Racing the gap: a critical analysis of Australian Indigenous education policy discourse and its political effects

© 2015 Dr. Sophie Elizabeth RudolphIndigenous educational disadvantage emerged as a policy problem in Australia in the late 1960s, however, policy thus far has been largely unsuccessful in shifting the educational inequality experienced by Indigenous students (Gray and Beresford 2008). This study examined the relationship between Indigenous educational inequality and the way it is conceptualised as a policy problem, known most recently as a ‘gap’. The notion of gap arises through a national, bipartisan policy called Closing the Gap in Indigenous Disadvantage, which contains three education targets. This study asks: how, why and with what effects has the notion of ‘gap’ become the dominant way of describing and addressing Indigenous educational inequalities? Critical educational research has identified the negative effects associated with understanding the pattern of poor Indigenous educational outcomes as simply one of deficiencies. It argues that gap discourse positions Indigenous students as the ‘problem’ and supports subtle forms of assimilation. This study contributes to these critical insights through investigating the historical echoes of this discursive construction of disadvantage. This involves the investigation of the ‘accumulated existence of discourses’ (Foucault 1967/1998, 289), identifying the conditions of existence and limits of particular ‘truths’ that have led to a concept becoming ‘self-evident’ in the present, in this case ‘the gap’ as disadvantage. To do this educational debates in two historical periods – the late 1930s and late 1960s – are examined. These eras are marked by Indigenous activist events that drew attention to the injustices being experienced by Indigenous people and called into question the governance of the First Peoples by the Australian State. These periods offer insight into how power and authority are structured and negotiated and thus give opportunities to reflect on these issues in relationship with the present. While Indigenous educational disadvantage is understood to be a persistent problem, this study has found that the deficit construction of Indigenous students is also persistent, having strong historical echoes. The reason for Indigenous deficiency has been rearticulated through time: in the 1930s it was explained by ideas of racial disability, in the 1960s it was understood as cultural deprivation and in the present it is explained by historical discrimination. The normative binary framework used to identify deficiency against non-Indigenous success, however, remains in place. Another important factor in the conceptualisation of Indigenous students as deficient, overlooked in the current critical scholarship, is the concomitant idea of potential which reinforces the idea of assimilation. The persistent rearticulation of race logics in diagnosing policy solutions to Indigenous disadvantage is argued to occur through three main mechanisms: 1) change, which accounts for the iterative process of repetition; 2) co-option, which entails the application of liberal terms that suppress constraining properties and, 3) distraction, which involves emphasizing the past as racist and subsequently operates to distract from enactment of racism in the present. This study makes the following contributions to education scholarship and policy debates about Indigenous disadvantage and equity: it urges a rethinking of the political relationship between the past and present that takes into consideration the ongoing work of colonial legacies that contribute to present day educational inequalities and power relationships. It illuminates the ways in which race logics are socially produced, replicated, used and contested across time and space and advocates a greater understanding of the structuring techniques of race. Finally, drawing on the analysis presented, it offers some possibilities for thinking otherwise that may assist in shifting structural injustice and work towards decolonising educational policy and school spaces