Following on from the CPL’s Implementing Aboriginal Eduction K-12 course, this course seeks to embed Aboriginal perspectives in the classroom.
Linking to the syllabuses this course focuses on Aboriginal education outcomes in the classroom.
Further details to follow.
17 November 2026 in Surry Hills
$220
Professor Tony Moore (Monash University)) gives us an update on what is currently happening with the international digital history project ‘Conviction Politics’…
Conviction Politics is a digital history project funded by the Australian Research Council and industry partners as part of the Linkage scheme. The NSW Teachers Federation, through its Centre for Professional Learning, is a major Partner Organisation in this project joining with the ACTU’s Trade Union Education Foundation, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the UK Trades Union Congress.
Our project re-conceptualises convict transportation as one of the great forced global labour migrations of history, continuous with the slave trade, used to build settler capitalist colonies in Australia. It flips the narrative of a downtrodden criminal class by revealing the agency of the coerced workforce in collectively resisting this system. At the same time its focus on the transported political prisoners reveals Australian colonies vitally connected to the revolutions, ideas, movements and media innovations sweeping the Atlantic world. Harnessing the latest data mapping technologies, Conviction Politics, reveals how from the earliest days of settlement, Australia’s first work force resisted exploitation through inventive solidarity in the face of coercion, while a vanguard of transported rebels, liberal pamphleteers, industrial protesters, trade unionists, Chartists, Irish independence fighters, and radical agitators changed the political direction of the colonies.
What follows is an update Conviction Politics’ achievements and activities since our last article for the Journal of Professional Learning . Click this link to Tony’s Semester 1 2022 article
Chief Investigators Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart (University of New England) and Emeritus Professor Michael Quinlan (University of NSW) researched and published a new book that engages a key focus of Conviction Politics: Unfree Workers: Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia 1788-1860 (Palgrave Macmillan, London):
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-7558-4
It explores the role that penal transportation played in the development of capitalism in Australia as well as exploring the many ways in which the active resistance of convicts shaped both workplace relations and institutions. Drawing on two unique ‘big datasets’, the book provides both a quantitative and qualitative assessment of convict-worker resistance from the moment of their embarkation on ships bound for the Australian colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land to their arrival and deployment into various categories of state and private employment.
The book reveals the terrain and scale of resistance by convicts. Between 1788 and 1860 there is evidence of over 11,000 collective protests (including strikes, mass absconding, go-slows and riots). Michael and Hamish conservatively estimate that in excess of 43,000 convicts participated in these actions. Using data for the entire nineteenth-century, the book places the scale of dissent by convicts in the context of later non-union and union organised industrial action by free workers.
It demonstrates that convicts dominated workplace dissent prior to 1850. This included the 1804 Castle Hill rebellion in which nearly 10 percent of the transported workforce participated. The book also reveals a marked prolonged crisis of dissent that occurred between 1822 and 1834. This was a direct response to the abolition of convict wages and the introduction of more intense work regimes in road gangs and on rural estates. The book argues that this wave of resistance eroded the cost-savings that accrued to those who sought to hire unfree labour over free, contributing to the demise of convict transportation.
Michael and Hamish show the extent to which convict actions informed subsequent struggles over working hours and other conditions of employment by free workers. Nothing in Australian history comes close to matching this activism until the titanic maritime and pastoral strikes of the early 1890s.
The ending of Covid lockdowns allowed Roar Film’s Steve Thomas and Lead Chief Investigator Tony Moore, assisted by our man in London Paul Smith, to embark on an extensive interview, location and archive shoot of the UK and Ireland in 2022.
Interviews included Trade Union Congress (TUC) General Secretary Paul Nowak, in London; Secretary South West TUC Nigel Costley (head of the Friends of Thomas Muir) in Glasgow; Dr Tim Causer from the Bentham Centre at University College London; convict author Katharine Quarmby; and leading Irish, Scottish and English historians. With help of freelance documentary crews, we captured locations across the British Isles associated with convict transportation or where democratic and labour movement activism occurred, and digitally photographed the rare collections of the People’s History Museum in Manchester.
This overseas field trip climaxed in a special presentation on Conviction Politics led by Tony Moore at the Menzies Australia Institute, Kings College London chaired by its Director Dr Agnieszka Sobocinska, and smaller presentations on the project at University College Cork and sat the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival summer school.
The Conviction Politics team (Roar’s Steve Thomas and Aaron Wilson, Tony Moore, and Kyle Harvey) undertook extensive shoots in Melbourne and Sydney in 2023, making use of stunning locations provided by our collaborators, including Trades Hall in Melbourne, Unions NSW ‘banner’ museum in Sydney, the Hyde Park Barracks, and Cockatoo Island UNESCO convict heritage site on Sydney Harbour Sydney interviewees included Geoff Gallop, Tom Keneally, Noelene Timbery, Margaret Vosand John Dixon from the NSW Teachers Federation, Peter Lewis from Essential, John Jeremy (former CEO of Cockatoo Island dockyard), Libby Bennett (Sydney Harbour Trust), Warren Fahey from Larrikin Records, Neal Towert from Unions NSW and Prof. Nick Carter from Australian Catholic University.
Melbourne interviewees included economist Alison Pennington, Steve and Andrew Vizard, Research Fellow Dr Monika Schwarz, PhD student Daisy Bailey, and Profs. Gordon Pentland, Mark Andrejevic, Judith Brett and Andrew Reeves.
The discoveries and media by the Conviction Politics project were unveiled on the evening of May 5, 2023 at the Federation’s Friday Forum, opened by the union’s General Secretary Maxine Sharkey, chaired by Margaret Vos with closing remarks by Kate Ambrose. This full house heard from Tony Moore, Steve Thomas, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Monika Schwarz, about the project’s reconceptualising of the convicts as an unfree workforce that collectively resisted exploitation and impacted both the development of Australian democracy and the early labour movement.
The audience was treated to a sample of the project’s short documentaries, its online Hub, and heard how these resources can be deployed in the classroom.
Tony’s opening speech on the project’s significance can be read here:
( See Appendix One – 2023 Friday Forum: Introductory remarks by Tony Moore)
• The ACTU Congress Fringe Festival, June 2024
• Moreton Bay Bicentennial Symposium, Brisbane, September 2024
• The MEU National Congress, Opening, October 2024. Listen to MEU Podcast interview with Tony Moore here: https://meu.org.au/podcast-how-convicts-made-australia-fair/
• at the official opening of IndustriALL, the international congress of 1,000 trade union leaders from around the world, held at Sydney’s Darling Harbour Convention Centre from 4 to 7 November 2025.
The Conviction Politics team of Tony, Monika and Daisy presented papers and documentaries at the International Association for Media and History conference (20-22 June 2023), which was held at Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada.
The team hosted a panel discussion and screened microdocumentaries in a communal conference space. The panel demonstrated the transnational history of a shared struggle to advance democracy across various parts of the British Empire, and how the ambitious linking of digitised and analogue archives through international institutional partnerships has revealed the political agency of prisoners who had long been obscured as recidivists in individual records.
Tony then embarked on a road tour with Canadian-Australian filmmaker maker, Deke Richards, researching and photographing sites of the Canadian revolutions of 1837-38. Deke has made a major documentary Land of a Thousand Sorrows Revisited about the Québécoise rebels transported as political prisoners to Sydney, in the early 1840s.
They also met with museums in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto and the Australian High Commission to commence discussions about Canada potentially hosting a tour of the Conviction Politics exhibition.
In 2022 Tony had joined Deke and the Canadian Consul-General André François Giroux, and Marie-Anne Alepin, President of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society of Montréal, in the unveiling of a series of plaques to the Canadian prisoners at the burial sights of those who did not return to their homeland, including the Dapto grave of revolutionary Joseph Marceau, who married a local girl and became a farmer and grocer in the Illawarra.
With over 80 short documentaries, combined with long and short reads, original songs, timeline, podcasts, songs, data visualisations and rich image archive the Conviction Politics Hub is now live to the public and available for use in schools and by our Partner Organisations. Go to:
https://convictionpolitics.net
A trailer about the Conviction Politics documentaries can be viewed here:
The Hub was test driven with the help of the Centre for Professional Learning. Under the guidance of Margaret Vos, in 2024 teachers undertaking the CPL course Teaching Conviction Politics learned from Steve Thomas and Professors Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Tony Moore about the project’s academic discoveries. They also discovered how the Hub could be used in the classroom as a resource for parts of the NSW History syllabuses. During the course, in real time, Roar Film garnered valuable feedback from teachers that helped us tweak the Hub ahead of it doing public.
Please explore the Hub and provide any feedback directly to Margaret Vos at cpl@nswtf.org.au
‘Unshackled: The True Convict Story’ is Conviction Politics’ culminating research
output, that launched on the 12th of March 2024 at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG). It had over 40,000 visitors in its four month run. Unshackled is a ground-breaking, multimodal experience melding traditional museum presentation with engaging storytelling, short documentaries, data-visualisation, innovative technology, original music and soundscapes with traditional museum objects. The creative approach and visitor experience has been described as ‘surprising, immersive and moving’. Its video trailer can be viewed here:
It features curated collections of key objects and images including selections from the magnificent Dempsey portraits of British working-class women and men, a collection of radical tokens, reproductions of radical posters and cartoons from Britain, Ireland and Australia.
A highlight of the exhibition is a life size reproduction of the portable solitary ‘box’ used on the female convict transport ships. Interactive screen-based media, large projections and augmented reality lead the visitor through the exhibition themes: Repression, Exploitation, Resistance & Redemption. These media installations are complemented by real objects to provide a truly unique museum experience.
Unions Tasmania hosted a Workers Day at the Unshackled exhibition in June featuring presentations by union activists, and the Conviction Politics Team. Here is a video of event: https://player.vimeo.com/video/953006465?h=5b0138214c
Please see here the professional photographs of the Unshackled exhibition and launch provided by Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery available at this URL:
https://rosie hastie photography.pic-time.com/By8398ltXJ0WN
Here’s link to the exhibition web app visitors use on their smart phones while at the exhibition that provides more information about the solid objects, accesses the short documentaries by theme that appear on screens in the exhibition, and provides images and information on characters and events, including AI generated talking portraits:
https://exhibition.unshackled.net.au/themes
The exhibition shows how one of the nineteenth century’s largest forced migrations of unfree workers was preserved in time by a remarkable set of records and demonstrates that far from being a downtrodden, supplicant workforce, convict men and women fought back against tyranny and exploitation and changed Australia for the better.
Unshackled is designed, curated, and built by the project through its principal exhibiting Partner Organisation, Roar Film, working closely with TMAG. Thanks Steve Thomas, Matt Daniels Tony Moore, Daisy Bailey and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart. As well as the generous support to the project from NSW Teachers Federation and the ACTU, the exhibition has been made possible by generous sponsorship from the Mining and Energy Union, its Mineworkers Trust and Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, with the later becoming a new partner of Conviction Politics.
Here’s the link to podcast Late Night live interview with Philip Adams:
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/unshackled-true-convict-stories/103583600
A review on Arts Hub’s must-see museum blockbusters of 2024:
and a feature article on ABC Online:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-30/forgotten-political-history-of-australia-convicts/103621728
A travelling ‘pop up’ version of Unshackled that can be assembled in a day has also been produced, and the plan is for it to be assembled at the NSW Teachers Federation building in tandem with a suitable conference event in 2026.
Unshackled will tour from 2025-2027 to Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Queensland’s Bowen Basin, the Hunter, Illawarra, North Tasmanian and overseas to Dorchester, London and Cork.
A different bespoke exhibition focused on resistance by Tasmanian female convicts called a ‘A Stitch in Time’, was ‘created by Conviction Politics research fellow Monika Schwarz and was launched at the Penitentiary Chapel in Hobart in June 2023. The exhibition features 18 ‘data embroideries’ created by Monika of 21 convict women chosen for their participation in protest and resistance, especially in the Female Factories.
