Culturally Nourishing Schooling Papers | Culturally Nourishing Schooling

With the first phase of the CNS project coming to a close, our quantitative and qualitative publications have highlighted the impact of the CNS program on whole-of-school change. These papers are both programmatic and summative.

The publications arising from Phase 1address key themes of the research project, such as whole-of-school reform, the undeniable impact of working with local Aboriginal communities and mentors for change, changes occurring in the ways teachers plan curriculum and engage learners, and what it means to lead a school committed to cultural nourishment. The publications below demonstrate the veracity of our findings for communities, teachers, leadership, and whole-of-school change.

Community Expertise and Mentorship

Aboriginal cultural educators teaching the teachers: mobilising a collaborative cultural mentoring program to affect change

C Burgess, V Harwood (2021)

The Australian Educational Researcher

This journal article presents a compelling case for the need for Cultural Mentors to support non-Indigenous educators' professional practice. Evidence from surveys and interviews indicates that Cultural Mentors as cultural and educational experts in Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander education positively impact non-Indigenous teachers’ understanding of more appropriate teaching and learning processes for Aboriginal students and subsequent engagement.

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Decolonising Indigenous education: the case for cultural mentoring in supporting Indigenous knowledge reproduction

C Burgess, M Bishop, K Lowe (2020)

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 43:1, 1-14

This journal article is co-authored by investigators of the CNS project with the material presented within contributing to the conceptual underpinnings of the project. The article shifts away from deficit discourses surrounding Indigenous people in Australia to provocate on the need for Indigenous-led professional learning for classroom educators to improve their skills in developing culturally responsive practices in schooling. Using data collected as part of the Caring for Country program, the relational connections that developed between Aboriginal mentors and classroom teachers offered a safer space for two-way learning to occur and evidenced the power of grassroots movements to challenge systematic prejudices and exclusions in Australian schooling.

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Decolonising schooling practices through relationality and reciprocity: embedding local Aboriginal perspectives in the classroom

M Bishop, G Vass, K Thompson (2019)

Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1-19

This journal article is co-authored by an investigator of the CNS project with the material presented within contributing to the conceptual underpinnings of the project. Using data from a three-year pilot of the Culture, Community and Curriculum Project (CCCP), the authors report on how local Aboriginal community members worked alongside classroom teachers to enhance learning experiences for all students. Data collected during the project indicated that student learning experiences were more culturally responsive and that there was greater involvement of the community within schools beyond the immediacy of the intervention.

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Teaching Practices

The impact of Learning from Country on teachers’ understandings of place and community: insights from the Culturally Nourishing Schooling project
D Commbs, S Langdon, Z Jabir, C Burgess, R Amazan (2024)
Australian Educational Researcher

This journal article presents empirical evidence of the Learning from Country (LFC) activities with teachers working in New South Wales (NSW) schools in Australia. The paper found evidence of teachers: professing an ethical commitment to respecting and honouring local Aboriginal knowledges and knowledge holders; understanding the importance of connectedness and relational practices in their teaching; reflecting critically on their pre-existing ideas about Aboriginal students and communities and developing ‘place-consciousness’, ‘Country consciousness’, meaning a deep understanding of the relationship between people, land, and culture.

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Aboriginal Community-led Preservice Teacher Education: Learning from Country in the City
K Thorpe, C Burgess, S Egan (2021)
Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 46(1), 55-73

This journal article is co-authored by an investigator of the CNS project with the material presented within contributing to the conceptual underpinnings of the project. This journal article discusses the challenges and benefits of implementing a place-based professional learning program for pre-service teachers led by Aboriginal community members. With data collected from surveys, individual interviews, and yarns, the authors report that Learning from Country professional learning is a useful strategy to improving teachers’ capacity to teach about Aboriginal perspectives in Australian schooling.

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Rhetoric vs Reality: The Disconnect between Policy and Practice for Teachers Implementing Aboriginal Education in their Schools
C Burgess, K Lowe (2022)
Education Policy Analysis Archives 30 (97), 1-23

This journal article is a critical examination of how policies relating to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander education in Australia is preoccupied with standardization, competition, and market metrics that are hyper focused on closing the gap in achievement between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. Using Bacchi’s (2009) ‘What’s the ‘problem’ represented to be?’ analytical tool, the authors reveal that many of the existing policies construct Aboriginal peoples as the primary ‘problem’ to be addressed.

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Educators engaged in curriculum work: Encounters with relationally responsive curriculum practices
G Vass, D Coombs, A Woods, K Lowe (2023)
The Curriculum Journal

This journal article provides a report on the Curriculum Workshops strategy of the CNS project. Using data collected during 2021, the article provides evidence that by participating in these workshops, classroom educators move beyond tick-the-box and/or tokenistic engagement of Indigenous content and genuinely work towards creating deeper learning opportunities for students to learn about Country and localised Indigenous histories and knowledges.

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Teachers’ motivation to teach Aboriginal perspectives in the curriculum: links with their Aboriginal students’ academic motivation
A Martin, K Bostwick, T L Durksen, R Amazan, K Lowe, S Weuffen (2024)
The Australian Educational Researcher

This paper draws on quantitative data from the national survey to examine links between teachers’ beliefs about Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students and/or perspectives to their pedagogical and relational motivations. Analysis identified that when teachers believed in their capacity to adapt practice and saw value in developing relationships with Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students, they are more likely to be motivated to teach Aboriginal perspectives and positively view the academic engagement of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students.

