‘No Shame at AIME’: Listening to Aboriginal Philosophy and Methodologies to Theorise Shame in Educational Contexts

Abstract

<jats:p>Shame is a ‘slippery’ concept in educational contexts but by listening to Aboriginal philosophy and Country, we can rethink its slipperiness. This article contemplates how multiple understandings of shame are derived from and coexist within colonised educational contexts. We focus on one positive example of Indigenous education to consider how these understandings can be challenged and transformed for the benefit of Indigenous learners. We discuss a mentoring program run by and for Indigenous young people that is successfully impacting school retention and completion rates: The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME). AIME has a rule, ‘No Shame at AIME’, with the view to minimising shame as a barrier to engaging with Western education. But is this as beneficial as might first appear? Might this erode important cultural understandings of shame necessary in Indigenous education? Instead, could shame be repositioned to better align with original cultural meanings and purposes? We philosophise about the AIME rule with Yuin Country and stories from Country along with our observational and interview data. We argue AIME does not so much ‘remove’ shame as reposition it to better align with Aboriginal cultural educational practice, which positively impacts mentees.</jats:p>

Aboriginal cultural educators teaching the teachers: mobilisng a collaborative cultural mentoring program to affect change

“…(Kate, Teacher Mentee) Aboriginal student use of this term was challenged by Mia (mentor), so that students could consider deeper understandings of the impact of coloniality on their thinking and so move on to developing the necessary public speaking skills. This can be a common pattern in Aboriginal student thinking, an observation noted in the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (McKnight et al, 2018), which devised similar strategies to address this issue. For Kate, it also meant that she could continue this dialogue with students after the mentoring program, thus encouraging her and the students to embrace difficult, but critical conversations.…”

Counting on Indigenous accountants: Collaborative curriculum development for an Indigenous pre-accounting enabling program

“…The general barriers are considered first. Culturally, doubts and shame prevent Indigenous students from applying to a higher education degree (Louth, 2017;McKnight et al, 2020). These sentiments arise from a lack of confidence in one's intellectual capacity and ability to complete tertiary study, and difficulty in conciliating the different demands of two world views-Indigenous and non-Indigenous.…”

Community-Led Research: Walking Pathways Together

“…This chapter reflects on our lived experiences of data analysis and writing processes for producing one particular journal article titled 'No shame at AIME' (McKnight et al, 2019). AIME is the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience; it is a not-for-profit, educational mentoring program that 'builds mentoring bridges between universities and schools ' (aimementoring.com, 2019) for educationally disadvantaged young people.…”

“…In addition to all the people who were involved in writing the 'No shame at AIME' paper (McKnight et al, 2019), we would also like to thank Dr Christine Grice and Ann Leaf for pointing us in the direction of some very helpful reading regarding distributed and shared leadership in educational contexts.…”

“…With permission from Uncle Max, the first word for shame in lore is baambi (strength in holding lore), while the second word (everyday use) is baambi-mumm (scared, frightened). A fuller explanation is withinMcKnight et al (2019).Community-Led Research…”