Slipping and Sliding – Moving in and out of Social, Cultural and Linguistic Spaces from an Indigenous Educational Perspective

‘Slipping and sliding’ is a powerful yet simple, subtle and organic phenomenon that expresses how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academics and students engage, move and interact within the social, cultural and linguistic spaces of diverse Indigenous educational contexts.
This article draws on my PhD study which focused on ‘Aboriginal English as a social, cultural and identity marker in Indigenous Tertiary Education’ (2019). This paper will define, describe and demonstrate ‘slipping and sliding’ among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in an adult educational context and contrast this with further exploration of this linguistic phenomenon in a remote community primary school setting. The article illustrates how linguistic and pedagogical slipping and sliding is used across two different learning contexts. It adds to discourses around code switching, and suggests what conditions are required for slipping and sliding that supports student and teacher interaction and learning through a model of both-ways learning and teaching.