This project uses data embroidery, a new form of data physicalisation, to display historical life courses of Australian female convicts. The source of the data includes the female convict records of Van Diemen’s Land kept by the British Bureaucracy, including their trial and voyage, their colonial offences and sentences, their marriages and births or their official status like receiving a Certificate of Freedom. These data titbits inspire the sketches for the data embroideries, focusing on acts of resilience or resourcefulness. The data is integrated in the form of a lifeline with the inspiring data points highlighted in colour. The embroideries try to capture moments where the women’s personality is shining through the records, showing that these women weren’t so different from us. Here are two examples.
In early 2025 Conviction Politics’ Monash PhD student Daisy Bailey submitted her Thesis:
Emotions of Activism and Exile: A study on Chartist and Young Ireland political prisoners transported to the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century
The work was praised for its originality, discoveries and writing by the two examiners, and accordingly passed by Monash. The project congratulates Dr Baily and looks forward to the thesis being published as a book.
In partnership with the National Trust of Tasmania, Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Steve Thomas and Roar Film’s creative technologist Matt Daniels installed the digital convict memorial in Hobart Penitentiary Chapel Historic Site in October last year. Sharing the brand name Unshackled, the memorial links to, and visualises, the UNESCO Heritage Listed Tasmanian convict records held by project partner Libraries Tasmania.
Powered by the Digital History Tasmania convict dataset, the digital memorial tells the stories of 75,000 convicts through a four-metre interactive obelisk that performs a role not unlike the honour wall of a war memorial. Hamish Maxwell-Stewart reports that “feedback from data visualisation, tourism and heritage experts has been overwhelmingly positive and the descendants of convicts report that the experience is respectful and deeply moving.”
Building on, and enhancing, the memorial this new 2023 project includes Monash academics Prof. Jon McCormack (SensiLab), Prof. Tony Moore and Research Fellow Dr Monika Schwarz who worked on Conviction Politics, as well as Dr Jenny Wise, Associate Prof. David Roberts and Prof. Martin Gibbs from the University of New England. The project aims to create digital tools to allow visitors to experience Australian convict sites and historical big data in new and novel ways. The successful grant awarded to Making Crime Pay enables further analysis and public engagement with convict records and colonial history, the longevity of Unshackled and the continued collaboration with Roar Film and National Trust Tasmania.
Thanks Margaret Vos, Kate Ambrose and Maxine Sharkey and the NSW Teachers Federation for inviting us.
The NSW Teachers Federation has been a generous and energetic partner in this project, and shares with our other union partners (the ACTU, TUC and the AMWU) a commitment to retrieving the contribution of the convicts to the early development of democracy and the labour movement in this country. Also Principals Conference.
Conviction Politics is a digital history project funded by the Australian Research Council and industry partners as part of the Linkage scheme. It investigates how Britain’s Australian colonies – beginning as some of the most unfree and unequal jurisdictions on earth – became some of the first polities to give all working men the vote by the 1850s and in quick time earned a reputation as the social laboratory of the world.
The answer is to be found in newly digitised convict records, which reveal a very different story of the empire-wide struggle for political and human rights and the unlikely victory of Britain’s reformers and radicals in their place of exile. Harnessing the latest data mapping technologies, Conviction Politics, reveals how from the earliest days of settlement, Australia’s first work force resisted exploitation through inventive solidarity in the face of coercion, while a vanguard of transported rebels, liberal pamphleteers, industrial protesters, trade unionists, Chartists, Irish independence fighters, and radical agitators changed the political direction of the colonies.
Our project re-conceptualizes convict transportation as one of the great forced global labour migrations of history, continuous with the slave trade, used to build settler capitalist colonies in Australia. It flips the narrative of a down – trodden criminal class by revealing the agency of the coerced workforce in collectively resisting this system. At the same time its focus on the transported political prisoners reveals Australian colonies vitally connected to the revolutions, ideas, movements and media innovations sweeping the Atlantic world. To put it in Star Wars terms, there’s not just an evil empire, but a rebel alliance too, and its exiled leaders and foot soldiers make quite a mark in Australia and back in Britain and Ireland. The project reveals this new take on convict Australia through an array of media that we will sample tonight.
Indigenous People:
Notwithstanding the role of convicts in the seizure and occupation of the First Nations’ land in Australia, there is also a shared experience here, between Indigenous people and the transported convicts. Unrest in Britain, Ireland, and throughout the empire was triggered by capitalist commodification, land enclosure, colonialism within the British Isles and the destruction and disenchantment of traditional ways of life. The invasion of the Australian continent brought the same dislocating forces to bear on the Indigenous people of Australia, who fought against this dispossession, with many internally exiled into the convict system, from where they continued to resist. There was violence and death, with convicts used to dispossess. Indigenous land was stolen for the land hungry of Britain and Ireland, that helped the rulers avoid a revolution back home. However, our project reveals some remarkable acts of recognition and solidarity between Indigenous people and European convicts.
Developing the project’s application, we took heart from the Sally McManus’ comments in March 2017 that sometimes it is necessary to resist unfair and unjust laws. It is a key proposition of Conviction Politics that political and social democracy was not simply ceded to the Australian colonies by a caring mother country, but had to be fought for by brave, principled and persecuted people, first in their home countries and then again as convicts.
The project looks at 2 groups. At least 3600 protestors, reformers, radicals and revolutionaries sacrificed their own liberty, and sometimes their lives, for the freedoms and rights we take for granted. Meanwhile the 160,000 convicts who composed our first workforce undertook collective action to resist exploitation of its unfree labour through insubordination, absconding, uprisings, refusals to eat, strikes, and forming union -like combinations from at least the 1820s. Conviction Politics examines both these groups.
So often in the period we’re examining we find that it was new laws buttressing a new economic system that created the crimes. While many such as the United Irishmen took up arms in revolution against the Crown, both at home and then in Castle Hill, Sydney, others were transported simply for what they wrote, said or published. So many British workers, known to history by colourful names like Luddites, Swing Rioters, Tolpuddle Martyrs and Daughters of Rebecca, smashed the machines that were taking or automating their jobs, or demolished the tolls and turnpikes that heralded the privatization of the roads and commons they had travelled free for centuries. Still others were transported simply for coming together in a trade union.
Conviction Politics puts into practice the powerful injunction of media scholar Raymond Williams that drawing a new line with the past can inform contemporary social change. To that end, the scholars and partners in this project mobilise history to speak to our present moment. We consider the persistence from the colonial period of problems that drove our convicts to resist: precarious, insecure, and coerced work; decline in wages: our current cycle of automation: privatisation; our use surveillance and facial recognition; threats to freedoms in speech, media, and assembly; and the ease with which we incarcerate the marginalised. Most importantly we look at the unfinished work of decolonisation in Australia, not just for Indigenous people, but of us all.
We will now watch the first of our short documentaries about the Indigenous Convicts
Dr Tony Moore is Professor of Communications and Media Studies at Monash University and former Director of its National Centre for Australian Studies. Tony is author of the critically acclaimed Fringe to Famous: Cultural Production in Australia After the Creative Industries (Bloomsbury 2024) Dancing with Empty Pockets: Australia’s Bohemians since 1868 (2012), Death or Liberty: Rebels and Radicals Transported to Australia 1788 – 1868 (2010), adapted as an ABC TV documentary (2015) and The Barry McKenzie Movies (2005). Tony is lead investigator on the ARC the ARC Linkage Projects Conviction Politics: the convict routes of Australian democracy (2019-2025): https://www.convictionpolitics.net and Comedy Country: Australian Performance Comedy as an Agent of Change (2022 – 2027)
Tony was specialist consultant on the major exhibition Bohemian Melbourne, held at State Library Victoria 2014-15 https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/search-discover/galleries/bohemian-melbourne
He is a former ABC TV documentary maker and commissioning editor at Pluto Press and Cambridge University Press and worked in youth policy and advocacy for the Education Commission of NSW, International Youth Year and Youth Affairs Council of NSW. His documentaries include Bohemian Rhapsody: Rebels of Australian Culture, TimeFrame history of ASIO, Lost in Space: Australians in their Cities and Nobody’s Children.
Get Death or Liberty book here:
https://www.murdochbooks.com/browse/book/Tony-Moore-Death-or-Liberty-9781741961409
Rent or purchase Death or Liberty documentary here:
When investigating and reclaiming the voices of women in Australian history, it is essential that we include the voices of Aboriginal Women and Torres Strait Islander Women. I write this expressly acknowledging that this piece is exploring the reclaiming of invisible Aboriginal women in the records of western, post invasion history. Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have, since time immemorial, valued equally the roles of women and men. Both women and men have shared the responsibilities of lore, custom and practice. Women’s lore is equally as important as men’s lore in maintaining social and cultural practice.
In 1788, when the way history was recorded on this continent changed dramatically and irreversibly, Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islander People’s experience and history was recorded through the lens of western patriarchy. The experiences and voices of Aboriginal Women and Torres Strait Islander Women, like those of other women, were rarely publicly recorded and therefore their voices are either missing, forgotten, ignored or subject to interpretation by the men recording and publishing their experiences.
Contact history is a great place to begin exploring the hidden history and women’s voices in early European records in NSW. By exploring the experiences of women, we see a more diverse range of social and cultural contacts and interactions than those traditionally presented. By exploring the experiences of Aboriginal women in early contact history, we can broaden our understanding of the shared experience that contact is. Contact is not just an experience one group has over another, or something that happens to one group by another group.
Patyegarang was a young woman who spoke the Gadigal language and is recorded in some of the very earliest written records as the first teacher of Gadigal Language in the new colony.
William Dawes was an English Lieutenant and scientist who arrived on the First Fleet and remained in the colony until 1791. He recorded his experiences in the colony in detailed notes and manuscripts.
Patyegarang and William struck up what appears to be an unlikely friendship based on mutual respect, humour and a shared curiosity and interest in each other’s ways. In his notes Dawes records the conversations between them across a broad range of subjects.
Patyegarang taught Dawes Gadigal and she learnt English herself. Both learnt each other’s language in a functional manner which allowed them to communicate in depth and showed the intellect of both. Dawes recorded a conversation where Patyegarang explained the anger of the local people, that the colonists had stayed on their land and that they were afraid of the guns. Dawes later refused to follow orders to participate in punitive and violent actions against the local peoples and was likely sent back to England due to his sympathetic views towards the local Aboriginal peoples.
Maria, a Dharug woman, was born on the Hawkesbury River between 1794-1804.
In 1814, Maria was in the first group of children placed in the newly created ‘Native Institution for tuition’, which was created to teach Aboriginal children basic education, moral and religious instruction and manual skills, to allow them to be useful to the new colony. Despite this radical and total upheaval in the young Maria’s life, she excelled in learning. In 1819, Maria won the top prize in the yearly exam for the children engaged in education in the colony, including nearly 100 European children.
In 1822, Maria married William Walker, a Dharug man she had spent time with at the Native Institute. Unfortunately, within weeks of their marriage, William died of illness. In 1823, Maria married convict, Robert Locke, in the first sanctioned marriage between an Aboriginal person and a European. As Robert was a convict, he was ‘assigned’ to Maria, making her the first Aboriginal supervisor of a convict.
In 1831, Maria petitioned Governor Darling to be given her deceased brother’s land grant at Blacktown. Maria had been promised a grant of land as part of her marriage to Robert but this had not been provided. The grant was not given; however, 40 acres of land were granted to Robert on Maria’s behalf. In 1833 a further 44 acres of land was granted to her in Robert’s name at Liverpool and in 1843, after 10 years perseverance, Maria was granted her brother’s land.
