The Cherbourg Aboriginal community experience and requirements of tertiary education students

Engagement of tertiary institutions with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities can take a range of forms and from a tertiary institution perspective be variously oriented to teaching and learning, research, community service or a mixture of these. The tension between the tertiary institution and its staff and students realising outcomes versus the potential for the community obtaining benefit has received little academic interest. Whilst the growth in decolonising methodologies in research with Indigenous communities has given credence to the importance of community benefit in research, there has been much less attention to the ways in which Indigenous communities become partners in teaching and learning experiences for students and the extent to which this is founded on an appreciation of community benefit. We take up the challenge here of decolonising approaches to work integrated learning involving students undertaking such learning in an Indigenous community context. This report describes the Cherbourg community and agency experience of University and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) students who undertook part of their learning in Cherbourg. This could, for example, include a social work student completing a placement with a youth organisation or an education student placed with the local primary school. It could also include student group visits to agencies in Cherbourg or students undertaking a community project as part of their coursework. Whilst there are good reasons for students to undertake learning within an Indigenous community context, current research in this area is dominated by a teaching and learning perspective which focuses almost entirely on the benefits to the student and or the educational institution stemming from this engagement. This leaves the community experience invisible and continues to produce a neo-colonial relationship between tertiary education providers and the community. In contrast, this research project has investigated the Cherbourg experience of students engaging within their community in order to develop a more balanced model for positive WIL community engagement. This project was built on established connections between QUT and Cherbourg involving WIL, but was extended to a research project with the aim of mapping the extent and diversity of student engagement with Cherbourg as well as determine what factors contribute to positive outcomes from the community perspective. This research has been funded by a research innovation grant from the School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology. The research has been developed in partnership with the Cherbourg community via the Cherbourg