Seeding success in indigenous Australian higher education: Indigenous Australian students' participation in higher education and potential ways forward

While access to higher education has increased for Indigenous Australians, participation and completion rates remain lower than those of non-Indigenous Australians. A sound evidence base is needed to ground equity initiatives if they are to address the specific needs of Indigenous students. This paper presents the results of a scoping review of empirical research focusing on the participation of Indigenous students in higher education. The purpose of the scoping review was to synthesise empirical research on aspirations for, and barriers and enablers to, higher education that were published between 2000 and 2016 (n = 57), and identify areas where further research is needed. Despite a recent increase in research on this topic, relatively little attention has been paid to Indigenous students’ aspirations while they are at school. We argue that future research should take account of school students’ aspirations for higher education, including primary school students; the similitude of barriers and enablers across the student life cycle; differences within Indigenous community and among Indigenous students; and, the insights emerging from Indigenous methodologies and scholarship.

In Australian higher education, Indigenous students are defined as students who selfreport as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander student to their higher education provider, either at the time of their enrolment or during their studies. This briefing paper considers how Australian universities are performing against parity targets for the participation of Indigenous students in higher education. It finds that despite over three decades of the widening participation agenda, significant work remains to reach targets for enrolments and completions in undergraduate, postgraduate coursework, and postgraduate research.

Indigenous Australians are underrepresented and considerably disadvantaged within the Australian system of higher education. The various measures taken by Australian universities over the past decades have produced varying levels of success in increasing Indigenous participation and completion rates. In order to continue improving Indigenous Australian participation in higher education, it is important to understand the current patterns of participation and factors within universities that are associated with participation and success. In this article we analyse higher education student and staff statistics available from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and information sourced from the web sites of 40 Australian universities to examine correlations between various Indigenous student support mechanisms and Indigenous students' higher education participation rates. Our results indicate that there is a dual system of Indigenous higher education, with one group of universities excelling at attracting Indigenous students, and a different group of universities demonstrating high Indigenous student completion rates. We argue that challenges remain in determining how to increase commencements at universities with high Indigenous completion rates without compromising entrance requirements or further diluting the level of student support, and how to increase completion rates at universities with higher numbers of Indigenous students.

This article focuses on answering two main questions: Why is this phenomenon occurring for Indigenous students in higher education and what are effective solutions for the retention and success of Indigenous students in higher education?

Indigenous Australian postgraduate students experience different barriers from those encountered by non-Indigenous students. In the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate study, Indigenous students are more likely to come from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, have lower personal incomes and lack family and other networks supportive of engagement with tertiary, and especially postgraduate, study. While there is a growing literature on Indigenous participation in higher education, with the exception of a few notable examples, there is little known about the effectiveness of support mechanisms and issues for Indigenous students undertaking postgraduate study. Drawing on interviews with current and past Indigenous postgraduate students at The University of Queensland, this paper problematises the postgraduate experience for Indigenous Australian students, identifying common themes in their accounts. It also discusses one of the outcomes of the project along with planned future developments that aim to provide better support for Indigenous Australian postgraduate students at The University of Queensland. By knowing and acting upon the kinds of mechanisms that can assist Indigenous postgraduate students, the disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous student participation in postgraduate study can begin to be addressed.

Over the past five decades, policies and programmes aimed at supporting Indigenous students have increased Indigenous student participation in Canadian higher education. However, the effects of colonisation continue to manifest in systematic barriers to Indigenous students’ success. In this chapter, we emphasise Indigenous students’ accounts of overcoming such challenges, while focusing on a particular subset of Indigenous students in higher education: Indigenous women who pursue postsecondary education while caring for children. Drawing on qualitative interview data with nine Indigenous student-mothers, we explore their experiences navigating postsecondary education through the lens of an Indigenous wholistic framework. This framework foregrounds the intersections among intellectual, physical, cultural and emotional realms, as well the integral connections among Indigenous individuals, family and community. In this chapter we represent these Indigenous women’s experiences as three essential teachings: responsibility to others, challenging expectations and resiliency through relationships. These teachings offer an expanded view of wholistic support for Indigenous students and for student-parents more broadly. The wisdom of the Indigenous student-mothers in this study offers a more transformative vision of support, specifically, structures, policies and practices that recognise and value students’ wholistic (integrated) identities as women, mothers, students and Indigenous people.

