A study of children's roles in a rapidly changing Aboriginal community

Abstract

This is a study of 14-16 year old Aboriginal children at the Elcho Island Mission in Arnhem Land where tribal Aborigines have been in contact with Europeans for just over twenty-five years. It examines aspects of the culture contact situation.A survey is made of the literature dealing with culture contact to establish guiding principles for a theoretical orientation and a research design.The theoretical approach to the study shows the inter-relationship of internal and external determinants of behaviour. It argues the case for first studying the external determinants, namely social structure and culture, in exploratory research of this kind. Role theory provides a useful set of constructs for examining social structure and culture. Related research suggests certain relationships between the role constructs, and these provide a basis for formulating six hypotheses.The home, the peer group and the school are described as three significant social systems in the lives of 14-16 year old children. Because parents, European teachers and children are three important categories of people in these social systems, they are used as subjects. In the empirical investigation they state their own and attributed conditions about children*s behaviour in each of the social systems. The thirty-three behaviours in the role instrument are selected on the basis of role conflict.Nonparametric statistics are used to test the hypotheses and explore the data. The main findings of the study show the importance of the three social systems in the lives of children. Subjects perceive that children change their behaviour to suit the social system in which they find themselves. It appears that they resolve role conflict by living in at least three worlds - the home, the peer group and the school. There are marked disparities between what children should do and what they actually do in the social systems. An examination of subjects' cognitions about children's behaviour reveals complex patterns of agreement and understanding.Stress is placed on the importance of using the vernacular during field research. This in turn raises the problem of developing an ordinal scale using Aboriginal quantitative terms.The educational implications of the study focus upon the place of the school in the community.