Approaches to Understand Learning (VCE SSCE Psychology): Revision Notes

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ways of Knowing

Introduction: understanding Indigenous knowledge systems

Indigenous ways of knowing represent sophisticated learning systems developed over tens of thousands of years. These systems differ from Western educational approaches in how knowledge is acquired, shared, and understood.

Tyson Yunkaporta, an academic and researcher from the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland, highlights a common problem in discussions about Indigenous knowledge. Many conferences and presentations acknowledge that Indigenous peoples have lived sustainably for thousands of years, but they rarely explain how these knowledge systems work. The focus tends to be on what Indigenous people know rather than how they think and learn.

Overview of Indigenous community systems

What are Indigenous communities?

Indigenous refers to First Australians and First Peoples of any country. There are Indigenous communities in 90 countries around the world, each with their own systematic way of knowing and learning.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples describes the Australian Indigenous population, which includes Aboriginal peoples, Torres Strait Islander peoples, and people who have both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage.

Community means a group of people who live in the same location or who share an interest or characteristic in common, and who interact or have the potential to interact.

Ways of knowing are methods through which knowledge becomes apparent to us.

Characteristics of Indigenous knowledge systems

Indigenous worldviews are highly integrated. Each aspect of culture, history, and society connects with all other aspects. This integration contrasts with Western approaches, which tend to compartmentalise knowledge into separate disciplines.

Key differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge systems include:

• Integration vs separation: Indigenous cultures treat scientific knowledge and artistic expression as interconnected aspects of one culture. Western culture typically separates them into distinct fields.
• Daily life and learning: Indigenous cultures combine teaching about how to learn with teaching about how to live. Traditional Western schools usually separate these aspects.
• Community responsibility: Each member of an Indigenous community is responsible for both daily life activities and teaching the next generation.
• Knowledge transmission: Indigenous artwork often communicates scientific knowledge passed through generations, demonstrating the integration of different knowledge areas.

Local, national, and global scales

Indigenous knowledge systems operate at three interconnected levels:

Global communities include all Indigenous peoples - the first people of any country.

National communities include specific Indigenous groups within countries, such as the Maya people in Guatemala, Lakota people in the United States, Māori in New Zealand, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia.

Local communities exist within national groups, each with their own language, historical stories, decision-making processes, and skills. The AIATSIS Map of Indigenous Australia shows this diversity across the continent.

Historical context: barriers to knowledge sharing

Past research practices

There is potential for valuable knowledge transfer from Indigenous communities to Western communities. However, historic barriers dating back to colonisation have eroded trust between communities. This trust needs rebuilding to enable knowledge exchange.

Historically, research involving Indigenous communities has been inappropriate for several reasons:

• Researchers rarely obtained informed consent from participants
• Power differences between researchers and participants led to exploitation
• Research aims often served the purposes of colonial control rather than community benefit
• Early colonisation focused on "classifying and labelling" Indigenous peoples in attempts to manage them

The Stolen Generations

A perpetuating belief existed that Indigenous peoples embodied a "problem" to be solved and that they were "passive objects requiring assistance from external experts". Non-Indigenous leaders believed their understanding of community integration was superior. This led to the forced removal of First Nations children from their communities and placement in non-Indigenous communities, causing severe psychological harm. These children became known as the Stolen Generations.

Continuing challenges

Unfortunately, culturally insensitive research designs and methodologies have continued. These approaches fail to recognise and accommodate the systems of knowing and learning that are part of Indigenous peoples and communities. True engagement requires respectful dialogue, appropriate research ethics, and genuine partnership with Indigenous communities.

Connection to Country

Connection to Country describes how Indigenous ways of knowing are rooted in deep respect for the ecology and the importance of the connected relationship with the land.

The phrase "Indigenous ways of knowing" displays the intricate nature and diversity of Indigenous learning and teaching systems. It guides people in how to explore the abundance of knowledge in Indigenous communities. The concept reminds everyone that learning exists in human connections and relationships, but also in all objects of creation: plants, animals, land, and natural resources.

Characteristics of connection to Country

Indigenous ways of knowing are sophisticated and intricate. The practice of learning and knowing concepts for each Indigenous community is based on the specific location of the land. Alongside the importance of land are the language, protocols, and culture surrounding each way of knowing. This means concepts and constructs may look different from one First Nations community to another.

The 8 Ways framework

The 8 Ways framework provides one example of Indigenous learning approaches. This framework comes from a NSW Department of Education project.

The framework emphasises that Indigenous perspectives are found in how knowledge is transmitted, not just in Indigenous content. The eight interconnected approaches work together in the learning process.

1. Story sharing: learning through narrative

Narrative is a story which in a cultural context may be delivered in a variety of ways including performance, song and dance.

Yarn is an Indigenous system of learning that involves continually sharing stories.

This approach involves continually sharing stories (including stories told in song) and connecting through shared personal stories of the past, present, and future. Within First Nations culture and community, this is known as "yarning" and is a way to gain knowledge and learn.

Yarning allows learning to be built upon real-world experience rather than through print-based text and screens. Stories from yarning sessions should be repeatedly used, expressed, and incorporated into everyday conversation to encourage learning.

2. Learning maps: visualising and mapping processes

Learning map refers to images or visuals used to map out processes for learners.

This approach involves creating learning maps - picturing a pathway and creating a deliberate visual plan for learners to follow. Learning maps usually follow a story and involve discussion-based procedures to create the map, indicating the direction to take in that learning sequence.

Images are at the forefront of these plans and make up most of the maps. Learning maps can be created for various purposes, including curriculum plans at schools, directions to locations, plans for a family's future, or storytelling.

3. Non-verbal: see, think, act, create, move without words

Kinaesthetic means to do with body movement or sensation.

This approach uses non-verbal kinaesthetic methods. People see, think, act, mime, make, and share without words. Instead, they use dance, facial expressions, gestures, and kinaesthetic skills to help them think and learn.

4. Symbols and images: understanding concepts through art and metaphor

This approach involves keeping and sharing knowledge through symbols and images in the form of art and drawings. The images and drawings are central to the learning and can be a way of communicating without drawing too.

Drawings can vary greatly:

• Some take moments to create, others take days
• Some are simple, others are complex
• Some exist only briefly before being rubbed out and never drawn again - these drawings are only for those people at that time to understand and know

5. Land links: place-based learning

Place-based learning means learning drawn from the landscape with profound connections to ancestral and personal relationships with place.

This approach involves making connections with nature. Ecological and place-based learning is drawn from the living landscape within a framework of profound ancestral and personal relationships with place. The land itself becomes the teacher, with lessons embedded in the environment.

6. Non-linear: indirect, innovative and interdisciplinary approaches

In non-linear learning, there are different phases of learning that can be learned in the order that best suits that moment. The learner puts different ideas together and creates new knowledge, producing original thoughts and understanding through lateral cognitive processing.

7. Deconstruct/reconstruct: modelling and scaffolding

This approach involves looking at a whole process or concept before examining parts in detail. Learners may watch a complete process to understand its purpose and what it produces, and only then learn individual steps or skills that make it up.

8. Community links: connecting learning to local values and needs

This approach involves bringing new knowledge to help the community (or "mob"). The knowledge being learned is based on local viewpoints and will benefit the community. This connection to community benefits both the community and the learner because the learning experience has real-life purpose.

Growing the community helps to build teams to continue learning from in the future.