Maria outlived Robert by 24 years. She spent her life engaged in the day-to-day life as a land holder in the colonies. On her death in July 1878, her land passed to her nine surviving children.
Moran, Alexis and McAllister, Jai ‘Patyegarang was Australia’s first teacher of Aboriginal language, colonisation-era notebooks show’, ABC
Troy, Jakelin (1993) The Sydney Language, Aboriginal Studies Press (Produced with the assistance of the Australian Dictionaries Project and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies)
https://www.williamdawes.org/docs/troy_sydney_language_publication.pdf
Significant Aboriginal women: Maria Lock | Parramatta History and Heritage
This course will support teachers implementing Aboriginal Education within the new syllabuses and will build knowledge of policy frameworks and inform the building of relationships.
This course will begin with an exploration of key policies guiding Aboriginal Education, including the Department’s Aboriginal Education policy and key documents, and the NSW Teachers Federation’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education policy and their implications for practice. This course will be conducted by Aboriginal teachers who are highly experienced in their fields.
In primary and secondary workshops, NESA officers will provide an analysis of Aboriginal Education content within the syllabuses, ensuring a clear understanding of curriculum expectations. Presenters, holding varying leadership roles within the Department of Education, will share practical strategies for establishing and maintaining culturally inclusive, safe, and responsive learning environments.
Keynote adress from Associate Professor Christine Evans, Pro Vice-Chancellor University of NSW:
Embedding Indigenous knowledges in curriculum: continua of learning from preschool to higher education
The representation of Aboriginal histories and cultures in NSW syllabuses has improved with the increased involvement of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander teachers particularly since 2016. Higher education has also been experiencing curriculum renewal through national strategic initiatives requiring the embedding of Indigenous knowledges in university curriculum. How do the Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property rights of knowledge holders feature in the process and what professional learning might be required for educators to ensure that academic and cultural considerations are addressed?
Wednesday 5 August 2026 at NSW Teachers Federation, 23-33 Mary Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010
All CPL courses run from 9am to 3pm.
$220
Please note, payment for courses is taken after the course takes place.
Teachers K-12 and leaders in schools implementing Aboriginal Education.
RUSSELL HONNERY
Aboriginal Education Officer, NSW Teachers Federation
Russell is a proud Wearie Gomeroi Man.
Russell’s current role as role is the NSW Teachers Federation Aboriginal Education Officer allowed him the opportunity to be the AEU Yes for Voice Campaign Lead Officer in 2023. Before holding this current role, he was a Professional Support Officer (2019-2021). Prior to holding these elected positions, Russell worked for the NSW Teachers Federation on a Relief basis in many roles. From Project Officer in 2010 and relieving in positions from 2011 to 2017: as Aboriginal Education Officer, Research Industrial Officer, Professional Support Officer and both Country and City Organiser positions. He was also the Aboriginal Executive Member for council 2017-2019 and Aboriginal Members Councilor from 2008 to 2019.
His teaching career has been in rural/northern NSW, which has given him a variety of experiences from classroom teacher, teaching Reading Recovery, Relieving Assistant Principal, team teaching with beginning teachers, mentoring staff and being part of the Department as Indigenous Teacher leadership program 2014/2015. He was also the Aboriginal Education and Engagement Officer SEO1 for the Tamworth Operational Directorate 2017-2019.
Russell’s experiences within the NSW Teachers Federation have given him the opportunity to represent and present at local, state, national and international events on behalf of Aboriginal members.
JENNI WENZEL
Chief Education Officer, Aboriginal Education, NSW Education Standards Authority
Jenni is a proud Bundjalung, Gumbayngirr, Ngoorabul, Walbunja Yuin woman with kinship connections to the North and South Coasts of NSW. Primarily working in Aboriginal Education at local, regional, and state levels, she has worked tirelessly to ensure Aboriginal students, parents and communities are represented at all levels.
Her teaching expertise ranges across Aboriginal Studies, Aboriginal Languages and HSIE subjects, with lecturing across several universities in Aboriginal Education.
Jenni is the Chief Education Officer, Aboriginal Education at NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA).
DIMITI TRUDGETT
Coordinator Schooling and Transition 7-12 PEO, Aboriginal Education & Communities Directorate
Dimiti Trudgett is a proud Wayilwan woman who is the Coordinator Schooling and Transition in the Aboriginal Education and Communities directorate. She works in the Schools and Transitions unit where she leads various programs and initiatives across NSW in improving the educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Prior to her position, Dimiti was a Deputy Principal in a Central School. She is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representative for the AEU NSW Teachers Federation Executive and one of the elected Councillors from the Aboriginal Members roll. Dimiti is a passionate advocate for Aboriginal education as well as educating all students and educators about Aboriginal histories and cultures
ANTHONY GALLUZZO
NSW Department of Education
I was surfing the other day and the conditions started to change. A rip had formed where I was sitting, and water was heading back out to sea. This is not unusual, and I instinctively moved to ensure that I remained in the best position. I could have stayed where I was (but I’d probably still be there). I am also a high school teacher. My desire to learn fuels my passion to teach. As both a teacher and surfer I rely on my instincts and situational awareness to ensure my students are engaged and focused on their learning. If what I am doing is not working, then I must make changes for the benefit of my students’ learning. The ongoing challenge for teachers lies in the confines of our scope of control. I can make incremental adjustments (within my role description as classroom teacher) that will have some benefit to student outcomes. I cannot however undertake the seismic shift that is so desperately needed to support the ongoing growth of our kids’ learning. If under some miracle I could, and let’s set aside the fact that we are in a crippling staffing shortage, then I would suggest one strategy: ‘onCountry learning’ to remind ourselves what teaching was like before schools had fences, and off campus excursions didn’t involve half a dozen layers of risk assessment paperwork. [Mark Werner]
In 2021 a collaboration between school teachers, university teacher-researchers, and a local council established an outdoor learning setting in a park known as ‘Dawkins Park Reserve’, in Macksville, rural NSW. This group coalesced around a shared desire to promote local resilience to climate change impacts, and to strengthen the local community’s understanding and engagement with local Indigenous cultural and scientific knowledge. This park was chosen as a setting primarily for two reasons: it was within walking distance of a high school, and it was suffering real and visible biodiversity breakdown due to the effects of climate change.
Being part of this collaboration as two university researchers (Wilks and Turner) was a rich experience in terms of the lasting relationships built with local teachers and moreover, witnessing the enjoyment and significant growth in the students’ understanding of climate change. In Turner and Wilks (2022) we recounted our experiences and research findings, concluding with a concerning paradox: as the benefits of place-based environmental learning become better known, in practical terms it is getting harder to achieve with teachers increasingly burdened by layers of paperwork, risk assessment protocols, policies and procedures. The resulting disembodiment of learning from the natural environment is especially concerning, given that the endeavour of education has its very roots in nature, where over 250 years ago Jean-Jacques Rousseau recognised nature as the child’s best teacher (Taylor, 2013). Caught in the current risk-averse milieu, many educational systems have forgotten these roots in the face of increasing litigation, and educational trends that marginalise the connectedness between nature and children and young people. (Wilks, Turner & Shipway, 2020).
Our particular focus here is to convey the experiences of collaboration that involved the teaching of climate change. We share how a different approach to teaching and learning in this rural setting might be sustained into the future through engaged environmental and Indigenous cultural learning, and creating a smoother transition for students between primary and secondary school.
The enactment of positive change is not possible without first acknowledging the need for a new direction. In the high school learning environment, collegiality and the courage to innovate are important ingredients for success in cross-curriculum and cross-cultural teaching and learning. In 2020 a small collegiate of like-minded teachers saw an opportunity for their Year 7 students to investigate climate change through authentic, active, environmental learning experiences. Even though well-established relationships with local Aboriginal elders and Knowledge holders already existed, it was critical to invite them into our teaching collegiate. Consequently, they became integral to the students’ outdoor learning experiences.
The authors all live and work on Gumbaynggirr Country located on the NSW Mid-North Coast, NSW. Mark Werner is a proud First Nations man from the Torres Strait, a Dauareb and member of the Ulag Clan, a clan of the Zagareb Tribe of Mer. He is also a Geography/History high school teacher.
At Macksville High we were seeking to create a different type of learning environment, albeit on a shoestring budget. In order to better engage Year 7 students, we were compelled to try something new, and it turned out to be something that became a highly influential force in our teaching — the creation of a teaching and learning Year 7 ‘Hub’ [Mark Werner].
The Hub was a learning environment established to provide students with a smoother transition from local primary ‘feeder’ schools into high school. It was designed with the goal that a foundation year of focused interdisciplinary teaching and learning would support the academic success of students, and address some of the poor student learning habits we were noticing. Students coming into Year 7 are confronted with up to fifteen different teachers. This not only impacts on their sense of connectivity and engagement with the new learning environment of high school, but also on the teaching staff’s capacity to develop an understanding of each student’s strengths, capacities and inherent learning styles.
The Hub space was an open learning space (conjoined classrooms) housing up to fifty students, three teaching staff (English, Maths, Science and Geography/History), and one student learning support officer. Each lesson could be delivered to the whole group or, alternatively, a targeted skills intervention lesson could be taught on a rotation basis.
The Year 6 – Year 7 transition is often experienced by students as a difficult period, thus there was a significant focus on student wellbeing. For students being part of this core group provided them with the continuity and consistency lacking in the traditional Year 7 structure. The establishment and maintenance of consistent classroom expectations provided a foundation for improved learning outcomes within a safe and predictable place, more attuned to the students’ social and emotional needs. The teacher-student ratio afforded staff the space to develop stronger relationships with students, target their skills, identify curriculum overlap, and withdraw struggling students to a different space without disrupting the learning of their peers.
Improving our knowledge, understanding and agency about climate change is urgent. The rapid deterioration in Earth’s natural systems presents unprecedented challenges for teaching and learning that is capable of encompassing, and bringing meaning and immediacy to the scientific, the ecological, the social, the economic/political, the moral, the cultural and the ethical dimensions of climate change (Haraway, 2015). It is not surprising that in recent years climate change learning has been embedded into Australian school curricula. In Australia, climate change learning in schools must provide the scope across key learning areas for students to be able to acquire deep knowledge about the many dimensions of human-caused ecological change. Learning about climate change therefore has played an increasingly significant role in NSW school curricula.
A series of cross curricular, collaborative learning programs and resources was developed by teachers in the Hub prioritising learning about climate change, and, under this umbrella, teaching the themes of ‘identity’ and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and sciences. The environmental learning activities at the Park were designed to deepen students’ knowledge of climate change through authentic learning about water quality, biodiversity, ecological and technological processes in Dawkins Park Reserve.
Activities and resources were designed to promote engagement with the Australian cross curriculum priorities Sustainability and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures. Students learned about how our ecological landscape is shaped through natural and human-caused factors; the influences of this on animal behaviour patterns; how humans interact with ecosystems; and how these interactions may be achieved in a sustainable way. At Dawkins Park Reserve students were exposed to ‘real world’ hands-on activities such as collecting water ‘bugs’ as the students called them [microorganisms], identifying flora and fauna, observing bird migration patterns, testing the water, and using maps, photos and light microscopes to analyse their water samples.
The interconnectedness of fieldwork skills combined with a highly relevant case study at Dawkins Park Reserve engaged both students and teachers, and through this experience they developed the necessary knowledge to understand climate change at a deep level. But we were only able to examine climate change in any depth because of the Hub model. Previously there were very few interdisciplinary options and subjects were taught in silos.
Well established community relationships with local Aboriginal elders and local Knowledge holders also proved to be pivotal. Students learned about clan size and what the size of the group should be to sustain itself. They learned about sustainable lifestyles in the Indigenous context, how a typical day was broken up in the clan, and about structured lore/systems. They enjoyed the Gumbayngirr cultural narratives through stories, dance, song, and art.
