The majority of academic literature on the topic of Aboriginal ways of knowing, teaching and learning is concerned with an improvement of the educational situation for Aboriginal students. The only two such resources included in my analysis, however, are by Michael Donovan. His 2007 article “Do Aboriginal Knowledge and Western Education Mix?: to Get Aboriginal Cultural Knowledge in Schools to Make all the Kids Smile” provides a guideline for non-Indigenous teachers on how to successfully connect with and integrate Aboriginal children into their lessons. In his 2009 research “Quality Teaching and Aboriginal students, a NSW model”, on the other hand, he examines how the “recognised elements of good teaching practice” (1) of the so-called Quality Teaching framework influences Aboriginal students’ learning. Both texts provide a valuable overview over culturally appropriate methods of teaching from which “all students will benefit” (Donovan 2007: Abstract).

Like Donovan’s 2007 article, Rhonda Craven’s Teaching Aboriginal Studies: A practical resource for primary and secondary teaching is as well a guidebook for non-Indigenous teachers. In contrast to Donovan, however, she is concerned with teaching mixed classes of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children about Indigenous culture, the colonial past and reconciliation. Although this resource as well as the two texts by Donovan is directed towards primary and secondary education, it is still relevant for my research because L3 admits that he does “the exact same thing with adults” as he does with “early childhood students” (Interview with L3).

A researcher who seems to be very active in the field of Aboriginal methods of knowledge transmission is Tyson Yunkaporta. In his papers “Our Ways of Learning in Aboriginal Languages” and “An overview of Aboriginal Pedagogy Models and a Proposal for a Workable Common-ground Framework”, published in 2009 and 2010 respectively, he describes Aboriginal ways of learning, teaching and knowing in great detail and sets up a model of teaching practices which can be used in schools. In addition, his research “Reclaiming Aboriginal Knowledge at the Cultural Interface” from 2009 in cooperation with Sue McGinty provides insights into pedagogical methods derived from Indigenous knowledge which were used in a project in rural NSW.

In “Conceptualising a pedagogical cultural identity through the narrative construction of early career Aboriginal teachers’ professional identities” (2016) Cathie Burgess discusses the impact which a person’s cultural background can have on their teaching practice and how to use this cultural capital most effectively. Unlike my research, her article is very teacher-centred and gives only little information on the outcome for students.

The two resources which relate the closest to the field and focus of my research are Kathleen Julie Butler’s Teaching an Indigenous Sociology: A Response to Current Debate within Australian Sociology (2009) and Shirley Morgan and Barry Golding’s “Crossing Over: Collaborative and Cross-Cultural Teaching of Indigenous Education in a Higher Education Context” (2010). Being an Aboriginal lecturer teaching Indigenous issues to a mainly non-Indigenous audience of tertiary students, Butler describes her teaching practice from a sociological perspective. Morgan and Golding examine an Aboriginal Class at another Australian university which in its structure and content seems to be comparable to Class 1. Both resources offer valuable points of reference for many features which I observed in my two classes.

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