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On Country Learning (OCL) is a culturally responsive pedagogy which aims to support Aboriginal students, their peers, teachers, schools and families to engage with Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing. The OCL approach is firmly grounded in Country and has as its fundamental principles: Respect for Aboriginal epistemologies, ontologies and spiritualities, Responsibility for Aboriginal student learning, the building of genuine Relationships, and Recognition that Australia is and always will be Aboriginal land. This thesis presents deep learnings from three OCL school-based programmes conducted by the researcher in several regional and remote locations in Western Australia, including on Nyungar Boodjar and the Gascoyne. Collectively, the research demonstrates the benefits of OCL as a place-based, transformative and culturally responsive pedagogy. It builds on the strengths of Aboriginal students, their families and communities and in doing so speaks back to deficit colonialist discourses about Aboriginal people, cultures and histories. Culturally responsive pedagogy (CPR) is illustrated in this thesis through the structure of a Boorn (Tree). The Bworr (Roots), Kwola (Trunk) and Boorn (Canopy) each represent different parts of the pedagogical process. The process begins with the Bworr, the foundations derived from Boodjar (land), where the fundamental Aboriginal protocols of Country lie. The rings of the Kwola represents the interconnected tensions that exist at the Cultural Interface (CI) of the classroom. Within the Boorn are the pedagogical approaches that nurture and are nurtured by the strong Kwola and Bworr. While this process is represented in a linear way in this thesis the parts are necessarily interdependent and complex. Importantly, it is the Bworr, the protocols of Country, that cannot be forgotten, ignored or negated for these privilege Aboriginal knowledge and ways of knowing, being and doing. For you see, this continent always was, always will be

In this dissertation I explore and report a series of critical teaching dilemmas that occurred in the context of a social justice teacher education unit. Facilitating Critical Pedagogy: Challenges and Rewards is an auto-ethnographic qualitative research project grounded in critical theory. It uses Critical Reflective Practice, in order to advise, provoke and reform significant teaching challenges. Discussing issues surrounding social justice with student teachers can be a rewarding experience. It can however, also create teaching incidents when students become defiant and resistant to change. When this manifests as passive resistance, introducing sociological questions concerning notions of identity, privilege and racism can become difficult. My journal writing, using a Describe, Reflect and Act sequence on significant teaching incidents, examined how I acted towards students. This process helped me ascertain what scope there is for becoming a more effective facilitator of learning under difficult and challenging circumstances. Further research analysis incorporated a fourth ‘Reconstruct’ stage of Critical Reflective Practice within the sequence and this allowed me to further analyse my research data within a research methodology. Critical theorising and journaling is the methodology I used because it motions educators to become better practitioners through reflective practice. The contribution of this study to educational research is such that teachers will recognise that by understanding, reflecting and acting in certain critical situations they have the power to change the awareness of students. They also may learn that to be effective in certain educational settings, teachers will have to develop more trusting relationships with students and engage in deeper dialogues about social justice. The major finding locates critical narrative, action research and critical thinking within reach of practitioners because it joins theory with the practices of good teaching.

After the Last Ship illustrates the author’s own history, as well as its connection to the history of other women and children who left India and made the journey across the Kala Pani, the Indian Ocean, and lived as migrants in other countries. In this book the author brings greater understanding of how subjectivities are shaped through embodied experiences of ‘mixed race’. She bears witness to the oppressive policies of the fascist government in Portugal in the 1960’s and 1970’s and the effects of displacement and exile, by reconstructing her own passage from India to Mozambique and finally to Australia. Further, the author shows the devastation that labels such as ‘half-caste’, ‘canecos’ and ‘monhe’ can cause, when they eat at your flesh, your being, and your body. She sheds light on how identity and culture can serve as vehicles of empowerment, how experiences of belonging can germinate and take root post-diaspora.

Milk, Dudh, dudh, dudh After the last ship embodies the critical incident that illustrates my own history as well as the connection to the history of other women, who like myself made the journey across the Kala Pani – the Indian Ocean and lived as migrants in other lands. In this project I aim to bring greater understanding of how subjectivities are shaped through embodied experiences of diaspora and the diasporising of home (Brah, 1996). I have explored my own passage from India to Mozambique and finally to Australia, to illustrate in a testimonial way how diaspora can be lived, embodied and experienced in the flesh. This has been achieved through a body of artworks that have been exhibited in galleries in Perth, Western Australia, exploring the medium of drawing as well as the compilation of poems and the writing of this thesis. In this project I bear witness to the oppressive policies of the fascist government in Portugal and the effects of displacement and exile. I bear witness to how identity and culture can serve as a vehicle of empowerment, how experiences of belonging can germinate and take root, post diaspora. This project is about shedding light, making sense of the act of diaspora and the journey that is diaspora. It is also about representation, about me as a body, as a racialised and gendered body living this journey, this trajectory. My diasporic space is pulled apart or deconstructed within a feminist, post colonial framework with the aim that this scrutiny will shed light on how I come to visualise myself inhabiting Hommi Bhabha’s Third Space (1988) a space of movement and enunciation.