Students participated in an ‘On Country’ cultural immersion field trip. This excursion was organised to support the unit of learning called ‘Identity’. During this experience students and staff were offered an alternative learning environment. This alternative learning environment shifted behaviour and attitudes of both students and staff. The logistics of the journey focused on ensuring Aboriginal perspectives from across their valley were well represented. The day started with a Welcome to Country in Bowraville, delivered by a local knowledge and language holder, who then shared the history and narrative of his town and community. The immersive experience continued as the students travelled to Nambucca Heads and were met by traditional owners, elders and knowledge holders who shared narratives, culture and experiences. A smoking ceremony and the re-creation of a local dreaming narrative (using the students as actors and participants) enriched the students and teacher understanding of local Aboriginal culture and identity. The final leg of the journey was to Scotts Head. Once again cultural protocols were observed, and students and teachers learnt more about the Gumbaynggirr creation narratives regarding the how the sea was created and how waves were made. This was followed by the playing of Traditional Indigenous Games on the beach and reflecting on the history, purpose and relevance of these activities
Teachers’ interest, enjoyment and excitement in teaching climate change were stimulated by these events. Commensurately there was an increase in their self-efficacy and confidence as their knowledge grew and their understandings and perceptions deepened. It was clear that the growth in these attributes was connected to their own learning about climate change at the park. Teacher A recounted their journey as follows:
I think at the beginning … I kind of had that attitude of ‘nah Climate change’ … I’d glaze over. But now I think I have a better understanding myself, and I think the enjoyment of teaching it, through the process that we followed … has improved my knowledge of climate change, as well as my enthusiasm for teaching it, and passing it onto the students, and encouraging them to do something [about it].
Teachers shared that at the Park they had been caught up in the same feelings of excitement and the fascination as the students when they were discovering new knowledge through for example, water sampling activities. And the growth in both teacher and student knowledge and enthusiasm had an entwined, spiraling effect, with each promoting the other. The teachers became co-inquirers with their students because they were also making deeper connections between the different scales of climate change. Teacher B said “I think the connections I was able to make within my own personal life, and how little things that I can do can make a big difference on a bigger picture, certainly grew.”
While the teacher’s learning design and programming benefitted, they also stated that they now found it easier to link teaching about climate change with the Australian Curriculum’s Sustainability priority area. Furthermore, they envisioned the Park becoming a ‘centrepiece’ for future learning about the impacts of climate change at the local level, as it offered great affordance in terms of teaching, learning and benchmarking about key concepts in geography such as place; space; environment; interconnection; scale; and change. Fieldwork is geography; it is at its very heart (Laws, 1984; Bliss, 2009). From Teacher C’s perspective, the experience “gave me more time to spend investigating on a local level, and a pathway to teach it through because sometimes you think, ‘how am I going to embed this into the program?’ but here, if it’s the centrepiece of the program, it’s really simple.”
The teachers related that teaching climate change through an Indigenous lens gave students the opportunity to hear about Aboriginal perspectives of pristine environments and no trace practises. The Aboriginal guides embedded language into their stories. Although the Park is not an Aboriginal sacred site as it is human built, there are many sites in the district and the area has strong links to Gumma, where fresh water supply and the Nambucca River link to the sea. Students looked at the variety of vegetation types available, and their traditional Gumbaynggirr names and purposes. Students were shown the Lomandra grasses used for weaving baskets, and were encouraged to speculate about what type of things these baskets might have carried. Teacher D explained:
We’ve tried to open up their understanding as to what Indigenous communities are about and different aspects of their lives and we’re certainly incorporating a little bit more of that to increase the understanding because for some of them they really had limited understanding of pre-European settlement in the area.
Students came to realise that there were many places around them, in their daily lives, that have stories. Student A shared: “Just knowing about it makes you feel more connected”, and another (Student B) said, “Stories make it easier to remember things.”
Teachers not only observed the stimulation of their students’ interest, passion, enjoyment and engagement in learning about climate change, they also noticed their students were reflecting far more deeply about their responsibilities in relation to it. The following observations were made in this respect:
There were a lot of light bulb moments, a lot of students not only learning the information, but then also getting a bit of a fire in their belly, really wanting to change, really wanting to make action, and asking questions like what can they do about it to change. they’re kind of at that age where they’re starting to understand the world isn’t perfect. And we’re kind of called, aren’t we, it’s all our responsibility to all do something about it for the future. (Teacher A)
I guess for my generation we kind of feel responsible for what’s happened, and these guys kind of inherit a lot of our shortcuts and kind of short-sightedness. Whereas you get some students who kind of straight away think, they just lay the blame, and see the dire consequences straight away. And then to get other students that kind of perk them up by saying, “How about this and for solutions? (Teacher B)
Students were excited about seeing things in ‘real life’ at the Park and teachers could see them getting ‘hooked in’ to their learning there. Teachers were not having to deal with behaviour issues because the setting catered for a wide variety of learners and all students were so engaged: “they really benefit … all of them … from experiential learning where they’re hands on. They’re measuring … they’re testing … they’re collecting, analysing and comparing … they’re really focused and on-task” (Teacher C). This reinforced for teachers how important it is for students to have place-based, authentic learning experiences and to “try and get the kids out of the classroom and give them those real-life experiences as much as we can” (Teacher D). When they returned to classroom learning the teachers noticed a real enthusiasm borne from what they had done at the Park. Students were motivated to venture hypotheses, do their own research, and give class presentations on what they had found out.
In their discussions with researchers before they went to the Park, students used terms such as ‘nervous’, ‘devastated’ ‘not confident’ to describe their thinking about climate change. Teachers observed that as a result of the activities their students demonstrated a greater confidence and a richer vocabulary when postulating connections between the local and the global in relation to climate change. They related that through being at the Park students were able to link their learning about climate change to a place with which they were familiar and in so doing enriching their knowledge and understanding. As Teacher A explained, “having something to pin it on”, and Teacher B observed “We’re having conversations with the students where they wouldn’t have made the links previously … floods in West Germany, record temperatures in Europe”; and another:“… for them to get an understanding about the relationship between fossil fuels and carbon emissions…It was kind of like just opening the door for a lot of them. They really hadn’t thought about it before, even though they’ve heard some of the phrases and things like that. But for them to get an understanding of the causes and the links, and also some of the possible solutions”.
According to Teacher D, the conversations they were having with their students and what they did at the park had opened up their thinking to beyond their ‘small world’ to “what’s happening around them and how that impacts everybody else in the world”. Moreover, Teacher B observed that the program had encouraged students to have bigger thoughts beyond themselves, to “go deeper … and tie a lot of things in with climate change.”
It not surprising that in recent years learning about climate change has played an increasingly significant role in NSW school curriculum. There are now frequent mentions of the term climate change, with Sustainability framing the entire curriculum as one of the three Australian curriculum priority areas. Nevertheless, such curriculum elements represent relatively new and emerging fields of study in both primary and secondary curricula, and teachers have had had to quickly ‘come on board’ with teaching them across all curriculum areas, as they are no longer just located within the traditional domains of geography and science. The students perceived the potential for cross curricula learning about climate change emanating from their experiences at the Park. They expressed a desire to see more art, mathematics, and writing, in addition to geography and science, associated with their activities there.
Through professional channels many teachers have anecdotally reported a lack of confidence in teaching climate change despite the many excellent professional development opportunities and resources that have been created for teachers. The problem has been that the majority of these are text-based and designed to be delivered in a classroom setting – either in digital or paper-based format. This has led to a focus on ‘climate science’ and environmental ‘issues’ (Loughland, Reid, and Petocz, 2010) privileging knowing facts about climate change over more experiential, sensory engagements inhibiting the creation of deep knowledge which, as Jensen and Ross argue, is so vitally important underpinning “all educational skills we value…knowledge begets knowledge”, (2022, p. 23). The experiences of teachers and students at Dawkins Park most certainly aided the development of deeper content knowledge about climate change.
Students related that they loved learning outside the classroom, that they felt more focused and “a bit more free” (Student B). Paradoxically, they felt “less distracted… if that makes sense” (Student C). They enjoyed learning through their senses – listening; seeing; touching and feeling; and smelling – and in so doing they felt more connected to the environment. They were more able to make connections between the local and the global manifestations of climate change; the interactions between plants and animals and the seasonal influences relating to climate change. Teachers observed students to be more curious, interested, engaged and both student and teacher appreciation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural, language and scientific knowledge increased. Teacher feelings about self-efficacy in teaching climate change also improved.
As others have experienced in similar, recent programs (Burgess & Thorpe, 2024; Spillman et al., 2022), we found that well established community relationships with local Aboriginal elders were vital to the success of the program. The students thoroughly enjoyed the telling of Gumbayngirr stories by the Aboriginal knowledge holders. Through embedding an Aboriginal voice in the activities, students’ cultural awareness and engagement with holistic, spiritually-based connections to Country were enhanced. Story telling involves feelings and emotions, and helps young people to follow a series of events through a story’s structure, and to understand choices people have made in the past and the consequences of those choices (Seefeldt, Castle & Falconer, 2014, p. 232).
The Hub enabled the Year 7 student cohort to be taught as an entity, as opposed to separate classes, by a core group of teachers enabling a significant focus on student wellbeing. Students were provided with continuity and consistency during what is often experienced as a difficult transition from primary to secondary school. The synergy generated through the combined efforts of highly trained professionals created momentum and enthusiasm within the learning environment. The collaboration facilitated an even deeper mutual regard for colleagues’ professionalism, their discipline and content-specific knowledge. Sharing a teaching space between colleagues and freely exchanging ideas and feedback empowered and invigorated teaching.
It is imperative that our students are climate change literate. This involves understanding how our ecological landscape is shaped through both natural and human-caused factors; the ways in which water is integral to the survival of all living things; how this influences animal behaviour patterns; how humans interact with ecosystems, and how these interactions may be achieved in an environmentally sustainable way.
It was obvious to us as teachers that students were developing understandings about climate change at a deep level. As clearly beneficial as it was to take the students to this rich environmental and cultural learning setting, we were only able to examine climate change to the depth we did because of the added affordances that the Hub model offered for enriching teaching and learning. That we managed to interconnect learning about climate change with fieldwork attached to a highly relevant case study at Dawkins Park Reserve which clearly engaged the students was achieved in large part because of the Hub. Learning stations have been created at the Park for future outdoor environmental education activities, and their continued use will augment students’ understandings about climate change vulnerabilities, risks and adaptation responses.
Just as swimmers and surfers must react to the sudden formation of an ocean rip, it is imperative in teaching to change what is not working. When you change your perspective on historical, entrenched challenges in education you can deliver enhanced student engagement and success. Macksville High School in rural NSW had the courage and conviction to embrace remodelling education delivery to its newest students when it literally flung open the school gates to a world of possibilities.
Although the ‘physical’ Hub no longer exists, relational links between the participating teachers remain strong, and the possibility still exists for cross curriculum project-based learning because of these links. Ironically, external factors associated with climate change conspired to erode teacher motivation around its continuance. These included COVID-19 and the accompanying lockdowns and extended periods of learning from home, teacher shortages and time constraints largely borne out of the COVID-19 driven workforce-wide impacts, and prolonged flooding in the region causing major disruptions to everyday life. Possible areas of future focus are teaching space redesign, classroom furniture, and redistribution of students into subject-specific skill rotation groups that coalesce around social interactions, friendship cohorts and abilities.
Bliss, S. (2009). Fieldwork: The heart of geography. Geography Bulletin, 41(1), 7-11. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/aeipt.183894
Burgess, C., & Thorpe, K. (2024). How teachers can use the Learning from Country framework to build an Aboriginal curriculum narrative for students. Journal of Professional Learning. NSW Teachers Federation.
