ABSTRACT

In this Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaboration, we examine discourses of ‘community engagement’ in Australia’s blueprint education policy, Through Growth to Achievement: The Report of The Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools. While the report addresses the education sector widely rather than being specifically directed towards Indigenous education, as a significant equity-oriented text it is accountable for responding to the educational inequities that so greatly impact Indigenous students and communities. We begin this paper by reviewing some of the complex historical meanings in educational policy assumed through the term community engagement, followed by an analysis of how Australia’s non-Indigenous policy writers have historically constructed Indigenous identities and communities. Drawing on Carol Bacchi’s poststructural policy discourse analysis, ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ we explore the taken-for-granted assumptions about who and what ‘community’ means including what cause and effect benefits are assumed from community engagement. We propose that colonial legacies are still present in the way ‘community engagement’ is defined in this influential report and advocate for a policy disruption that utilises Indigenous definitions of community and community engagement.

摘要

在本次土著/非土著合作中，我们研究了澳大利亚蓝图教育政策中“社区参与”的论述，通过成长到成就：澳大利亚学校实现卓越教育的审查报告. 虽然该报告广泛涉及教育部门，而不是专门针对土著教育，但作为一个重要的面向公平的文本，它有责任应对对土著学生和社区产生如此巨大影响的教育不平等。我们首先回顾了通过社区参与一词假设的教育政策中的一些复杂的历史意义，然后分析了澳大利亚的非土著政策制定者在历史上如何构建土著身份和社区。借鉴 Carol Bacchi 的后结构政策话语分析，“问题是什么？” 我们探讨了关于谁和什么“社区”意味着什么的理所当然的假设，包括从社区参与中假设的因果利益。