'It's much more than getting ready to go to school': Thinking about young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children learning literacy

Increased access and participation to quality early childhood education has been endorsed by successive Australian governments as a key strategy for closing the highly politicised and widely documented ‘gap’ that exists across a range of life outcomes concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) and non-Indigenous Australians. Accessing quality early childhood education for those experiencing marginalisation and disadvantage is a matter of educational equity and reform. The Australian government has focused on an equity policy that promotes improved educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, which it has sought to achieve largely through increased distribution of economic and other resources. While economic redistribution is an important component of any effective strategy, this alone will never be adequate to address ongoing issues of inequity. Nancy Fraser’s framework of social justice is applicable to education reform by addressing the equitable redistribution of resources (redistributive justice); the recognition of different cultural, social, and language backgrounds as well as different experiences, values, and perspectives (recognitive justice); and the necessity of shared decision making in spaces where a diverse range of perspectives count (representative justice). We apply these understandings of social justice to a Case Study of a playgroup for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in remote Australian community to highlight an Indigenous-led model of early childhood education that is offering equitable access to quality early literacy education