Jensen, B., & Ross, M. (2022, September 23). One million left behind. The Australian. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/
Laws, K. (1984). Learning geography through fieldwork. In J.Fein (Ed.), The Geography teacher’s guide to the classroom (pp. 134-145). MacMillan.
Loughland, T., Reid., & Petocz, P. (2010). Young people’s conceptions of the environment: A phenomenographic analysis, Environmental Education Research, 8(2), 187-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620220128248
Seefeldt, C., Castile, S., & Falconer, R. (2014). Social Studies for the preschool/primary child. Pearson.
Spillman, D., Wilson, B., Nixon, M., & McKinnin, K. (2023). ‘New Localism’ in Australian Schools: Country as Teacher as a critical pedagogy of place. Curriculum Pedagogies. 43, 103-114
Taylor, A. (2013). Reconfiguring the natures of childhood. Routledge.
Turner, A., & Wilks, J. (2022) Whose voices? Whose knowledge? Children and young people’s learning about climate change through local spaces and indigenous knowledge systems, Children’s Geographies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2022.2139591
Wilks, J., Turner, A., & Shipway, B. (2020). The risky socioecological learner. In A. Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles., A. Lasczik., J. Wilks., M. Logan., A. Turner, A., & W. Boyd, (Eds.), Touchstones for deterritorializing socioecologcial learning: The anthropocene, posthumanism and common worlds as creative milieux (pp. 75-99). Palgrave Macmillan.
Mark Werner
Mark is Daureb and part of the Ulag Clan which is a clan of the Zagareb Tribe of Mer in the Torres Strait. He is a secondary trained teacher and holds a Masters in Indigenous Languages. He lives and works on the Mid North Coast of NSW. He is passionate about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, the environment and creating On Country immersive learning experiences.
Dr Judith Wilks OAM
Is Adjunct Associate Professor at Southern Cross University, Faculty of Education, and also Adjunct Associate Professor, Nulungu Research Institute of the University of Notre Dame Australia. She is an experienced educator with a significant research, teaching and community engagement track record in regional education services delivery in both the higher education and schooling sectors. In 2023 Judith was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for Services to Education. Her research interests and publications stretch across a number of fields. These include the promotion of agency, resilience, and citizenship skills through participatory methodologies for children and young people in environmental education learning settings. Judith has also been an active member of national research collaboration (Nulungu Research Institute) that has sought to promote access, participation and success in higher education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. In recent years she has undertaken considerable research work in the Western Kimberley region focusing on strengthening the learning experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander higher education students living in remote locations.
Dr Angela Turner
Dr Angela Turner has 22 years higher education teaching experience. She holds a Bachelor of Education Technologies (Hons) and a PhD in Food Technology education. Angela has been recognised for integrating the domains of teaching and research through a Southern Cross University Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Citation (2018); School of Education Recognition Award (2018); Australian College of Educators Award (2017). Her research projects have received competitive grant success over the years for actively forming university-school community engagement with rural primary and secondary school communities that have advanced teaching, learning and assessment in the classroom as an ongoing educational enterprise. She is currently an Adjunct Senior Lecturer/Researcher at Southern Cross University and a curriculum advisor for the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) curriculum reform for Technological and Applied Studies 7-10.
In this exciting new CPL course participants will delve into women in history, investigating programming approaches for History 7-10, History Elective years 9 and 10 as well as Extension History Year 12.
Utilising history case studies of both the well-known and forgotten women of history, participants will explore thematic, comparative and biographical event-based programming approaches, taking in key historical debates and the big questions in history.
Primary, Secondary and TAFE teachers are encouraged to apply to attend this course.
Presenter Judy King will take participants through planning units of work in History 7-10, History Elective years 9 and 10 and Extension History Year 12, including perspectives on women’s history in a variety of topics.
As well, participants will be given an overview of the Australian Research Council (ARC) international digital history project Conviction Politics.
If you are interested in this course, you may also be interested in a connected social event. Meet History’s (In)Visible Women over a drink and snack, is designed to complement the course and offers a relaxed social setting for those interested in women’s history and activism.
Friday 31 July 2026
NSW Teachers Federation, Surry Hills
All CPL courses run from 9am to 3pm.
Judy King is a former high school principal and a Life Member of the NSW Teachers Federation, the Australian Education Union and Secondary Principals’ Council. She retired from Riverside Girls High School in 2010 after 19 years as a secondary principal.
Since retirement Judy has worked part time at Chifley College Mt Druitt campus, Northmead High and Georges River College in an executive support role with a strong focus on teaching and learning, assessment and reporting, especially in the areas of reading for meaning and writing for purpose.
She currently teaches History and Politics at WEA , the oldest adult education foundation in the CBD of Sydney.
Judy represented secondary principals on the Board of Studies (now NESA) from 1998-2004 and was History Inspector at the Board in 1991. Judy was deputy president of the SPC from 1998-2006.
In 2018 she researched and wrote a history of the NSW Teachers Federation 1918-2018 as part of its centenary celebrations. The articles were published throughout each edition of Education in 2018 and were featured as part of a three week exhibition in the Federation building.
In 2007 Judy was awarded the Meritorious Service in Public Education medal by the Department of Education.
Judy has an abiding interest in all aspects of Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern History as well as archaeology, politics and film. In 2014 and 2019 she attended the Cambridge University History Summer School for international students and hopes to return in 2025.
In 2024, Judy was awarded an OAM for “services to secondary education.”
Jen Sonter began teaching in 2016 around the Central Coast, eventually landing at Terrigal High School in 2018. She has since been working full time at Pittwater High School on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, finally achieving permanent employment there in 2022.
She has predominantly worked in mainstream classroom settings throughout this time, but has also worked in wellbeing roles such as Year Advisor.
She is a passionate history teacher and takes up any opportunity to travel and experience historical sites from far and wide. She brings this passion into the classroom in the hopes of passing it on to her students.
Emma Seabrook began teaching in 1992 at Crestwood High School in Sydney’s Northwest. Her first permanent position, in 1995, was at Cambridge Park High School in the Western suburbs.
She has worked in public education her whole career and is currently teaching History and Society and Culture at Winmalee High School, in the Blue Mountains. As well as teaching History through all stages, Emma’ focus is on student well-being and has her career has included various stints as Year Advisor.
$220 for one day
Please note, payment for courses is taken after the course takes place.
“Excellent resources provided by all speakers.”
“Judy’s session was very thought provoking and a great way to start. Very inspirational woman.”
“All presenters were engaging and informative. I appreciate their generosity in sharing.”
“Very valuable course. (I have) new ideas to take back to school.”
“Thank you Federation and the CPL team for providing another extremely useful PD. All PD by the CPL has presenters who are genuine experts in their fields and provide useful resources and knowledge.”
Moorambilla Voices (Moorambilla) is more than a choir. It was founded in 2006 with the aim of creating a regional choir of excellence that encompasses regional children and youth. Moorambilla Voices has expanded to include dance, Japanese Taiko drumming, lantern making and visual art.
It is a regionally focussed arts organisation that seeks to empower children and youth to think big, dream widely and connect to Country1 and their communities. Moorambilla does this through an exceptional annual multi-arts program of workshops, cultural immersions, artistic commissions, residential camps, tours, recordings, performances and more recently an award-winning online learning platform, ‘Moorambilla Magic Modules’
Moorambilla fosters team cooperation through group performance: in choirs, Japanese Taiko drumming groups and dance, which develops general cooperative ability, confidence and leadership skills. Like our rivers in flood – our creative capacity is powerful, breathtaking and immense.
Moorambilla’s commitment to, and connection with, living culture in regional NSW is vital to empower participants and audiences to initiate conversations at every level that encourage and celebrate inclusion and respect. Raising cultural awareness, recognition and respect is at the heart of what we have done since 2006. The use of Indigenous languages in the songs that are performed and the telling of the stories through dance, singing and drumming facilitates this cultural communication and links directly to the broader community agendas of promoting knowledge and learnings of our shared cultural history in an empowering and life affirming way. Our Indigenous elders, community leaders and student participants are vital to the success of the program and, as Elders and leaders from the regional communities share their themes and stories with the artists, they collectively weave them through our yearly program, so we all grow and learn cultural competency year on year on year. Ongoing conversations and support for the Moorambilla program come from the Gamilaraay, Yuwaalaraay, Wiradjuri, Wailwan, Ngiyampaa and Ngemba nations.
Moorambilla prides itself on engaging children from the remote regional area of NSW. We operate regardless of the background or financial circumstances of our participants. Many children on remote properties, and from small towns, are disadvantaged and lack opportunities to engage with creative arts. Rural and remote Australia hosts many areas of disadvantage, with Australia’s lowest levels of income, education and employment. This coincides with high levels of Aboriginality and cultural disconnection and poorer chances of advancement.
Schools in the region lack resources in terms of learning aids, instruments, computers, appropriate buildings and access to consistent internet services. It is common for schools’ internet service to be unreliable; this was exacerbated during the recent floods and mouse plagues (e.g., mice ate through cables to white boards and other electrical equipment). Staff turnover at all levels in the educational system is high and many children move from community to community resulting in disjointed educational exposure- exacerbated during COVID-19, and beyond.
Moorambilla strongly believes that everyone, particularly in a regional or remote part of Australia, should not be limited by education, aspirations or belief in their capacity to live a life rich in opportunities. Moorambilla Voices has a well-developed and focussed planned approach to delivering its program. This ensures Moorambilla continues to contribute to a brighter, and more inclusive, future for our regional communities and the wider Australian arts ecology. It has made the incredible commitment, over seventeen years, to ensuring the pillars of excellence equity and opportunity are upheld and is the longest serving arts organisation in one third of the state.
Evidence demonstrates the clear benefits of music and artistic education programs in breaking children free of disadvantage. Many recent studies confirm the significant value of carefully planned and well taught music/arts programs in all education and their developmental advantages for young people:
Over the past 20 years, multiple studies (Saunders, 2019; Lorenza, 2018; Meiners, 2017; Winner, Goldstein & Vincent-Lacrin, 2013; Bryce, Mendelovits, Beavis, McQueen & Adams, 2004; Fiske 1999) in Australia and elsewhere have demonstrated better personal and educational performance by those involved in the arts and music. These outcomes include measures such as national school results, student well-being, attendance, reduced need for school discipline or exclusion and better self-control.
Moorambilla, in Gamilaroi language, means ‘place of deep fresh water’. This image of ancient rock art represents the physical manifestation of the Brewarrina Fish Traps2. These are one of the oldest man-made structures in the world. The image is a mark on Country and represents our core program’s geographical footprint in Western New South Wales, Australia. It is a visual symbol of excellence manifest. It represents cooperation, innovation, transference of culture and knowledge, creativity and collaboration, as well as ethical and economic sustainability through aquaculture. This image was adopted in 2018 as the visual representation of our core program and, as such, sits at the heart of what we do.
We recognise that water connects us all to each other – water is vital for human survival. The analogy of the Brewarrina fish traps allows us to connect the economic, cultural and creative importance of water to all Australians. Within this analogy, we have interconnecting slip streams in the Moorambilla Voices flow, which lead either a fish or fingerling to leadership opportunities.
Our core program was established in the state of NSW, Australia. Our fish fingerlings3 swim through, in and out of this, as part of the ensembles of:
The program starts with skills development workshops, based around music and dance, in schools through which participants are selected, not auditioned. Candidates are selected in workshops for the annual program based on natural ability and tenacity. For many the defining feature is their strong desire to positively contribute to the ensemble.
Our Moorambilla Voices program grows from fingerlings, at various stages of development, swimming through the bends in the flow radiating from our core program. As they swim through this structure, they tour, perform, increase in skill and knowledge, and potentially create new bends in the river (contributing to the wider arts ecology as alumni and associate artists).
