Exploring possibilities through critical face theory: exemplary pedagogical practices for Indigenous students

This paper draws from a research project designed to investigate exemplary pedagogical practices for Indigenous students in a secondary school in northern Australia. In the paper, I examine the contribution that critical race theory (Ladson-Billings, 1998, 1999, 2000) can make to understandings of the experiences of Indigenous students in Australian schools, which continue to be a site of both struggle and possibility for Indigenous people. Recent government reports (Department of Education Science and Training, 2002 Yunupingu, 1995) have concluded that there have been considerable improvements in the educational status of Indigenous Australians since the introduction of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy (Department of Employment Education and Training, 1989). However, inequities remain. These inequities are clearly evident in the area of secondary education where, for example, in 2001 the national retention rates to Year 12 for Indigenous students who were in Year 10 in 1999 was 43.6% compared to 76.2% for non-Indigenous students (Department of Education Science and Training, 2002). This failure of Australian schools to provide Indigenous students with outcomes at the same levels as their non-indigenous counterparts provides a ongoing challenge to the legitimacy of Australian educational systems and their assumptions and an ongoing challenge to educational researchers committed to social justice