Chapter 4 - Supporting Indigenous Students Through the University Journey: The Elder in Residence Program

This study addresses the role of Indigenous students in higher education regarding the practices of recognition and invisibilization of linguistic, ontological, and epistemic identities. We focus on a Colombian university and examine how Indigenous students contest and reshape the legacies of coloniality that permeate cultural, academic, and organizational practices. We draw on principles of a critical intercultural view in combination with elements from a decolonial perspective to explain the ways students’ intersectional subjectivities, languages, and communities are represented and positioned and how students engage in agentive action to reshape and contest colonial practices. Data collection included a sociolinguistic survey, field notes, interviews, a Círculo de Palabra, and documents. Findings show that Indigenous students engage in counterhegemonic agentic enactments through processes of material and symbolic reterritorialization. Indigenous students' agency on campus, more than an individual trait, appears a collective enactment of their social, cultural, and political aspirations and historical struggles.

This article attempts to highlight literature that focuses on Indigenous students, including the various areas that work to support and honor Indigenous students, faculty, staff, and communities. Only since 2000 has there been more literature produced by Indigenous scholars that honors Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences. This article attempts to focus on Indigenous-authored and Indigenous-centered literature whose goal is to shed light on how we better support Indigenous students through representation, research, teaching, and learning to the praxis of being an Indigenous student affairs professional and faculty member.

Integrated systematic review on educational strategies that promote academic success and resilience in undergraduate indigenous students

In the scope of the universities, new challenges are placed daily with the aim of overcoming the limitations which hinder the full participation of the subjects. In this sense, the inclusion of indigenous students in higher education represents an iconic and challenging reality. The article discusses how indigenous students and teachers who participate in the undergraduate course in Nursing from the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT) in Sinop, Brazil, perceive the Indigenous Inclusion Program (PROIND), introduced there. It is, therefore, an exploratory, descriptive and interpretative study. Four indigenous students and six teachers participated in the study. The data collection was carried out through semi-structured interviews. The perception of the students prioritized the operational and pragmatic aspects, since the political aspects and the critical perception appear only underlying. In their statements, access to higher education was perceived as a federal government initiative, available to the indigenous peoples, and not as a right, an achievement or mitigatory measure. For the teachers, the issue of affirmative policies created certain uneasiness either by not wishing to speak contrary to them, or because they could not find adequate arguments to fight or defend them. The formal entry and the daily presence of the indigenous students in university spaces, when analyzed by more careful lenses, reveal a new form of exclusion, sometimes explicit, sometimes dissimulated, especially in the classroom and spaces of socialization. As will be seen in the text, there is still much to be done and built in order to effectively universalize the offer of quality higher education for indigenous peoples.
\nNo âmbito das universidades, novos desafios são postos, cotidianamente, com o intuito de superar as limitações que impedem a participação plena dos sujeitos. Nesse sentido, a inclusão de estudantes indígenas nos cursos superiores caracteriza uma realidade emblemática e desafiadora. O artigo discute como os acadêmicos indígenas e os professores que participam do curso de graduação em Enfermagem da Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso (UFMT), no campus de Sinop, Brasil, percebem o Programa de Inclusão Indígena (Proind) lá implantado. Trata-se, portanto, de um estudo exploratório, interpretativo e descritivo. Participaram do estudo quatro acadêmicos indígenas e seis professores do curso. A coleta de dados deu-se por meio da técnica de entrevista utilizando um roteiro semiestruturado. A percepção dos discentes priorizou as questões operacionais e pragmáticas, uma vez que os aspectos políticos e a percepção crítica aparecem apenas subjacentes. Nos seus depoimentos, o acesso aos cursos superiores foi percebido como uma iniciativa do governo federal, disponibilizada aos indígenas, e não como um direito, uma conquista ou uma medida mitigatória. Para os docentes, a questão das políticas afirmativas despertou certa inquietação, quer por não desejarem se manifestar contrariamente a elas, quer por não encontrarem argumentos adequados para combatê-las ou defendê-las. O ingresso formal e a presença cotidiana de indígenas nos espaços universitários, quando analisados por lentes mais cuidadosas, revelam uma nova forma de exclusão, ora explícita, ora dissimulada, especialmente nas salas de aula e nos espaços de socialização. Como se verá no texto, ainda há muito a ser feito e construído no sentido de universalizar efetivamente a oferta da educação superior de qualidade para os povos indígenas.