Candidates and professional artists engage with, and find their own flow in, the system. Because of the transient nature of our candidates and artists, they will enter into this system at various points in their educational life cycle. This sophisticated structure is fluid enough to support change as the child or artist grows.
Moorambilla enables individuals to enter the slipstream or the natural flow in our program through our core ensemble program, or as an associate or featured artist, volunteer or audience member. Artists show our candidates career flow in action and the capacity for creative fluidity. Their connection to the program does not have to be linear; it can happen within the individual’s creative journey and life cycle.
Our program supports a mentoring framework across all our associated art forms. The engagement of composers, choreographers, visual artists and performers of the highest calibre supports our fingerlings to grow.
As cultural sector leaders, we reference this framework through our online, spoken and written word to support and nurture the creative flow of this program within the wider arts ecology. All artists, volunteers and candidates make a commitment to shared cultural understanding through singing, language art and dance, guided by cultural immersion on Country. Furthermore, we make an artistic commitment to recognise, acknowledge and celebrate our shared understanding of marks on Country from fingerling to fully grown fish.
Moorambilla Voices is an organisation that seeks to empower children and youth to think big, dream widely and connect to Country and their communities. More recently, to support this aim, Moorambilla Voices has created a Nationally award-winning online learning platform – Moorambilla Magic Modules – click here
These modules won the award for the APRA AMCOS National best educational program 2022.
In early 2020 the world changed. At the end of March 2020, it became clear that the normal mode of delivery for the program was about to undergo significant change due to the emerging restrictions unfolding for COVID-19 risk mitigation.
By April 2020, Moorambilla Voices made the decisive and empowering decision to support all of its associated artists and create pedagogically sequential 20–30 minute modules in consultation with the Artistic Director. Twenty-nine artists were eventually employed to create these modules as the backbone of the 2020/21 program. Artists were paired with an educator so there was industry knowledge coupled with curriculum expertise, and so that the pedagogy is embedded in the content created.
These modules subsequently connected our established and emerging artists to our regional children and their communities, offering skills, humour, hope and a sense of connection at a time when the arts ecology felt like it was fraying beyond repair.
Each module showcases the specialised artistry, integrity and immense capacity of the individual artist delivered in a way that was engaging, sequential, empowering and palatable for regional children and youth already experiencing isolation, lack of resources and opportunity before COVID-19.
In March 2020 floodwaters were swiftly moving across the region that had until that point been a dust bowl; in April 2021 the same region experienced the might of a mouse plague and then floods again in 2021 and 2022, yet still the resilience and commitment to creativity and connection has been maintained by our communities and the Moorambilla team.
Now all of the Moorambilla Magic Modules (157) have been mapped to the NSW syllabuses (music and dance), as well as visual arts, drama, and PE syllabuses to further support their use in the classroom. Now regional educators who have the will but not the skill to engage with the creative arts, can engage in professional development at school with a sequential empowering resource, of which 42% of the content is First Nations led, created or consulted and where every artist has an understanding and connection to the region.
The Moorambilla Magic Modules demonstrate in a tangible way that we have the knowledge and experience in the arts industry to develop and provide online curriculum content for schools.
Existing evidence, underpinning the Moorambilla modules, supports the clear benefits of artistic education programs in helping students develop better self-confidence and self-efficacy.
These modules are based on direct instruction and are designed to create the maximum level of engagement in students4. They integrate educational theories and practical approaches for differentiated teaching to challenge and cater for the needs of all learners5.
These modules represent a collection of resources (strategies, techniques, processes, ideas, tools, digital technologies/ICT) that support participation and engagement for all learners in arts-based classroom experiences6. They use a range of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies to manage learning, participation and engagement7.
Evidence shows that arts learning promotes teamwork and collaboration. We focus on collaborative tasks which require intense commitment and promote the development of coordination and expressiveness.8
Each module is built on differentiated teaching pedagogies embedded in the design of their structure, content and delivery. The Dance modules employ explicit instruction using imagery, descriptions and metaphors to ‘feel/experience’ the movement9. The music modules are presented sequentially through embodied learning starting with a simple phrase reinforced cumulatively10. The modules use sequential and scaffolded learning taking the children from the known to the unknown, providing a firm foundation which is built on, so the students feel supported as they develop their knowledge and skills.
The modules support student learning through student engagement, reflection, critical and creative thinking, and improving students’ sense of self-concept.11
Interactive video modules were developed for primary and secondary students, covering and mapped to the NSW Educational Standards Authority’s creative arts syllabus. They include song, dance, art, craft, taiko drumming, photography, drama, literacy and Indigenous culture. They are distributed across three learning stages and five curriculum categories:
| Learning Stage | Dance | First Nations | Music & Singing | Visual Arts & Drama | Percussion & Rhythm | Total Modules for each stage |
| 2 (early primary) | 17 | 42 | 34 | 19 | 5 | 70 |
| 3 (late primary/early secondary) | 32 | 54 | 37 | 22 | 6 | 94 |
| 4 (secondary) | 39 | 56 | 44 | 30 | 30 | 137 |
| Total | 157 |
Subjects and artistic presenters are shown in Appendix 1. Top national performers and mentors have been used throughout. Singing coaches include previous members of the Song Company (Anna Fraser, Hannah Fraser and Andrew O’Connor). Taikoz artists explain taiko and general percussion (Anton Lock, Kerry Joyce and Sophie Unsen), Modules have been created by some of Australia’s top dance educators and performers (Jacob Williams, Courtney Scheu, Tai Savage) and many well-known Indigenous artists (Frank Wright, Amy Flannery, Neville Williams-Boney). All of these workshops feature Australian music composed by well-known Australian composers – Kevin Barker, Alice Chance, Andrew Howes, Elena Kats-Chernin, Elizabeth Jigalin, Josephine Gibson, Riley Lee, Christine Pan and Oscar Sweeney and more.
All modules are activity-based – there is no listening without doing. All demonstrate a level of energy matching that of the students.
Click here for 2020 Module Highlights Video (4m28s):
In June 2021, Michelle Leonard, Moorambilla Voices Artistic Director, met with school executives for initial interest consultations around utilising this resource, potential barriers and how to overcome them.
The modules were pilot tested through workshops delivered at schools located in Dubbo and Gulargambone, providing the opportunity for Moorambilla to evaluate the modules’ efficacy as a learning tool and their further market potential. The learnings gained from these evaluations were used to fine-tune the development of the modules being created at the time.
This cycle of testing and review will continue over time, as we work with the schools while we are still developing modules so that we can apply feedback in real time.
They are going to be very useful to teachers because the modules are so well designed by professionals who have done it all before. Brad Haling, teacher Gulargambone Central school.
Gulargambone Central School has used the modules the way Moorambilla anticipated:
Other teachers contacted by Moorambilla have reviewed the modules, with strong positive results.
The modules are an exciting and dynamic online program that have made an enormous difference to my teaching of the Creative Arts. The students have enjoyed the diverse lessons and have made a great connection to country. The units are easy to follow and enjoyable to teach, especially for teachers with no experience of dance or music. Kate Harper, Balranald Central School
All modules developed to date through the Moorambilla Magic Modules are sequential in nature. Skills are taught, reinforced, built upon and extended throughout each individual module as well as each set of modules.
Most modules begin with a warm-up and end with a cool down exercise. Each module’s activities move from simple to more complex activities, carefully scaffolded so that the students experience success by the end of each module. This may be the performance of a First Nations’ sitting down dance (taught through direct instruction) that teaches each movement in context and reinforces each movement phrase along the way; or the drawing of a First Nations animal or fish using the x-ray drawing technique carefully explained and demonstrated bit by bit; or the performance of a complex percussion or taiko drumming pattern learned cumulatively phrase by phrase through speech, movement and imitation.
Most of the modules are in sets of 3, 6 or 12 modules, with each module building on the one before, so that by the end of the sequence students have built a strong skill set in that particular arts area and experienced creative, joyful and successful learning experiences.
In order to establish the relevance of the modules for busy teachers and students in schools Moorambilla Voices has ‘mapped’ the modules to the detailed Outcomes and Objectives of the NSW Syllabuses for primary and secondary schools. The maps contain:
This mapping process provides a crucial link between the classroom and the modules that makes them more meaningful and relevant. It also breaks down the educator’s time barrier administratively to their inclusion.
Many of the artistic projects featured in our 2021 Magic Modules were featured in a live context during our 2022 camps and gala concert. Perhaps most importantly, the 2021 Magic Modules provided the means to continue our strong engagement and relationships with regional NSW school teachers and students, ensuring the success of Moorambilla’s 2022 life-changing, in-person multi-disciplinary arts programs.
The exceptional standard of the Moorambilla Magic Modules has been recognised nationally, being awarded the 2021 APRA / AMCOS National award for Excellence in Music Education.
Moorambilla is enjoying its seventeenth year celebrating the pursuit of artistic excellence, the energy of collaboration, the creation of new music, the sheer joy of singing, dancing, drumming and making art together in this rich and vibrant program. This is acknowledged by the achievement of many national awards over a number of years. We are thrilled to be an important part of the national conversation around identity and excellence.
Click here for more information on the choirs, the candidates and our program please see the attachments – 2022 and 2019 concert programs and flyers.
1 Country – http://www.visitmungo.com.au/aboriginal-country
When Aboriginal people use the English word ‘Country’ it is meant in a special way. For Aboriginal people culture, nature and land are all linked. Aboriginal communities have a cultural connection to the land, which is based on each community’s distinct culture, traditions and laws.
Country takes in everything within the landscape – landforms, waters, air, trees, rocks, plants, animals, foods, medicines, minerals, stories and special places. Community connections include cultural practices, knowledge, songs, stories and art, as well as all people: past, present and future. People have custodial responsibilities to care for their Country, to ensure that it continues in proper order and provides physical sustenance and spiritual nourishment. These custodial relationships may determine who can speak for particular Country.
These concepts are central to Aboriginal spirituality and continue to contribute to Aboriginal identity. Aboriginal communities associate natural resources with the use and benefit of traditional foods and medicines, caring for the land, passing on cultural knowledge and strengthening social bonds.
2 The Brewarrina Fishtraps, or as they are traditionally known Baiame’s Ngunnhu, are a complex network of river stones arranged to form ponds and channels that catch fish as they travel downstream. Known as one of the oldest human-made structures in the world, the traps are located in the Barwon River on the outskirts of Brewarrina.
3 Fingerling – A young fish, especially one less than a year old and about the size of a human finger
4 Smithrim, K., & Upitis, R. (2005). Learning through the Arts: Lessons of Engagement. Canadian Journal of Education, 28(1/2), 109-127.
5 Saunders, J.N. (2019) Dramatic Interventions: A multi-site case study analysis of student outcomes in the School Drama program. University of Sydney.
Lorenza, L.M. (2018) Curriculum change and teachers’ responses: a NSW case study. University of Sydney.
Meiners, J. (2017) So can we dance? : in pursuit of an inclusive dance curriculum for the primary school years in Australia. University of South Australia.
6 Winner, E., Goldstein, T. R., Vincent-Lancrin, S. (2013). Arts for art’s sake? Overview, OECD Publishing.
Bryce, J., Mendelovits, J., Beavis, A., McQueen, J., & Adams, I. (2004). Evaluation of school-based arts education programmes in Australian schools. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research.
Fiske, E. (Ed.). (1999). Champions of change: The impact of arts on learning. Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnerships/President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
7 Dinham, J. (2019). Delivering Authentic Arts Education. Melbourne, AUSTRALIA, Cengage
Bryce, J., Mendelovits, J., Beavis, A., McQueen, J., & Adams, I. (2004). Evaluation of school-based arts education programmes in Australian schools. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research.
