DESIGNING ASSESSMENT IN

INDIGENOUS EDUCATIONALISON QUIN

LEARNING DESIGNER - QUT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

I acknowledge the Kulin nation who are the custodians of this land. I pay respect to elders past, present and future and extend my respect to other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people present.

YARRA RIVER – ALWAYS FLOWS

• We will use an Indigenous perspective to open up spaces to think about teaching and assessment.

• We will travel a river today.

• The main river is the foundational Indigenous philosophy of connectedness.

• We will explore creeks that flow into this river:

• People• Place• Indigenous education

• We will look at a unit of work and design assessment for it.

CONNECTEDNESS• Draw something in front of you that represents you.

• Find something in common with every person at your table eg

• same age• support same sport team• same number of children• love cooking Thai food

• Draw a line from your symbol to the other person’s symbol.

• Do this for every person at your table.

• Move around if you need to.

EXPLORING CONNECTEDNESS

•Drawing something to represent you

• What did this do for you?

• There is a rich Indigenous tradition of abstract, conceptual, metaphorical visual representation.

• How much drawing happens in the classroom? What types of drawing? Under what circumstances?

•Finding things in common

• What does having that thing in common do for you?

• How much real connection do we generate in classrooms, between students, students and the content, the school and community?

•Webs of connectedness

• What does it feel like to be part of a complex, connected web?

•Moving around

• What does movement facilitate and enable?

CONNECTEDNESS

place• http://www.abc.net.au/indigenous/map/

• Connection to place is a mindset, a way of being in relation with the world

people• Kinship (incorporates people, place and things)

• Traditional owners

• History has caused complications in connection relationships

INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

Students – who you teach• Teaching all students, not just Indigenous students

Content – what you teach• Careful melding of teaching about and teaching through

Indigenous perspectives

Teaching – how you teach• Inclusive pedagogies

• Eight ways of Aboriginal Learning (Yunkaporta)• Holistic Planning and Teaching Framework (Uncle Ernie Grant)

EIGHT WAYS

http://8ways.wikispaces.com/

HOLISTIC FRAMEWORKLand Language Culture Time Place Relation

-ships

Pre-Contact

Contact

Post-contact

Contemp-orary

UNIT OF WORKAnalysis of unit of work for ways CONNECTEDNESS can be enhanced

Possible improvements:

• Localise• Make connections with local community, find out appropriate local stories

and places• Co-development of unit with community is ideal

• Share stories • Students give their understandings and connections, teachers and

community members as well

• Use local learning metaphor• Derived from land feature eg river, mountain, animal• Even better if this is connected to local knowledge story and Indigenous

perspective that unit is built around

UNIT OF WORK

Improvements

• Incorporate non-verbal and ‘non-conventional’ expressions of knowledge

• art, image, symbolism, dance, acting, yarning, ceremony, action, behaviour

ASSESSMENTThings to think about

• what?• task• knowledge/skills/capabilities/understandings• criteria

• how?• incorporate connectedness• assess connectedness itself

• who?• decides• assesses

• whose?• knowledge• education paradigm

ASSESSMENT• Task

• What is most appropriate?• What captures connectedness, Indigenous perspectives, local

learning and curriculum content?• Artwork, enactment, action, behaviour, story telling, creation

• Connectedness

• Group-based task• How facilitate? Collaboration. Jigsaw. CoP. • What kind of ‘mark’ or ‘grade’ for group vs individual? What

evidence for it?• Who comprises the ‘group’? – students, community members,

family…

ASSESSMENT• Marking instrument

• co-development to ensure Indigenous knowledge and perspectives, as well as curriculum requirements, met

• What do different levels of knowledge/capability look like?• Are there differentiations of levels of knowledge/capability, or

more carefully calibrated levels of access, ownership and implementation?

• Are there limitations such as women’s/men’s/clan knowledge? How build this in?

• Who teaches and who assesses?

• Who has training and authority?• Who gets paid? • Who has subject matter expertise?

THANK YOU

Alison Quin

alison.quin@qut.edu.au

https://au.linkedin.com/in/alisonquin

Thank you for your time and attention.