Policy Dynamism: The Case of Aboriginal Australian Education

Abstract

With reference to an ethnographic study of Aboriginal Australians in formal schooling, this paper focuses on the dynamism of the policy process. It argues that social policy is different in its performance from its formal articulation. It proposes that other discourses complicate policy discourse in its implementation, and that the Aboriginal objects of policy respond creatively to their representation in policy in ways that contribute to that complication. Aboriginal political leaders adopt the subject imagined in policy, elaborate its normativity and pressure their constituency to perform it. The routine performance of this subject works to compromise individuals’ capabilities to negotiate their lived interculturality and multiplicity, and confirms Aborigines in their marginalisation. Thus, policy becomes a central, authoritative catalyst in the real-world constitution of the subject initially imagined. The paper proposes that if social policy engages with this complexity, it can be effective in its aims of contributing to Aboriginal education and development, and management of the emerging condition of diversity. In both cases, it must account for the discursive and performative agency of the objects of policy, making it necessarily context-specific and revisable.

School leadership and Aboriginal student outcomes: systematic review

“…The dominant discourse and power dichotomy impact representation and development of policy based in difference that is counter-productive for Aboriginal students. Guenther, et al (2014) indicate that the "discourse of disadvantage leads to a deficit approach to the development of policy where Aboriginal children are considered as a special interest group and can become "objects of policy" (Moore, 2012). Moore points to a need for dynamism in the policy process that includes an intercultural approach to recognise and engage in complexity and context (ibid).…”

Is Indigeneity hidden in the shadow of Australian national school reforms?

“…In 2012, Terry Moore suggested that Indigenous education policies navigate a path between recognising and valuing Aboriginality and inclusion in the mainstream (Moore, 2012). Since then, the pressure to conform with the mainstream has increased.…”

“…As Moore (2012) identified, policy discourse is influential in how policy is performed and experienced by policy targets. Education policy statements can therefore be read not only as blueprints for policy implementation but also as having the capacity to influence beyond the focus of the policy itself.…”