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An increasing number of Australian universities are committing to Indigenous Graduate Attributes across a wide range of academic disciplines. This paper critiques not only the slow up-take of Indigenous Graduate Attributes in the last 10 years, but also how such attributes may realistically contribute to university students graduating with increased 'awareness', 'knowledges' and 'abilities' to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities. It is reasoned that any commitment to Indigenous Graduate Attributes must be carefully and critically monitored for the silencing effects of colonial narratives that also are prevalent throughout Australian Indigenous Studies (which is arguably the foundation of realising Indigenous Graduate Attributes). Drawing from a diversity of Indigenous standpoint theories, critical studies and research methodologies, the paper offers a critical evaluative framework through which both Indigenous Graduate Attributes and the content within the teaching and learning of Australian Indigenous Studies may be evaluated. This includes an acute awareness of imposed colonial narratives, a critical awareness of one's own positioning, engagement with Indigenous voices, knowledge of Indigenous Research Methodologies, and more meaningful levels of Indigenous engagement through Indigenous ethics and protocols.

A significant body of literature attests to the influence of social contexts on students' engagement with school. A review of this literature led to the construction of a self-report instrument designed to measure Social-Relational Support for Education (SRSE). The conceptual framework underlying the SRSE instrument focuses on the factors that can potentially boost student engagement: these include young people's relationships with peers, teachers, and parents. Specifically, the SRSE seeks to measure young people's perceptions of the education-related values espoused by those to whom they relate most closely, as well as their sense of belonging at school. The psychometric properties of the SRSE measure are assessed in this paper through examining the congeneric properties of each hypothesised latent factor, confirmatory factor analysis of responses to the full SRSE instrument, and invariance testing. Results indicate strong factor loadings of all items on their respective scales and excellent overall model fit. The SRSE scale presented in this paper provides an essential foundation that will allow a comprehensive examination of the relationships between students' social-relational contexts and their engagement with school.

Over the last two decades, social capital has received increasing attention in the international literature. Despite the popularity of the construct, problems concerning definition, theoretical conceptualisation, and measurement continue to plague research and policy in this area. This investigation aimed to address this gap by developing a new social capital instrument to test the theorised nature of the construct. Utilising a sample of 1371 young Australians living in disadvantaged communities, the newly developed Social Capital and Cohesion Scale (SCCS) combined the commonalities in the current theoretical conceptualisations of social capital defining it as a multi-level, multidimensional construct consisting of trust and reciprocity across family, peer, neighbour, and institutional networks. To test the convergent validity of the scale, relations with mental health were also examined. Confirmatory factor analysis results demonstrated that the SCCS was a valid and reliable multidimensional scale, which was invariant across both regional and gender groups. Correlational analysis demonstrated that associations with depression, anxiety, and stress were consistent with past research thereby strengthening the validity of the SCCS measure

Whilst Indigenous Graduate Attributes -- or the embedding Indigenous cultural competencies within broad graduate attributes -- are becoming increasingly popular within some universities, it is essential that universities be held accountable for the realisation of such policies. Considering that Australian Indigenous Studies -- an essential component of Indigenous Graduate Attributes -- is a highly contested space where colonial and Indigenous knowledges collide, this article presents evidence from analyses, engaging with Indigenous Standpoints, aimed at evaluating critically the degree to which university subjects may contribute to the realisation of Indigenous Graduate Attributes. Results identify not only an array of psychometrically sound factors which measure "Student Knowledges and Attitudes to Indigenous Issues" as well as "Applied Indigenous Learning," but also indicate that the embedding of Australian Indigenous Studies content may vary across disciplines. In addition, results show that the impact of such embedding on student attitudes also varies greatly according to discipline, with positive, negative, and contradicting results across disciplines. These findings strongly suggest that any commitment to embedding Indigenous Graduate Attributes must be monitored very carefully.

Globally, rapid technological advancement is creating widespread concern about workforces of the future, and universities are expected to produce highly skilled graduates to meet the unremitting demands of knowledge economies. In this context, graduate attributes are a means for developing employability skills and an avenue for institutions to demonstrate to employers and potential graduates that the requisite skills will be developed during a degree. To meet these needs, graduate attributes tend to emphasise a range of generic abilities such as team work, communicating effectively, or critical thinking. While these soft skills are common in suites of graduate attributes, more recently, a next generation of attributes is emerging. The curriculum has now become a site for critical global issues such as sustainability. Also, globalisation is driving universities to foster graduates' intercultural and international skills, reflecting a diversifying and internationalised workforce. In Australian universities, and those in other colonised nations such as Canada and New Zealand, there is a growing emphasis on ensuring that graduates engage with Indigenous content and develop the capacity to work effectively with and for Indigenous peoples to address inequities and promote social justice. Using a case example from an Australian university curriculum project, we describe a degree framework developed to guide the institution wide implementation of Indigenous graduate attributes. Although the case context is quite specific, the guiding principles have widespread relevance for embedding graduate attributes into university curricula.

