Program Abstract
ICSEI 2018
Network:Professional Learning Network
Sub –Theme: Leading Capacity for Change
Paper Title Innovations = change: Relational Pedagogy and Indigenous education in Flexible Learning environments.
Presenters – Dale Murray, Director EREA Youth+ Institute
Michelle Kelman Murray, Senior Speech Pathologist EREA Youth+ Institute
Abstract
Australia is home to an increasing number of young people who for complex social, historical, political and economic reasons, are outside mainstream schooling. Whereexclusion reflects the legacy of education as an industrial sorting mechanism, flexible learning communities have emerged the world over to challenge the paradigm of educational access as economic capital.
First Nations young people continue to experience marginalisation and poorer educational outcomes than theircounterparts. Edmund Rice Education Australia Youth+ ( has 20 Flexible Learning Centres that support young people that have left mainstream education.
This paper brings to light findings of the Authors Australian Government Department of Education Endeavour Fellowship. Focusing on First Nations education in British Columbia the paper will share theirexperience of first nation’s education for disenfranchised young people.The paper will then offer an overview of first nations practice in flexible learning environments in the Australian context and discuss the benefits of these spaces for disadvantaged young people and their communities in terms of the impact of relational pedagogy, trauma and culturally informed practice.
The paper concludes with an examination of the school improvement process utilised within Youth+that promotes sustained educational improvement and signal beacons of innovation for system wide change.
Full abstract
ICSEI 2018
Network:Professional Learning Network
Sub –Theme: Leading Capacity for Change
Title Innovations = change: Relational Pedagogy and Indigenous education in Flexible Learning environments.
Presenters – Dale Murray, Director EREA Youth+ Institute
Michelle Kelman Murray, Senior Speech Pathologist EREA Youth+ Institute
Abstract
Australia is home to an increasing number of young people who for complex social, historical, political and economic reasons, are outside mainstream schooling. Where their exclusion reflects the enduring legacy of education as an industrial sorting mechanism, flexible learning communities have emerged the world over to challenge the paradigm of education as economic capital. With some 70,000 young Australians engaged in flexible or alternative educational environments and potentially many thousands more disengaged from learning altogether.
Indigenous young people continue to experience extreme marginalisation and relative poorer educational outcomes than there non – indigenous counterparts. Edmund Rice Education Australia Youth+ ( has developed 20 Flexible Learning Centres (Registered non state schools) that support young people that for highly complex reasons have left mainstream education. Over 40% of the student population within the Youth+ network of schools are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.
This paper brings to light recent findings of the Authors Australian Government Department of Education Endeavour Fellowship. With a focus on First Nations education in British Columbia (based at UBC) the paper will share the British Columbian experience of first nations education for highly disenfranchised young people by unpacking innovative responses for education engagement, cultural healing, enhancement agreements, indigenous epistemologies and the aria of the Territories governance supports for First Nations education. The paper will then offer an overview of first nations practice in flexible learning environments in the Australian context and discern the benefits of these spaces for disadvantaged youth and their communities more globally in terms of the impact of relational pedagogy, trauma and culturally informed practice.
Finally the paper proposes methods by which these benefits may be more accurately measured in term of the school improvement process which promote sustained educational improvement and signal beacons of innovation for system wide change.