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Communities of practice in supporting collective sense-making for culturally nourishing schooling
Amazan, R., Weuffen, S., Langdon, S., & Durksen, T.L. (2025)
Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 52. Published online 11 March

This paper examines how the professional learning conversations (PLC) strategy (as one of five professional learning strategies of the CNS model) supports collecting thinking and reform-minded schooling approaches within schools. Using case study qualitative data from Matraville Sports High School, Tweed River High School, Lake Cargelligo Central School, and Gilgandra High School, the paper argues that the PLC strategy creates a sense of belonging among educators, Cultural Mentors, and school leaders so that collaborative discussion around current challenges faced within schools, and workshopping of potential pathways forward, are possible.

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Transforming practices in Aboriginal education through teacher professional learning conversations
C Golledge, R Amazan, T L Durksen, K Lowe, G Vass (2024)
Teaching and Teacher education Volume 155 Mar 2025

This journal article discusses the influence of the Professional Learning Conversations through a lens that examines how learning and teaching practices are shaped by the people, knowledge, resources, beliefs, and cultures of the schools in which they take place. The empirical paper provides evidence of the language and understandings of learning taking place in the professional conversations impact the sayings, doings, and relating to the schooling of Aboriginal students.

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Conceptualising culturally nourishing pedagogies for professional learning in Australian schooling
K. Lowe, S. Weuffen, A. Woods, C. Burgess, G. Vass (2024)
Australian Educational Researcher, 52, 627–646

This journal article provides a high-level descriptive overview of the scholarship underpinning the pedagogies framing the bursts in the CNS project. As a first in the field of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander education, the paper conceptualises what culturally nourishing pedagogies might look like (to an outsider) as observable attributes of classroom practice. The broad aim of the paper is to put forward a framework that offers schools a tool for engaging with local communities and co-design curriculum and learning that can be adjusted to support Aboriginal students in reaching their full potential and fulfilling the social justice goals of the recently renewed (Alice Springs) Mparntwe Education Declaration.

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Whole-of-school reform

Towards an Australian model of culturally nourishing schooling

K Lowe, I Skrebneva, C Burgess, N Harrison, G Vass (2020)

Journal of Curriculum Studies, 53:4, 467-481

This journal article is the penultimate piece of scholarship that argues for whole-of-school reform to better meet the needs and aspirations of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students, their families and communities. Drawing together findings from eleven concurrent systematic reviews of Australian Indigenous education, the article presents four key elements that are argued to be essential to improving schooling experiences for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students. Learning from Country, Cultural Inclusion, Epistemic Mentoring, and Impactful Professional Change are argued to be the four pillars underpinning the CNS model.

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Pathways to progress? – collective conscientisation and progressive school reform in Aboriginal education

R Amazan, J Wood, K Lowe, G Vass (2023)

Critical Studies in Education, 1-17

This journal article discusses the impact of conducting professional learning activities within CNS that focus on encouraging teachers to be more reflexive of their own practices as well as the environments in which they work. Presented as a conceptual thinking piece, the article argues that in order to shift practices attention must be paid to how educators think about Indigenous students and embedding Indigenous content in their curriculum.

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Sovereign and pseudo-hosts: The politics of hospitality for negotiating culturally nourishing schools

S Weuffen, K Lowe, C Burgess, K Thompson (2023)

The Australian Educational Researcher. Special Issue: Aboriginal Voices: The state of Aboriginal student experiences in Australian secondary school project, 50(1), 131-146

This journal article is a critical conceptual exploration of how Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander education policies and practices are continuously caught up in battles of knowledge and the power to dictate narratives. Drawing on the notion of hospitality, the authors provocatively argue that non-Indigenous peoples have purposefully misinterpreted what it means to respect, accept, and work with Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples on the Australian continent to legitimate their authority to dictate and control society and education.

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Transforming schooling practices for First Nations learners: culturally nourishing schooling in conversation with the theory of practice architectures

K Lowe, K Thompson, G Vass, C Grice (2024)

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education

This theoretical paper suggests that using, and adapting, the theory of practice architectures (a theory designed to explain the complex practices happening in particular spaces) might be useful to examining the cognitive and lived experience changes happening in CNS schools. Ultimately, the paper argues that TPA can enable greater examination of relationships to uncover who is silenced, excluded, and/or privileged in these spaces.

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Leadership

Conceptualising culturally nourishing school leadership

C Golledge, K Lowe, S Weuffen, C Burgess & A Fry (2025)

Journal of Educational Administration and History

The Culturally Nourishing Schooling (CNS) project has already demonstrated the transformative potential of community-led and relationally grounded schooling practices. This paper extends that work by theorising the leadership practices necessary to sustain and deepen culturally nourishing schooling. We argue that culturally nourishing leadership must move beyond conventional, Western models of school management and administration to embrace distributed, relational, and decolonial approaches that promote Aboriginal voices, knowledges, and sovereignty. In other words, leadership in schools wanting to authentically enact reconciliation must shift practices to genuinely involve Aboriginal communities in learning and teaching processes.

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