns and experiences into curricula via the incorporation of Aboriginal standpoint pedagogy (Nakata, Reference Nakata2007), alongside complementary Western pedagogical practices (see below). This enables the provision of a richer and deeper understanding of the issues that are presented to learners in studying Aboriginal content.

In developing the material for the creation of the website and a teaching and learning framework, advice was sought by Lynette Riley from her home community in Dubbo through direct kinship family, Elders and other significant Aboriginal people. In addition, input was sought from Aboriginal students in the Bachelor of Education (Secondary Aboriginal Studies) Block Mode program.

The Kinship Module is aimed at providing an introduction to Aboriginal kinship, roles and reciprocal responsibilities. The teaching objectives are that through this presentation, participants will gain an insight into the complexity and sophistication of Aboriginal kinship, identify differing levels of relationship, and understand how reciprocal bonds of relationship work. Through this module participants will gain:

1. 1. greater understanding and experience of Aboriginal kinship systems;

2. 2. insight into Aboriginal social structures and how these differ from Western societies;

3. 3. knowledge of how cultural assessment assists in understanding these impacts;

4. 4. greater awareness of potential conflict in working with people from differing cultural backgrounds; and

5. 5. how this difference impacts upon Aboriginal people in the social systems that operate in Australia, such as through education, criminal justice systems and the legal system more broadly.

The Kinship Module is broken into eight themes and each has an aim and series of learning outcomes that build incrementally from Sector Theme 1 through to Sector Theme 8. This means participants need to be engaged from the start of the module to have greater understanding of the final learning outcomes. The themes are:

Sector Theme 1: Welcome and Acknowledgments

This sector provides an awareness of the significance and difference between a ‘Welcome to Country’ and an ‘Acknowledgment of Country’.

Sector Theme 2: Nations, Clans and Family Groups

This sector provides an overview of the range and diversity of the Aboriginal nations and clans that exist in Australia, and provides an introduction to Aboriginal protocols.

Sector Theme 3: First Level of Kinship — Moiety

The Moiety sector introduces the first level of Aboriginal kinship and the impact this has on a person's identity and relationships through reciprocal responsibilities.

Sector Theme 4: Second Level of Kinship — Totems

The Totem sector is an introduction to the second layer of kinship learning and obligations through links to the environment.

Sector Theme 5: Third Level of Kinship — Skin Names

The Skin Names sector provides an introduction to a third layer of kinship relationships: siblings, parents, grandparents and who people can marry.

Sector Theme 6: Language and Traditional Affiliations

This sector provides an overview of language, nation and clan links and the way in which protocols assist in these affiliations.

Sector Theme 7: Lines of Communication

This sector provides an overview of the network of links between nations, clans and family groups, for conservation, survival, marriage and ceremonial obligations.

Sector Theme 8: Disconnected Lines

This sector provides a small overview of how traditional lines have been impacted by colonisation and the impact of policies that have governed Aboriginal lives since first contact.

Table 1 outlines the sector themes, learning outcomes, and impact for disciplines.

TABLE 1

Kinship Module: Sector Themes, Learning Outcomes and Impact for Disciplines

Each of the introduced themes has associated learning outcomes. It is expected that these learning outcomes will have direct impact on students who use this material, as it will provide knowledge and understanding of complex and sophisticated Aboriginal cultural roles and responsibilities as governed by their protocols and interactions through their kinship structures. In the past, the limited understanding of kinship connections has led to poor services for Aboriginal people, and cultural conflict and miscommunication between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. The learning outcomes therefore provide valuable learning for individuals in their journey towards cultural competence in gaining skills to work specifically with Aboriginal people, by raising an awareness of the skills they will require to effectively work with people from a multitude of cultural backgrounds.

The Kinship Module has been broken into sectors to illustrate the Learning Outcomes and Impact for Disciplines. Figure 1, Kinship Online Module — Sector Themes, Learning Outcomes and Impact for Disciplines, shows the links in the teaching process between the sector themes of the kinship presentation, the learning outcomes associated with each theme, and the expected impact of each sector's associated learning outcomes for professionals in their area of discipline.

FIGURE 1

Kinship Module: Diagram For Learning Outcomes

What is demonstrated in Figure 1 is the incremental building up of knowledge and learning outcomes, with suggestions of impacts of that learning for disciplines of study within each learning sector.

