Aboriginal Perspectives in the Curriculum: Many teachers feel they lack the necessary skills and knowledge to teach Aboriginal perspectives, even though it’s a cross-curriculum priority. Researchers have sought to identify effective strategies to assist teachers, including how to meaningfully incorporate such perspectives into classroom learning and respond to the needs of local Aboriginal communities. It is vital for promoting mutual respect and understanding between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal members of society. 

Alongside research into the skills and knowledge needed to teach Aboriginal perspectives effectively, we suggest that understanding teachers’ motivation towards working with Aboriginal perspectives is a valuable avenue to explore. Taking self-efficacy as a motivational case in point, teachers lack the confidence to teach Aboriginal perspectives. This lack of confidence has been observed to impact their students’ own motivation for learning, including their Aboriginal students’ motivation.

Culturally Nourishing Schooling

We recently conducted a study as part of the Culturally Nourishing Schooling project, investigating teachers’ motivation to teach Aboriginal perspectives, what factors can support their motivation, and the implications of this for their Aboriginal students’ motivation. 

Specifically, we looked at two aspects of teachers’ agency (adaptability and teacher-student relationships), their role in teachers’ motivation (self-efficacy and valuing) to teach Aboriginal perspectives, and the extent to which this motivation predicted Aboriginal students’ own motivation (self-efficacy and valuing) to learn. The following figure shows the process we examined.

Teachers’ Motivation—and Links to Students’ Motivation

We explored two aspects of teachers’ motivation to teach Aboriginal perspectives: self-efficacy and valuing. 

Previous scholarship has argued that when teachers feel confidence (self-efficacy) in their capacity to teach particular subject matter, they invest greater effort in working with students, persist in meeting the needs of diverse students, and are more enthusiastic and energetic. This leads to positive impacts on students’ own motivation. When teachers place value in a subject or subject matter, this is communicated directly and indirectly to students, through instructions and through encouragement and modelling. This positively impacts student motivation. 

In our study, we hypothesised that teachers’ motivation to teach Aboriginal perspectives in the curriculum would positively impact their Aboriginal students’ motivation to learn, specifically, Aboriginal students’ academic self-efficacy and valuing of learning. 

Agency Factors Underpinning Teachers’ Motivation

There are salient agency factors that can impact motivation. Identifying such factors is important because it provides some guidance as to where professional learning might be directed to better support teachers’ motivation to teach Aboriginal perspectives. 

Research identifies two key aspects of agency implicated in teachers’ motivation: adaptability and teacher-student relationships. 

Adaptability is the capacity to adjust one’s thoughts, behaviours, and feelings in response to unfamiliar, new, changing, or uncertain situations and circumstances. Some examples of adaptability include looking at a situation in a different way (thought), taking a new course of action (behaviour), or minimising disappointment or fear (emotion).

Adaptability is highly relevant to teachers because their work often involves responding to and managing ongoing change and unfamiliar terrain, including new or changing curriculum. That includes teaching Aboriginal perspectives in the curriculum.

A large body of research has identified the ways in which interpersonal relationships impact motivation. Positive teacher-student relationships have an energising function that activates positive task-related emotions. Teachers ‘getting on’ with students in their classroom are more likely to be enthused and energised to teach these students. In many Aboriginal cultures, relationality to people and place are central ontological axes that have been demonstrated to underpin the manner and conditions by which students interact with teachers and learning content in Australian schooling spaces. For this study, we examined the extent to which teachers positively connected interpersonally with their Aboriginal students. 

Our Participants

Our online questionnaire had nearly 300 responses from Australian teachers who had taught Aboriginal perspectives to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students in 2020, 2021 and 2022. This made it both recent and relevant. Most of our respondents were women and they had taught, on average, for ten years. Other participant details can be found in the published study.

What We Found

Four key findings emerged from the study. 