PurposeService marketers are increasingly aware of inequalities triggered by service systems and the need to prioritize practical strategies for reducing inequalities. A priority area for the Australian Government is reducing university education inequities for Indigenous Australians. This paper aims to examine how Indigenous Australian university students build and leverage their capabilities and strengths, harnessing service providers’ efforts towards enhancing participation (and completion) in university education – an essential transformative outcome for reducing inequalities.Design/methodology/approachA three-stage qualitative research process explored student retention/completion and capability building among a sample of Indigenous Australian university students, typically under-represented in the higher education sector.FindingsApplying a manual thematic analysis, the findings reveal Indigenous students’ value co-creating capabilities (summarized in three dimensions) harness multi-actor processes extending beyond the service provider. Five dimensions summarize the service provider’s transformative service activities that strengthen capabilities for Indigenous Australian university students. Networks of place (a structured Indigenous Centre); processes (university systems); and people (social support), including peer-to-peer networks, are important service assemblages.Practical implicationsThe authors present implications for supporting Indigenous students in persisting with and completing higher education. More broadly, the authors provide recommendations for service marketers to resolve barriers to service equality and enhance strengths-based approaches to value co-creation.Originality/valueUnderpinned by a strengths-based approach, the authors contribute towards an agenda of sustainable transformative services. Although considerable research reviews the experiences of Indigenous students, little research has taken a transformative service research perspective. Addressing this, the authors propose a conceptual framework linking consumers’ agentic capabilities with transformative service mediator practices.

The decolonization of the curriculum has become a much-discussed process in higher education, and it is particularly pertinent to the inclusion of Indigenous students in the tertiary sector. While the momentum grows for a rapid integration of decolonization of the curriculum into higher education practices, the literature suggests that these efforts so far have tackled content rather than pedagogy itself. Universal design for learning (UDL), on the other hand, appears as a promising framework to support instructors as they engage more deeply with the process of decolonizing pedagogical practices. The chapter explores the phenomenological insights of the author regarding the ways UDL is contributing to this reflection on the inherently Euro-centric nature of classroom practices. The chapter also examined wider repercussions the implementation of UDL to the Indigenous student experience will have on UDL advocacy generally, on higher education reform, and on the future format of support services for this clientele.

This systematic review examines the sociolinguistic challenges faced by trilingual Indigenous students in higher education in Latin America from 2020 to 2024. The methodology used in this review was adapted from Kitchenham’s Procedures for Performing Systematic Reviews (2004) and incorporated ideas from Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) as outlined by (Urrútia & Bonfill, 2010). Twenty-five peer-reviewed articles were selected based on their focus on three main languages, namely, Spanish, English and Indigenous languages in higher education in Latin American countries. The results suggest the need to pay more attention to the region’s underrepresented Indigenous languages, such as Bribris, Nasa, Misak, Guaymis, and others. Therefore, the review highlights the importance of developing academic programs with an intercultural perspective and implementing concrete language policies to ensure inclusion, equity and cultural preservation.

This chapter extends the findings of a four-year investigation (2012–2015) into the processes, the data, the issues, the enablers and constraints, the opportunities and the successes associated with the transition of Indigenous students into higher education across the nation (Kinnane et al. ‘Can’t be what you can’t see’: the transition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students into higher education: Final report 2014. Office for Learning and Teaching, Sydney, 2014). This research described exemplar thinking, principles of successful programs, and identified elements of leading practice in the context of current trends and overall policy shifts relating to Indigenous experiences of higher education in 26 universities across Australia. (cont'd).