Pedagogy and the Kinship Online Module

The project engages both Aboriginal and Western knowledges and pedagogical approaches to create a teaching and learning resource aimed at addressing cultural competency in non-Indigenous students. That is, it takes Aboriginal cultural practice and uses the teaching of that practice within a Western teaching and learning system to improve the cultural competency of non-Indigenous people working in social systems that impact on Aboriginal people. The intention of the project therefore was to develop online teaching and learning tools to incorporate Aboriginal knowledge inclusive of Aboriginal community narratives into a module for cross-cultural competency, focusing on the different responsibilities in Aboriginal societies and the impact this has had on Aboriginal people.

While the Kinship Module can be situated within any unit of study on Indigenous Australian issues, the pilot Kinship Module has been designed for the teaching of humanities- and social science-related subjects at the University of Sydney, such as sociology, law, education and social work. Its pedagogical purpose is to provide both non-Indigenous staff and students with a knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal kinship and build their cultural competency, which includes raising their awareness of Aboriginal protocols and culture and enhancing their capacity to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in different contexts.

Nakata (Reference Nakata2007) notes that there are often innate problems when:

As such, it is critical that there be improved interface with Aboriginal cultural knowledge holders and academia on the type, style and manner of representation to be presented. Nakata (Reference Nakata2007) goes on to say that what has occurred in the academy is that through non-Indigenous discourse there has developed an approach of knowing ‘about’ Aboriginal knowledge, cultures and issues, rather than incorporation of Indigenous voices and grounding of Indigenous knowledges, cultures and issues in the disciplines. We are working towards research that has equality for Indigenous peoples, which is often a challenge to the Western classifications developed to suit Western hierarchies, linearity, abstraction and objectification of Indigenous knowledges, cultures and issues (Nakata, Reference Nakata2007, p. 9; see also Williamson & Dalal, Reference Williamson and Dalal2007).

Arguably, this can be achieved via pedagogical teaching and curriculum content that embeds cultural knowledge as provided by appropriate cultural knowledge holders; recognises and understands the complexities at the cultural interface (Nakata, Reference Nakata2007), that is, the connection and differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds and knowledge economies; prioritises Indigenous voices and epistemologies (Minniecon, Franks & Heffernan, Reference Minniecon, Franks and Heffernan2007) with recognition of the diversity of cultural knowledges; builds in Indigenous intellectual and cultural knowledge rights of the cultural knowledge holders; and increases critical reflection capabilities of academics in teaching programs.

A primary process for provision of these goals through this project is via engagement with Aboriginal educators, researchers and local communities. The embedding of Aboriginal understandings through their narratives will assist non-Aboriginal academics teaching Indigenous content as part of mainstream curriculum to incorporate both Aboriginal standpoint pedagogy (Nakata, Reference Nakata2007) and Aboriginal voices into their teaching (Phillips & Whatman, Reference Phillips and Whatman2007).

In being cognisant of such complexities at the cultural interface, the project team adopted what Blodgett et al. (Reference Blodgett, Schinke, Smith, Peltier and Pheasant2011) refer to as a ‘cultural praxis’ to design and deliver a project utilising complementary Indigenous, social constructionist and critical methodologies. They define a praxis as an approach ‘aimed at mobilising transformation through the balancing of research, theory and practice’ (Blodgett et al., p. 523). Essentially, a praxis is about the reciprocal relationships between academic and applied work enhanced ‘by a commitment toward creating positive social change’ (Blodgett et al., p. 523). The term cultural praxis is used to explain their adopted research approach, which ‘engaged Indigenous community members as the experts of their own realities and enabled them to voice personal experiences regarding community-based research and then transform those experiences into empowering applied practices at the local level’ (p. 523). For Blodgett et al., the ‘emphasis is on bringing forth the voices of Indigenous people, in an attempt to better understand their experiences and to identify a strategy for social change that are developed for and by group members’ (p. 523). The central tenet of cultural praxis is thus ‘giving voice’ through culturally sensitive practice (Blodgett et al., Reference Blodgett, Schinke, Smith, Peltier and Pheasant2011).

Blodgett et al. (Reference Blodgett, Schinke, Smith, Peltier and Pheasant2011) incorporate the cultural praxis into their research methodology and practice. We extend the cultural praxis to the pedagogical practice underpinning this project as a teaching and learning resource (Riley et al., Reference Riley, Howard-Wagner, Mooney, Kutay, Craven and Mooney2013). In the section that follows, we describe our use of the cultural praxis, which utilises five complementary pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning to inform the development of the online Kinship Module, including: a social constructivist approach, a narrative teaching style, Aboriginal standpoint pedagogy, decolonising mainstream pedagogy, and digital technologies (see Figure 2). We focus on describing how the five pedagogical approaches coalesce as a cultural praxis, making reference at times to their complementary epistemologies and practices.