8 Hallam, S. (2010) The power of music: Its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people, International Journal of Music Education, 28 (3), 269-289
9 Hattie, J., (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge
10 Juntunen, Marja-Leena. (2005). Exploring and learning music through embodied experiences, “Music and Development – Challenges for Music Education”, The First European Conference on Developmental Psychology of Music Proceedings. 273-276.
11 Fegley, L.E. (2010) Impact of Dance on Student Learning https://archives.evergreen.edu/masterstheses/Accession89-10MIT/Fegley_LMIT2010.pdf accessed 10 June 2021
Becker, K. (2013). Dancing through the school day: how dance catapults learning in elementary school. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 84(3), 6-8.
Bloomfield, A & Childs J. (2013) Teaching integrated arts in the primary school: Dance, drama, music and the visual arts, Routledge, New York.
Bryce, J., Mendelovits, J., Beavis, A., McQueen, J., & Adams, I. (2004). Evaluation of school-based arts education programmes in Australian schools. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research.
Fegley, L.E. (2010) Impact of Dance on Student Learning https://archives.evergreen.edu/masterstheses/Accession89-10MIT/Fegley_LMIT2010.pdf
Fiske, E. (Ed.). (1999). Champions of change: The impact of arts on learning. Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnerships/President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
George, E.M. & Coch, D. (2011) Music Training and working memory: an ERP study, Neurosychologia, 49(5), 1083-1094
Goldsworthy A. (2022) The slow fade of music education https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2022/june/anna-goldsworthy/slow-fade-music-education#mtr
Haselbach, B (1981), Margaret Murray (Translator), Improvisation, Dance, Movement, St Louis: Magna Music Baton
Ho, P., Tsao, J.C.I., Bloch, L., Zeltzer, L. K. (2011) The Impact of group drumming on Socio-Emotional Behaviour in Low-Income Children. https://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2011/250708.pdf
Kemp, A. E. (1984) Carl Orff, A Seminal Influence in World Music Education, International Journal of Music Education, os-3: 61, 62-64. DOI: 10.1177/025576148400300114
Lorenza, L.M. (2018) Curriculum change and teachers’ responses: a NSW case study. University of Sydney.
Meiners, J. (2017) So can we dance? : in pursuit of an inclusive dance curriculum for the primary school years in Australia. University of South Australia.
Mungo National Park Website, Share Mungo /Culture: Aboriginal Country http://www.visitmungo.com.au/aboriginal-country (accessed 6 November 2022)
Murdi Paaki Regional Assembly, Brewarrina Fish Traps https://www.mpra.com.au/brewarrina-fish-traps (accessed November 6, 2022)
Orff, C (1963). The Schulwerk: its origins and aims. Music Educators Journal, 49 (5), 69-74. DOI: 10.2307,3389951
Pavlou, V. (2013). Investigating interrelations in visual arts education: aesthetic enquiry, possibility thinking and creativity. International Journal of Education through Art, 17(1), 71-88.
Pitts, S. (2012) Chances and Choices: Exploring the Impact of Music Education. London: Oxford University Press
Saunders, J.N. (2019) Dramatic Interventions: A multi-site case study analysis of student outcomes in the School Drama program. University of Sydney.
Schellenberg, E.G. & Mankarious, M (2012) Music training and emotional comprehension in childhood. Emotion, 12 (5), 887.
Staveley, R. (2018), The Impact of Cognitive Neuroscience on Music Pedagogy, Orff Schulwerk in America: Our 50th Anniversary Issue, www.aosa.org, Spring 2018, 68-75.
The Free Dictionary, Definition of a Fingerling, www.thefreedictionary.com/fingerlings (accessed on November 6, 2022).
Winner, E., Goldstein, T. R., Vincent-Lancrin, S. (2013). Arts for art’s sake? Overview, OECD Publishing.
Wide Open Sky – Award winning documentary about Moorambilla Voices https://www.wideopenskymovie.com/trailer
Michelle Leonard, OAM Michelle Leonard is the Founder, Artistic Director and Conductor of Moorambilla Voices. Michelle is widely sought after as a choral clinician on Australian repertoire and appears regularly as a guest speaker, adjudicator and workshop facilitator. Michelle was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for Services to the Community and Performing Arts in 2017, 2018 the Sydney University Alumni of the year award for services to the Arts and in 2019 was named in the Financial Review’s top 100 most influential women. In 2021 Michelle led the rehearsal nationally for the ABC Classic choir.
Margie Moore, OAM, Arts and Education consultant Margie has extensive experience as an arts, education and music educator and administrator. She has had successful careers as a teacher, music consultant, lecturer in arts education and managing the highly regarded Sydney Symphony Education Program. She offers consultancy to a range of arts organisations in Australia and the UK. Margie has been on the board of Moorambilla Voices since 2010 and has held executive positions in both the NSW and National Orff Schulwerk Associations.
Primary class learning from Hannah Fraser https://vimeo.com/526787115
Lexi singing along with Hannah Fraser Module 1 https://vimeo.com/623171922
2020 Moorambilla Magic Module highlights:
Performance outcomes: 2013 Coonamble Showground
Subjects of the modules, all of which have been mapped to the Creative Arts syllabus, are:
* Indicates a First Nations artist/presenter
After more than 65,000 years of continuous culture, it’s time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are recognised in our 122-year-old Constitution. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people want recognition in a practical form by having a say on issues and policies that impact their lives.
It’s not complicated or confusing, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are asking Australians to say ‘YES’ if they agree that we should be able to give feedback to the Federal Government when they are making laws and policies for us.
When the Constitution was being drafted, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were still being murdered, along with other atrocities and the view was we would die out with so few of us left. So, there was no thought or reason to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the document that sets out the rules for Australia.
I know many people are anxious and don’t want to silence any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ voices, but it’s curious that some people feel that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must have a 100% consensus to move forward and create a better Australia for all. We are just as diverse as any other group, we need opposition in our ranks, so we can have the robust conversations that deliver best practice and outcomes for our people.
Yes23 shared with us their polling which shows that 83% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people support being recognised in the Constitution (in the practical form of a Voice to Parliament). Further to this, there are numerous surveys and polls online that put this support at between 80% to 87%.
It is important to listen to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, when they talk about Sovereignty and Treaty before Voice, to understand their position isn’t against Constitutional recognition, but a continued fight against broken promises, oppression, systemic racism, exclusion and entrenched poverty. We all fight to better the lives and create opportunities for our families and our communities, we just choose a different path to get there.
Not only have government, but laws also and policies made for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples failed for centuries, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been blamed for this failure. This has contributed to stereotyping and misconceptions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
When I went to school, I learned about Captain Cook, the First Fleet and how the British ‘civilised’ the savage Natives. I was told not to identify as Aboriginal because I could get away with being white and I was asked why I was hanging around with ‘those’ people referring to my friends who were darker than me. I became disengaged from school; school became more of a social experience instead of a learning one. Educational disengagement is still relevant to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Indeed, many remote communities do not have high schools, so at 12 years old many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are put on a plane and sent away for school, away from everything they know, their family, community, culture, language and Country. There is little to no support, they are scared living in such a foreign environment and of course they don’t want to go back to that.
Our children deserve access to education in the community in which they live, they deserve to have their culture recognised and their history told to build understanding and to break down those misconceptions. They deserve opportunities that lead to employment and careers, they should be our hope for the future. This is just one reason why a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous Voice to Parliament is so important.
Governments have taken a generic approach to issues in our communities, and this doesn’t get to the heart of the cause of those issues. Each of our communities have different priorities and needs, and they have their own answers on how best to fix them. With a Voice to Parliament, we can share all this information, give our input on how to address them in a culturally safe way and really get to the core of the issue.
We have had representative bodies before, but when there is a change of government, they are de-funded and collapse. The vital work done fades into obscurity. We are continually having to start the work from scratch, time and time again: the same emotional and cultural labour.
We have sent petitions, asked to be seen and heard, rallied, lobbied, campaigned, we have gone to governments, and we have gone to the monarchs, yet our issues are still the same. Governments continue to create policies that are expensive with no meaningful outcome, and which are often more harmful than productive.
This time, in 2023, we are inviting the Australian people (through the Uluru Statement from the Heart) to walk with us, to help heal our Nation and to create a fairer, inclusive and better Australia for all.
We are asking you to say YES to recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as the First Peoples, and to enshrine a Voice, so we can have meaningful input on the issues affecting us (our peoples and our communities).
Will you answer our call and vote YES?
References
The Yes23 website can be accessed at: https://yes23.com.au/
Lara Watson is a Birri Gubba woman from Central Queensland.
Lara worked on the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ (ACTU’s) successful campaign to deliver working rights for Community Development Program workers.
She is currently the ACTU’s Indigenous Officer and is leading their Unions For Yes campaign. She also created the artwork for this campaign. The symbol she used in it means ‘wadja gathering’. ‘Wadja’ in Wiri language means ‘speech’ or ‘word’ (the closest word to ‘voice’); gathering because the campaign is a community one)
Vocational Education for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students should never be a challenge – for our students or teachers. We need to empower our mob to be the best they can be, whilst maintaining their connections to culture, community and language. It can’t just be in the Aboriginal Studies space where this is found.
It starts with reviewing current practices in the delivery of Vocational Education and Training (VET) courses and how we can move away from the Westernised way of thinking in order to teach a more holistic approach that supports our students. How can teachers be best equipped to support their Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students?
We need to move away from the outdated assessment models that do not cater for the needs of our students. This involves taking a deeper dive into how they learn and why before we assess whether they can. We need to look at ways of knowing, being and doing, as well as providing a culturally safe learning space either online, or face to face, before any successful learning can occur.
Students need to feel that they have a voice, a say in what works for them and feel safe to share that with their teachers and peers.
Sometimes it’s as simple as that……listening.
Teaching at TAFE can be filled with mountains of compliance, taking time away from the learning. It can also be a place where Culturally Safe practices are absent. When we do take the time to be present in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander spaces, listening and learning can take place.
Too often we are asked to complete training that is merely a tick-box with no thought on the practices behind it. There must be a real focus on Cultural Practices, Cultural Knowledge and respect. These can’t be taught via a Moodle.
Currently the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment Education (TAE40116) does not contain a unit on First Nations andragogy. It is merely a footnote in the Language, Literacy and Numeracy (TAELLN411) unit of competency.
How can we make change when it isn’t included in the fundamental training course required to be TAFE Teachers?
To make an impact, we need to start with education.
Training should be provided to all teaching staff in Cultural Awareness and Cultural Safety. These are two separate things that can have an impact on Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander staff and students in various ways.
Cultural Awareness – shows respect for the culture with whom one is working, which can aid people working with these communities to build better relationships and be more effective in their work.( ANU, 2023)1
Cultural Safety – is about creating an environment that is safe for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.( Vic Health, 2023) 2
But we really should be aiming for Cultural Capability – basically it’s ‘walk the walk and talk the talk’.
Cultural capability refers to the skills, knowledge, behaviours and systems that are required to plan, support, improve and deliver services in a culturally respectful and appropriate manner. (QLD Health, 2022) 3
TAFE NSW has designed and developed a Course in Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Cultural Education (known as ACEP) to provide training in Aboriginal andragogy – Aboriginal Ways of Knowing, Being or Doing. To maintain cultural integrity in delivery, trainers must be Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.
To deliver the Aboriginal Cultural Education Program (ACEP), you must be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Currently there are approximately 130 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander teachers in TAFE NSW. However, this training is vital to support the wellbeing and Cultural Safety of staff and students.
The need across the nation to employ more Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander trainers and assessors is important. Having programs where pay to train is offered to niche industry skills areas could be a viable solution. Hopefully, a program can be developed for Aboriginal Language Teachers to build capacity across the state.
