Australian Learning and Teaching Council (now Office for Learning and Teaching) Fellowship Report: New Media Resources for Indigenous Researcher Training

Indigenous research students have significantly reduced participation in the academy compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts. The (Australian) Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council identified the need to pursue strategies that are pedagogically in line with Indigenous Knowledge(s) practice and that promote alternative methods of merging the community experience of Indigenous research students with sound research training (James and Devlin 2006).

This fellowship program has aimed to respond to this dire situation by stimulating Indigenous research students and their supervisors to consider how new media forms of dissemination, such as image/sound, film, exhibition and digital media, may form culturally appropriate alternatives or adjuncts to the linear, written thesis form. Working within the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education’s Both-ways philosophy, this program has reviewed and articulated current knowledge practice with the aim of encouraging multi-disciplinary Indigenous Knowledge(s) outcomes across the higher education sector. Using a framework of development and dissemination, this program has sought to articulate strategies for Indigenous research students and their supervisory teams to achieve meaningful goals in their research training, by engaging the epistemologies and cultural knowledge they bring to the academy, while challenging a perception of remediation.