FIGURE 2

Online Kinship Project: Pedagogy as a Cultural Praxis

Our aim in adopting a cultural praxis is to use Aboriginal knowledge productively to help non-Indigenous students understand traditional kinship structures and the impact of the breakdown of these structures through colonisation practices. Our overarching objective of bringing together the five complementary pedagogical approaches is not only to create an experience-rich, interactive, problem-oriented, scenario-based learning environment that privileges Aboriginal voices and embeds Aboriginal knowledge in mainstream humanities and social science units of study/subjects, but also to adopt these complementary teaching and learning approaches because they are in keeping with and allow us to respect Aboriginal standpoint pedagogy. The cultural praxis we describe here enables us to work at the cultural interface of Western and Indigenous knowledge systems.

In adopting an Aboriginal standpoint pedagogy (Yunkaporta, Reference Yunkaporta2009), this learning tool is aimed at enabling Aboriginal and non-Indigenous educators to teach in a way that respects and allows Aboriginal voices to be highlighted in lectures and tutorials (Healy-Ingram, Reference Healy-Ingram, Doecke, McLean Davies and Mead2011, p. 70). The inclusion of Aboriginal people's first-hand accounts of Aboriginal knowledges in mainstream curricula also reinforces the decentring of the non-Indigenous educator as an expert on Aboriginal identity (see below). Non-Indigenous students learn about Aboriginal people's perspectives from Aboriginal peoples, rather than non-Indigenous educators teaching their perspective on Aboriginal issues (Harrison & Greenfield, Reference Harrison and Greenfield2011). This enables non-Indigenous educators to provide non-Indigenous students with a richer and deeper understanding of the issues that are presented to them in studying Aboriginal content and to bring Aboriginal standpoints into mainstream curriculum.

In keeping with Aboriginal epistemology and standpoint theory too, our project uses an experiential format. It privileges Aboriginal voices, which are recorded and shared using digital technologies. Digital technologies and online learning scenarios allow us to not only provide an experience-rich, interactive, scenario-based learning environment, but also enable us to use an experiential format, which is an appropriate way of conveying Aboriginal knowledge systems and Aboriginal knowledge-sharing processes in an oral narrative form, bringing this into mainstream teaching. As Battiste (Reference Battiste2002) argues, integrating the voices and experiences of Aboriginal people into mainstream education creates a balanced centre from which to analyse European culture and learning. While the use of digital technologies to convey experiential accounts in Aboriginal narratives creates its own problems in terms of the ‘liveliness of Aboriginal knowledges’ (Christie, Reference Christie2005), decontextualising Aboriginal knowledges from place and space and presenting Aboriginal knowledges in a Western teaching format, it also enables the use of Aboriginal knowledges in a way that creates a positive and constructive interface between Aboriginal knowledges and Western knowledge. The critical concern here is to create an online teaching and learning resource using digital technologies in a way that is credible among Aboriginal people in that the process of collecting Aboriginal knowledges and conveying Aboriginal knowledges is respectful of these and respected by Aboriginal people (Christie, Reference Christie2005, p. 80). Aboriginal people conveying that knowledge must agree to how this knowledge will be used (e.g., in a digital format, as well as the format that this will take) and its intent, and permit the use of their knowledge in this way.

Indigenous research methodologies and protocols are thus an important aspect of the design of this project too (see Riley et al., Reference Riley, Howard-Wagner, Mooney, Kutay, Craven and Mooney2013). Aboriginal community engagement from an Aboriginal standpoint means, as Parsons (Reference Parson2008) states: ‘We are all stakeholders now’ (p. 99). Engaging Aboriginal stakeholders in the development and design of this project was a lengthy ethical process in keeping with Aboriginal protocols, which involved building research relationships and formalising the involvement of the community in the research to ensure that Aboriginal people involved in the research felt not only valued and in control of their engagement within the research, but agreed to the use of their stories in this way, the intent of their use, and permitted us to convey their stories using digital technologies for the purpose of decolonising mainstream curriculum and bringing about social change (see Riley et al., Reference Riley, Howard-Wagner, Mooney, Kutay, Craven and Mooney2013).

In this case, the project had the dual purpose of using the narratives collected from Aboriginal people to embed in the Kinship Module, yielding mutual benefit to both decolonising mainstream curriculum and being a site of empowerment in which Aboriginal people ‘are able to voice their thoughts and experiences in meaningful ways and participate in the process of knowledge production so that social transformations may be achieved’ (Blodgett et al., Reference Blodgett, Schinke, Smith, Peltier and Pheasant2011, p. 523). The embedding of Aboriginal understandings through their narratives will assist non-Indigenous academics teaching Aboriginal content as part of mainstream curriculum to incorporate both Aboriginal standpoint pedagogy (Nakata, Reference Nakata2007) and Aboriginal voices into their teaching (Phillips & Whatman, Reference Phillips and Whatman2007).