When writing curriculum for Training packages and accredited qualifications for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander People, the need to engage, consult and co-design with Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Subject Matter Experts (SME) is vital for the cultural safety of the training. This will ensure language discourse is centred around such practices and allow Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples to have a greater impact in the delivery. From this, Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) will be able to offer a qualification that is fit for purpose and provides all important Culturally Safe components. In order for all stakeholder to achieve their goals, the place of learning must be friendly and inviting for all.
It is important to provide Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students with a Culturally Safe learning environment within the Certificate IV in Training and Education (TAE). The length of time, the onerous assessments and the lack of Cultural Safety continue to push Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students out of the course. Even with the new changes coming in, there is little to no expectation that a TAFE teacher is required to have completed one unit on Aboriginal Studies, unlike our school based colleagues.
Recently South Australia Training and Skills Minister Blair Boyer made the push to address racism in the Responsible Service of Alcohol Training Packages, which had been renewed in 2021 with this clause still in it. This change was long overdue but highlights the trauma that can occur from stereotyping Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
Federal assessment requirements for the RSA certification, required for workers to serve alcohol in public settings, state that participants must learn about the “impact of excessive drinking” on local neighbourhoods, premises, staff, customers and “particular types of customers who are at heightened risk” – with the first group on that list being “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.”4(Guardian, 2023)
Victoria Legal Aid has a Cultural Safety Reflection Tool that you can use like a WHS audit. You can access it here
Things to remember:
Nationally accredited courses like Indigenous Policing Our Way Delivery (IPROWD), Diploma of Aboriginal Studies and Aboriginal Languages provide Culturally Safe environments for students. The curriculum is tailored to the students, the teachers are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, an Aboriginal Student Support Officer (ASSO) is attached to the class and Cultural knowledge is shared in a communal way, not teacher-student but as a Community. There is no hierarchy in Aboriginal Education.
They are the exception to the rule as most staff and students are not Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. This does not diminish the great work Teachers at TAFE do, but it does show that when Aboriginal Education is at the forefront of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander’s learning journey, great things happen.
Australian National University (ANU) ( updated 2023)
Indigenous Children and Families : Cultural Awareness
Guardian the (2023) Indigenous Australians racially profiled in alcohol training courses, SA minister says
Queensland Health (updated 2022) Cultural Capability
Victorian Department of Health (updated 2023) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural safety
Victoria Legal Aid Cultural Safety Reflection Tool
Anissa Jones is currently at TAFE NSW. She is the Accredited Course Specialist and Teacher based in Cootamundra. She is a proud Boorooberongal Dharug woman from the Richmond area in New South Wales.
Anissa has taught for over twenty years in both the ACT and NSW in a variety of roles ranging from preschool to university. Whilst in the ACT, Anissa was an assistant RTO Manager of a small RTO based across several secondary schools primarily in the Tuggeranong area, managing compliance, professional development and training. After completing the MILE program in 2022, Anissa began teaching Dharug Dhalang at TAFE NSW in Certificate I to Dharug Community members and teachers, with Certificate II starting mid-year.
Currently Anissa holds the position of TAFE TA Executive Member for NSWTF and is the NSW TAFE representative on Yalukit Yulendj – the AEU’s Executive for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers and most recently presented at TAFE Directors Australia on Aboriginal Pathways in VET.
I have been a member of the trade union movement since I commenced my working life at the port of Darwin at seventeen years old. It is there on the wharves, through the Maritime Union of Australia, that I learnt of the value of using the leverage of unity. I have seen individual workers uniting to make change at the workplace level; I have seen ports and state branches uniting to make change at the state level; and I have seen trade unions themselves, united in very specific campaigns to make major, lasting, national change that is to the benefit of all workers.
The union movement has won many a battle for workers – from wharfies to teachers – and social justice for all. We have brought our society from one where workers were mere servants, punished for disobeying the master; we have come from a place where children were forced to labour in harsh conditions and First Nations people were slaves, to a society that now enjoys universal health care, weekends, various loadings, allowances and legislated rights. Each of these wins for the union movement and society were maligned by employers and right-wing politicians who warned of impending doom from our success. But their claims of Armageddon, should these changes happen, have been thoroughly proved as selfish fearmongering.
Workers and their communities have progressed so far because unions are organised at many levels, including at the highest political level since the establishment of the Australian Labor Party. The working class has progressed because we have built strong and unapologetically representative structures that can influence laws and policies and organise to hold employers and politicians to account.
We are always under attack because of this.
I was a 20-year-old wharfie when Prime Minister John Howard colluded with the National Farmers Federation to silence the voice of maritime workers. In the middle of the night in April 1998, Patricks Stevedores sent balaclava clad mercenaries on to wharves around the country to physically drag us from our workplaces, locking us out of our livelihoods. It was part of the Howard Government’s grand plan to silence all workers by destroying their unions.
Howard failed to destroy the MUA. Because of our long-standing structure, discipline, financial resources and the leverage of unity that the union movement had, after several months of battle on the streets and in the courts, we victoriously marched back on to the wharves to work.
Where Howard failed though, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as a collective, he succeeded. He attacked the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, a representative Voice for First Nations people. He used its flaws as a weapon, instead of dealing with its issues and building on its strengths. Since ATSIC was silenced, we have seen the Northern Territory Emergency Response, or Intervention, we have seen hundreds of millions of dollars misdirected away from the communities and services that are needed, and we have seen the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens widen. Divided, we suffer.
I have briefly described how unions have achieved great progress for workers and society in general because it is one of the ways I understand the significance of establishing a constitutionally enshrined First Nations Voice to Parliament, as called for in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It is also how I understand that at Uluru, the 250 delegates, from throughout the Australian continent, that shaped and endorsed the Uluru Statement, made the right decision, prioritising the Voice in our proposed sequence of change.
Before I go on, it is worth briefly recapping on how the Uluru Statement from the Heart came to be, and what has happened since.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart is an unprecedented national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander consensus that came from the rare opportunity – an opportunity only achieved through relentless advocacy – to conduct a well-resourced and intensive series of dialogues culminating in a national constitutional convention at Uluru. The Statement brings together the collective wisdom of over 200 years of struggle.
At that final convention in the heart of the nation, on 26 May 2017, we were 270 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from throughout this great continent and from many different First Nations. The difficulty, the hard work, the passion of the debate and the achievement on the third and final morning – the achievement of a national consensus – cannot be underestimated for its national significance.
The endorsement of the Uluru Statement was a political feat that should be recognised, celebrated and taught in schools.
The call for a constitutionally enshrined Voice was officially dismissed by Prime Minister Turnbull in October of 2017, misinforming the Australian public that the proposal was for a third chamber in parliament. But this dismissal has been turned around by the weight of numbers – by a majority of Australians who say that if they were to have the opportunity to answer the invitation to walk with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in a referendum for a Voice, they would say YES.
To turn the dismissal around, a mountain of work has been done by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advocates and our allies. A turn around that is even more remarkable because we have had few resources with which to campaign with; there has been no government support to educate people about the Uluru Statement and the reasons we gave for its proposals, nothing from which to even build a campaigning organisation. We were starting from scratch.
The Uluru Statement itself, the sacred canvas, 1.6 by 1.8 m imbued with Anangu Tjukurrpa and the 250 names of representatives, proved to be our most powerful campaign tool. The Maritime Union of Australia, at the request of Aunty Pat Anderson who led the dialogue process to Uluru, seconded me to take the canvas around the country to inspire a people’s movement. For 18 months I hit the road and everywhere the Uluru Statement went, support multiplied. Another key moment was when Wiradjuri and Wailwan lawyer, Teela Reid, challenged Malcolm Turnbull on national television exposing his ignorance.
In the Prime Minister’s electorate of Wentworth, the grandchildren of the great Gurindji leader, Vincent Lingiari, engaged with voters to explain the bungling of the great opportunity the Uluru Statement provides – the opportunity to right the wrongs of the past in a way that the people who were wronged themselves had chosen.
At the Garma festival, the late John Christopherson, an Elder from Kakadu in Arnhem Land, spoke of the hope that the Uluru Statement gives this country, how there is nothing to lose, and 100,000 years of continuous culture to gain, by enshrining the Voices of First Nations people in the constitution.
Teachers across the nation have also taken action. Without waiting for education resources, many learnt about the Uluru Statement and proceeded to teach children who have taken the message in to their homes causing the adults in their lives to accept the invitation to walk with us.
A grass roots movement has increasingly made it loud and clear that we were not going to take no for an answer to the Uluru Statement.
In 2018, moved by this growing movement of people who had learnt about the Uluru Statement’s call for a Voice, the government established the bi-partisan Joint Select Committee into the Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Inevitably, the committee’s final report recommended that the Voice is the most desired reform, and that a co-design process begin.
This year, the co-design groups, appointed by the Morrison Government, have consulted with the public. Over 5000 of the submissions from individuals and organisations, from all different backgrounds and from across the political spectrum, called for the Voice question to go to a referendum. The Voice co-design final report recommended that the Government should not ignore the strong support for a Voice referendum in Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.
Polling since 2017 has indicated a continuous growth in the numbers of Australians who will vote yes in a Voice referendum. The latest polling by CT Group from August 2021, indicates 59% of voters would support a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous Voice to Parliament in a referendum.
Polling done specifically on Indigenous people has also grown. Support is now at 80%. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who say they will vote yes, what compels them is that a voice is a unifying reform.
Which brings me to my call out to teachers to join the movement simply by teaching the Uluru Statement to children and their families.
The campaign for a constitutionally enshrined Voice is the most important campaign in our lifetimes. Whether we are advocating for the revitalising and preserving of First Nations languages, or truth-telling about this nation’s history; whether we are trying to strengthen our land rights; reform the justice system; gain greater resources to teach Indigenous culture and languages; or simply have more homes built in our remote communities – all that we do depends on our ability to build leverage and use it in a way that moves the nation’s ultimate decision makers in Canberra, and then to hold them to account if they fail or ignore us.
A constitutionally protected Voice precedes truth-telling in our priorities, firstly because truth-telling is happening. Great work is being done on truth telling including in schools. But truth-telling needs a representative Voice.
What is the truth of the past without the political power to use it for our future?
A constitutionally protected Voice precedes treaty, not exclusively – treaty talks are already happening in the states and Territories. A Voice must be established with urgency to support treaty making where First Nations have chosen to do so, because in a federal system, it is the Commonwealth we must reckon with more importantly than the states.
Finally, I reiterate these words: A constitutionally protected Voice.
We must constitutionally protect a Voice because governments like Howard’s will always come along. As a union member, I know that when a collective of grass roots people make those in power uncomfortable, they will move to silence them.
ATSIC was one of many Voices we built to defy a government’s mistreatment and cruelty, to bring our voices together in a chorus that was hard to ignore. It was silenced as were the Indigenous representative bodies that came before it. It is time to unite and build a structure of unity for First Nations that can never be silenced again.
I believe we can win a referendum to protect and empower our Voice.
And the movement toward success will be built in the classrooms and schools across Australia. The words of the Uluru Statement – how it covers pre-colonisation; our connection to Country; what sovereignty means to us; what the problems are and how they are unacceptable; how we can rectify them with recognition, a Voice, truth telling and a settlement – can be used in many creative ways that will engage children and young people. If teachers can imagine ways that will provide children and young people with the means to take home the invitation in the Uluru Statement, to the adults in their lives, our research shows that the adults in their lives are likely to decide to vote YES.
The movement starts with you.
Go to www.fromtheheart.com.au to find helpful resources.
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Thomas Mayor is a Kaurareg Aboriginal and Kalkalgal, Erubamle Torres Strait Islander man. He is a union official with the MUA and is an advocate in the campaign for a constitutionally enshrined Voice – the key proposal in the Uluru Statement. Thomas is the author of four books published by Hardie Grant Publishing, and has articles and essays published in The Guardian, Griffith Review, The Saturday Paper, and Sydney Morning Herald.
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