In 2017 Universities Australia (UA), the peak body representing Australian universities released its "Indigenous Strategy 2017-2020." The document unites universities together in common goals for Indigenous achievement, filling a notable gap in the Australian higher education landscape. The "Strategy" outlines a comprehensive plan for enhanced Indigenous outcomes in critical areas of higher education including student access and success, graduate research, and community engagement. This paper focuses on the implementation of Indigenous curriculum for all Australian university graduates which is a key aspect of the "Strategy." The changing Indigenous higher education landscape invites the nuanced analysis that critical examination of universities, as organisations, might elicit. Drawing on de Certeau's notion of tactics and strategies, the paper examines the policy and cultural climate of an Australian university which supports an Indigenous Graduate Attribute curriculum project.

This article engages with an Indigenous Quantitative Methodological Framework to examine links between a positive sense of cultural identity, future aspirations, and academic motivational tendencies. Utilising a sample of Aboriginal, non-Aboriginal and First Generation (Migrant) Australian students in years 7-10, results showed strong psychometric properties across the three groups for the measures utilised. Whilst few differences were identified between the First Generation and non-Aboriginal Australian students, Aboriginal students consistently had lower future aspirations and less adaptive motivational tendencies than the two other student groups. Importantly though, Aboriginal students held a stronger sense of cultural identity. Key links between motivation and cultural identity were identified, and both were associated with stronger educational and life aspirations. The implications suggest that researchers and teachers need to recognise the importance of cultural identity as a positive driver for schooling motivation and future aspirations, and that First Nations theory and research should be engaged to override the erasing effects of Western epistemological standpoints when utilising statistical methods.

The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) is a national, extra-curricular mentoring programme that is closing the educational gap for young Indigenous Australians. So what is AIME doing that is working so well? This article draws on a large-scale classroom ethnography to describe the pedagogies that facilitate the teacher-student relationships in this programme. We use Shawn Wilson's theorisation of Indigenous ways of knowing in order to "unpack" how these approaches succeeded in creating the egalitarian and trust-filled relationships reportedly experienced in the AIME programme.

Student capacities to actively listen, sense and feel are often relegated to lower order skills in an education system increasingly governed by measurable outcomes. While most school-based pedagogies focus their approach on cognition, this paper considers how we might make sense of the affective experiences that often resist the deep thinking, independent learning and explanation so often required of students. The guiding aim is to explore how affective learning can be better understood through an Indigenous Australian concept of "Country". We apply the pedagogical work of Elizabeth Ellsworth, along with Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to explore ways in which sensation and affect are already a method of learning, but ones that are substantially under-valued in designed curricula. A series of interviews with senior Aboriginal people are presented to assist in understanding the various ways in which affect can lead to thought. The authors present three case studies to highlight how knowledge can be taught through affective experiences of Country.

This article explores the unique mentoring model that the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) has established to assist Australian Indigenous young people succeed educationally. AIME can be described as a structured educational mentoring programme, which recruits university students to mentor Indigenous high school students. The success of the programme is unequivocal, with the AIME Indigenous mentees completing high school and the transition to further education and employment at higher rates than their non-AIME Indigenous counterparts. This article reports on a study that sought to deeply explore the particular approach to mentoring that AIME adopts. The study drew upon interviews, observations and surveys with AIME staff, mentees and mentors, and the focus in this article is on the surveys completed by the university mentors involved in the programme. Overall, there seems to be a discernible mutual reciprocity inherent in the learning outcomes of this mentoring programme; the mentors are learning along with the mentees. The article seeks to consider how AIME mentors reflect upon their learning in this programme and also how this pedagogic potential has been facilitated.

It may be argued that the emerging discourses focusing on the social, emotional, educational, and economic disadvantages identified for Australia's First Peoples (when compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts) are becoming increasingly dissociated with an understanding of the interplay between historical and current trends in racism. Additionally, and if not somewhat related to this critique, it can be suggested that the very construction of research from a Western perspective of Indigenous identity (as opposed to identities) and ways of being are deeply entwined within the undertones of epistemological racism still prevalent today. It is the purpose of this article to move beyond the overreliance of outside-based understanding Western epistemologies, and to explore not only the complex nature of both racism and identity from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, but to also explore the role of education and research in perpetuating varying levels of racism and resistance to Indigenous identity(ies) from a contemporary insider-based standpoint. It is hoped this article will shed some light on the pervasive nature of racism directed at Indigenous Australians, and highlight the need for the continual acceptance, respect, and promotion of Indigenous voices and identities within the educational environment and beyond.

A strong feature of the widening participation agenda is improving the aspirations of groups that are underrepresented in higher education. This paper seeks to reposition the utility of this as a focal point of educational interventions by showcasing the success of a mentoring program that takes a different approach. The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) significantly and positively impacts Australian Indigenous high school students' aspirations to finish school and continue to further study, training or employment. AIME is not read as a classic intervention program for raising aspirations. Instead, AIME builds upon the cultural wealth of participants and adopts an approach that seeks to inspire individuals rather than remediate them. The paper draws on survey data and fieldwork to present an example case study for resisting the assumption that young people's aspirations are deficit and in need of "improving." The paper describes how AIME works within young people's "windows of aspiration" to positively impact their engagement in school and further education, training and employment.

This research explored gender and cross-cultural similarities and differences in the motivational profiles of Indigenous Papua New Guinean (PNG) and Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Secondary students (N = 1,792) completed self-report motivational measures. Invariance testing demonstrated that the Inventory of School Motivation (McInerney, Yeung, & McInerney, 2001) measure was invariant across both gender and Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups. Structural equation modelling (SEM) results explicated that males were significantlMeay more performance orientated than females in all three groups examined; however, the disparity between genders was most apparent in non-Indigenous Australians. Diverging from previous findings with non-Indigenous students, the current study found that PNG and Australian Indigenous males endorsed mastery goals more strongly than Indigenous females. In contrast, non-Indigenous females were more mastery orientated than non-Indigenous males. Finally, the two Indigenous groups endorsed social goals more strongly than the non-Indigenous Australians. The current findings highlight the importance of assessing gender and group differences, as broad statements relating to student motivation do not appear to be applicable in all cultural contexts.

This article reports on a large mixed methods research project that investigated the conditions of success for Aboriginal school students. The article presents the qualitative case study component of the research. It details the work of four schools identified as successful for Aboriginal students with respect to social and academic outcomes, and showed what was common and contextually different in their relationships with community and their approaches to curriculum and pedagogy. The article shows there were eight common themes that emerged in the analysis of the schools' approaches, and these themes are considered key indicators of the "seeding success".

Although literature on traditional bullying is abundant, a limited body of sound empirical research exists regarding its newest form: cyber bullying. The sample comprised Australian secondary students (N = 803) and aimed to identify the underlying structure of cyber bullying, and differences in traditional and cyber bullying behaviors across gender and grade. Reliability analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, and factorial invariance testing demonstrated that the newly extended measure of traditional and cyber bullying was psychometrically sound. Multiple-Indicators-Multiple-Causes models demonstrated gender, grade, and gender by grade interaction effects for traditional and cyber forms of bullying and being bullied. Findings were interpreted in the context of bullying theory. Moreover, potential limitations of the investigation and implications for theory, research, and practice were discussed. (Contains 11 tables and 3 figures.)

It is only relatively recently that empirical research has begun to emerge that has sought to further understand the factors that may contribute to the educational inequities between Indigenous Australian and non-Indigenous Australian students. Although it has been argued that research has typically employed small, unrepresentative case studies and weak statistical approaches, a new wave of Indigenous educational research is seeking to understand the impact of psychological constructs on educational outcomes for Indigenous (and non-Indigenous) students. Embedded within this research is a careful consideration as to whether measures used are not only equivalent in meaning for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students but also equivalent in their ability to predict important schooling outcomes. Using this approach, this investigation tests the relation of multiple dimensions of self-concept to Indigenous and non-Indigenous students' educational outcomes. The validity of the quantitative measures was tested through a range of reliability, confirmatory factor analyses and invariance tests with the results demonstrating cross cultural equivalence of the measures investigated. In addition, moderating structural equation modeling path analyses attested to the predictive power of specific dimensions of self-concept in relation to schooling outcomes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and some subtle differences were noted. The results imply that targeting domain-specific self-concepts to increase both Indigenous and non-Indigenous educational outcomes can provide potentially potent solutions for contributing to realizing equitable educational standards in Australia. (Contains 2 figures and 6 tables.)

This investigation reports on the cross-cultural equivalence testing of the Self-Description Questionnaire II (short version; SDQII-S) for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian secondary student samples. A variety of statistical analysis techniques were employed to assess the psychometric properties of the SDQII-S for both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. In addition, an analysis was conducted to determine whether the latent means of the self-concepts differed significantly between Indigenous and non-Indigenous male and female students. The results demonstrated that the SDQII-S held strong psychometric properties across the Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian students. Furthermore, the analyses indicated that there were significant differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students for 7 of the 13 self-concept facets. Although some question could be raised as to the practical nature of these differences, the measurement equivalence of the SDQII-S for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students may allow researchers to more confidently understand the nature of varying dimensions of self-confidence for minority students from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

The notion of academic disengagement, regardless of its specific conceptualisation (e.g., cognitive, affective, or behavioural) is one that has received considerable attention within the educational and social psychological literature, especially with regard to disadvantaged minority groups. Although such research has done much to identify the complexity of factors as to why some minority groups may disengage from the schooling system (extending well beyond rightfully maligned deficit models), there is a still a need to empirically identify factors that may lesson the risk of disengagement. This investigation tested the causal impact of secondary students' academic self-concept on patterns of school disengagement (once prior measures of disengagement had been accounted for) for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian secondary students across two time waves of data. The results suggest that a heightened sense of academic self-concept is causally, yet differentially, related to varying patterns of disengagement for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. The implications of this research suggest that academic self-concept may be a key variable to unlocking trends of school disengagement that have been noted for Indigenous Australian students, although more effort should be made to increase the strength and importance of academic self-concepts for Indigenous students. (Contains 6 tables and 2 figures.)