Social constructivism complements Aboriginal standpoint pedagogy in its approach to knowledge acquisition and its view on the role of social and cultural understandings of the world to knowledge acquisition. For example, social constructivism challenges traditional approaches to knowledge acquisition in learning, advocating an approach that enables students to learn through active formation of their own knowledge. That is, the emphasis is on ‘the active role played by the learner as he or she acquires new concepts and procedures’ (Lester, Stone, & Stelling, Reference Lester, Stone and Stelling1999, p. 2). More important is its premise that knowledge is socially constructed. While acknowledging its socially constructed nature in the context of social constructionism, for example, our approach treats culture as a social fact and everyday social phenomenon, identifying the importance of cultural competency among non-Indigenous students. For us, then, social constructivism in theory and practice acknowledges the significance of social and cultural contexts to the student's learning — that is, how our own social and cultural understandings of the world influence the way that we engage in and understand our world, and by exposing non-Indigenous students to Aboriginal worldviews we can change their understandings of the world, exposing their ways of doing business as the social and cultural practices of Whiteness. In others words, we acknowledge that knowledge can be socially manipulated to bring about social and cultural change and is a principle resource for mediating social and cultural change through social and cultural resources (Bitzer, Reference Bitzer2001, p. 99). For example, this cultural resource will allow students to hear Aboriginal voices and challenge ‘old’ understandings gained from cultural bias, cultural miscommunication and cultural misunderstandings. Accordingly, by designing an innovative cultural teaching resource that privileges Indigenous knowledge systems, culture and voices, we expose non-Indigenous staff and students to different worldviews.

Our use of a social constructivist approach thus serves the complementary purpose of decolonising mainstream pedagogy in a way that creates a deeper learning environment for both teachers as practitioners and their students as learners. For example, having completed the Kinship workshop, the student will have gained an appreciation and understanding of how Aboriginal authority structures and processes differ to those of Western authority and are structured by complex kinship and community protocols. This is achieved by adopting strategies that promote student-centred learning and encourage students to engage in reflective learning practices by fostering active learning and using digital technologies.

In decolonising mainstream pedagogy, for example, our intent is to implement a more inclusive way of engaging Aboriginal people in the research and development of the online Kinship presentation as a teaching resource. This was, for example, achieved via the design of the questions that would be used by interviewees to collect community narratives about experiences in relation to policy, and social service delivery in relation to say, the education system, legal system and other social service areas. This has been achieved by allocating stories to three aspects of kinship: to talk about their own kinship relationships; the effect of colonisation after invasion and in a particular cultural conflict; and the ongoing effect on people living under various professional services, such as the legal system or the education system.

Understanding relationships is the first priority in teaching kinship, and narrative pedagogy is the process used by Aboriginal teachers within the context of sharing Aboriginal knowledge. Within higher education more generally, narrative teaching styles have emerged from questioning, for example, whether conventional pedagogies prepare students for real life situations. In this context, narrative pedagogy is a phenomenological pedagogy that focuses on the lived experience. Narrative pedagogy in the higher education context emerges from listening to shared stories and the sharing of knowledge and lived experiences (Diekelmann & Diekelmann, Reference Diekelmann and Diekelman2009, p. xii). As Diekelmann and Diekelmann (Reference Diekelmann and Diekelman2009) note, a narrative pedagogy allows ‘. . . for a richer array of listening (interpreting) than that allowed by the usual application and presentation of disciplinary epistemologies’ (p. xv). The focus of narrative teaching style is on relationships and interaction.

In principle, a narrative teaching style is complementary to Aboriginal storytelling, that is, it is a teaching medium conducive to Aboriginal storytelling. Also, the use of narrative content forms has proven to be an effective way to teach non-Indigenous students (Egan, Reference Egan1998; Blakesley, Reference Blakesley2010; Andrews, Hull, & De Meester, Reference Andrews, Hull and De Meester2010) and to respect traditional Aboriginal storytelling methods (Bradley, Reference Bradley2010). This, too, provides the opportunity to use narratives from Aboriginal community members to convey a variety of perspectives on Aboriginal knowledge to non-Indigenous students.

In creating the teaching and learning framework it was clear that Indigenous narratives provided additional sources of information in line with three standpoints: