This edited volume brings together diverse perspectives on Australian literacy education for Indigenous peoples, highlighting numerous educational approaches, ideologies and aspirations. The Australian Indigenous context presents unique challenges for educators working across the continent in settings ranging from urban to remote, and with various social and language groups. Accordingly, one of the book’s main goals is to foster dialogue between researchers and practitioners working in these contexts, and who have vastly different theoretical and ideological perspectives. It offers a valuable resource for academics and teachers of Indigenous students who are interested in literacy-focused research, and complements scholarship on literacy education in comparable Indigenous settings internationally.

A collection of articles about literacy, English and Indigenous Australians, both the practical and political aspects. The titles comes from the experience of being a person literate across two cultures, with an opening article by Aboriginal author Mandawuy Yunupingu who argues that being literate in English has added to the resources he has at his disposal in negotiating with the dominant culture, presenting a strong case for the importance of English literacy with Aborigine communities.

​This book describes research undertaken by leading Australian researcher in Indigenous communities. While the chapters are Australian in their focus, the issues that are discussed are similar to those in other countries where there are indigenous people. In most cases, in Australia and internationally, Indigenous learners are not succeeding in school, thus making the transition into work and adulthood quite tenuous in terms of mainstream measures. The importance of being literate and numerate are critical in success in school and life in general, thus making this collection an important contribution to the international literature. The collection of works describes a wide range of projects where the focus has been on improving the literacy and numeracy outcomes for Indigenous students. The chapters take various approaches to improving these outcomes, and have very different foci. These foci include aspects of literacy, numeracy, curriculum leadership, ICTs, whole school planning, policy, linguistics and Indigenous perspectives. Most of the chapters report on large scale projects that have used some innovation in their focus. The book draws together these projects so that a more connected sense of the complexities and diversity of approaches can be gleaned.

This paper is a review of current policy and research in Indigenous education. Evidence from a range of disciplines such as educational and developmental psychology as well as education more broadly, have been utilised in an attempt to shed light on why Indigenous peoples' educational disadvantage persists, despite extensive government and community effort and resources. -- p. 9.

Six years since the First Edition of Literacy and Education, the ways we think about literacy have changed. The book continues to be an accessible guide to current theory on literacy with practical applications in the classroom, but has a new focus on the ecologies of literacy, and on participatory and visual ways of researching literacy.

This study by the Australian Council for Educational Research has been monitering growth in the English literacy and numeracy achievement of a group of Indigenous students through the early years of primary school prior to year 3.

This book, which is intended to inform Australia's education community about various aspects of the national literacy debate and the policy development process, reviews the literature on literacy teaching in secondary and postsecondary education and the workplace and describes the sociocultural and educational context for development of literacy policy and programs in the 1990s. Among the topics discussed in the book's six parts are the following: part 1, broad context of literacy education (the powers of literacy; literacy levels among Australians; and citizenship, social equity, and competence); part 2, necessary content of a national policy on literacy (policy context; purpose and scope; definitions; considerations in defining literacy; teaching cycles); part 3, Australia's learners (Australian English speakers, language diversity and English literacy, indigenous Australians, special needs, socioeconomic disadvantage); part 4, school literacy education (the early years, the middle years, the later years, the postschooling sector); part 5, adult literacy, numeracy, English-as-a-Second-Language) education, and lifelong learning for all; and part 6, state and territory programs in literacy (literacy teaching and learning in department of education schools in South Australia, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, New South Wales, and the Northen Territory and literacy teaching and learning and current practices in literacy education in the Catholic and independent schools sectors). (Contains 162 references) (MN)