1. Teachers’ adaptability was significantly associated with higher self-efficacy for teaching Aboriginal perspectives. It thus seems that teachers’ capacity to navigate change, uncertainty, unfamiliarity, and novelty underpinned a confidence to teach Aboriginal perspectives. 
2. Teacher-student relationships was significantly associated with teachers’ valuing of Aboriginal perspectives. It seems that when teachers connect with their Aboriginal students, there is a greater sense of the intrinsic utility and importance of Aboriginal perspectives. This may be because these interpersonal connections lead teachers to feel a sense of purpose and commitment to their Aboriginal students, and by implication, a desire to promote Aboriginal perspectives in their teaching. 
3. Teachers’ self-efficacy for teaching Aboriginal perspectives was associated with greater valuing among their Aboriginal students. Thus, teachers’ confidence to teach Aboriginal perspectives may help their Aboriginal students to be interested in their learning and to see their learning as important and worthwhile. 
4. Teachers’ valuing of Aboriginal perspectives was associated with greater self-efficacy among their Aboriginal students. It seems that when teachers value teaching Aboriginal perspectives more, Aboriginal students tend to also show more confidence in their schoolwork. 

The figure below summarises these main findings.

Implications for Practice

These findings have important practice implications. They suggest adaptability and teacher-student relationships are critical to teachers’ motivation and for supporting Aboriginal students’ motivation. Adaptability and teacher-student relationships are modifiable so they are viable foci for supporting teachers’ professional learning and development. 

We suggest teachers might be encouraged to identify areas of Aboriginal curriculum where they are uncertain or find unfamiliar. They could then brainstorm adjustments that could be made to enhance adaptability. 

Here are some examples:

• thought (e.g., adjust their attitudes, beliefs, or expectations about these areas of curriculum)
• behaviour (e.g., seek help or look for new resources to help them navigate these areas of curriculum)
• emotion (e.g., address anxieties about implementing this new curriculum material)

For interpersonal relationships, we suggest that teachers may benefit from better understanding the different forms of relational support they can provide students, including their Aboriginal students. Two major sources of relational support are instrumental support and emotional support. Instrumental support includes:  

• help with homework and assignments
• support for study management
• additional content-specific instruction
• seeking help from Aboriginal Education Officers in the school on pedagogical approaches 

For emotional support, teachers could look to:

• ensure that communication with Aboriginal students is characterised by empathy, warmth, and care 
• provide encouragement to Aboriginal students if they experience setback at school
• connect and work with local Aboriginal communities
• understand sovereignty and relational systems between students  

To Sum Up

Our study provides further insights into the motivational dimensions of teaching Aboriginal perspectives and the factors that may be targeted to better support this motivation, with a view to better supporting Aboriginal students’ own motivation to learn at school. 

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation (grant number: 5031). Any opinions, findings, or conclusions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. The authors would like to thank members of the Culturally Nourishing Schooling project and the Blak Caucus for advice and assistance during the conduct of this research.

Biographies

Andrew J. Martin is Scientia Professor and Professor of Educational Psychology in the School of Education at UNSW, Sydney. His research interests are student motivation, engagement, learning, instruction, and quantitative research methods.

Keiko Bostwick is a Research Fellow in the Assessment and Evaluation Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. She previously worked for the Culturally Nourishing Schooling project at UNSW as a quantitative Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

Tracy Durksen is a Scientia Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer of Educational Psychology for the School of Education at UNSW, Sydney. As a non-Indigenous Canadian and former primary school teacher she aims to impact the learning and development of students and teachers through research on interpersonal interactions and psychological characteristics like motivation and adaptability.

Rose Amazan is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at UNSW, Sydney. She has extensive experience working with low socio-economic status communities in Australia and internationally. Rose’s research, teaching, and service activities are motivated by her commitment to community development and creating equitable environments for marginalised and disadvantaged communities.

Kevin Lowe is a Gubbi Gubbi man from southeast Queensland and is a Scientia Indigenous Fellow and Professor at UNSW, Sydney. Kevin has had experience in education as a teacher, administrator and lecturer. He has expertise in working with Aboriginal community organisations on establishing Aboriginal language policy and school curriculum implementation.

Sara Weuffen is a specialist of educational research in cross-cultural studies, history, diversity, and inclusion. As a non-Indigenous woman of German, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry, she works with other non-Indigenous educators with the intention of interrogating the almost invisible conditioning factors and systemic pressures of education in order to develop more relational and authentic schooling experiences for all students.

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