When IEU member and teacher-librarian Janelle Hamling undertook a non-fiction stocktake at her school, it led to a collaborative project highlighting the vital role of school libraries in meaningful reconciliation, writes Emily Campbell.
Janelle Hamling works in the junior library at St Paul’s School in Bald Hills, north of Brisbane.
In late 2022, upon realising her school’s non-fiction book collection was starting to date, with some items published in the 1980s, Hamling put a call out to her colleagues.
She asked for suggestions from parents and community members with particular expertise and an interest in assisting with the First Nations elements of the library’s cultural stocktake.
Hamling was determined to honour and respect First Nations people and not to perpetuate past injustices.
“Two families agreed to support this process,” Hamlin says. “One family took a box of books home to review, and I met with the other volunteer, Alison Quin.”
Quin is a descendant of the Tagalak people of the Gulf Country of far north Queensland. Her children attended St Paul’s.
At the time, Quin was a Senior Curriculum and Learning Adviser at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
“Alison offered to take the remaining books to the preservice teachers she tutored, a class of approximately 35 students who were completing an Indigenous Education Unit as part of their initial teacher education,” Hamling says.
“She used these books in a critical literacy activity to help the students evaluate the cultural appropriateness of the resources.
“This began a fantastic partnership,” she says.
Selecting First Nations texts
Quin is now the Curriculum Adviser for Indigenous Education at Brisbane Catholic Education. She says it is vitally important that teachers learn to evaluate the cultural appropriateness of First Nations texts.
This is a two-part process: selecting texts and evaluating them.
“The Australian Curriculum (v9) emphasises showcasing First Nations voices and expressions of knowledge – which requires selecting texts by First Nations authors or resources by First Nations creators,” Quin says.
“This provides an opportunity for students to learn directly from First Nations people through the resources they’ve created.
“Teachers need to have the skill to select resources by First Nations creators – which sounds simple, and generally is, and can usually be solved by an internet search.”
In cases where there is collaboration with a non-First Nations author, however, Quin says there are important considerations to keep in mind.
“It is important to determine that First Nations people have been involved in sharing their knowledge in a transparent relationship and giving informed consent,” she says.
“There has been a history of non-Indigenous people taking and reworking First Nations people’s knowledge, especially in the form of knowledge stories – Dreaming stories.”
Abundant resources
Selecting appropriate resources also involves considering the intent of learning, so resources must be evaluated for what they bring to the learning experience.
Quin says that with an abundance of resources available about First Nations people, culture, histories and knowledges, the evaluation phase helps determine if they will be useful for student learning.
The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Guide to Evaluating and Selecting Education Resources includes a useful graphic for navigating content about First Nations people, Quin says.
“It moves from resources that have destructive impacts on First Nations people, through to being about First Nations people without their input, through to resources created by First people,” she says.
“There are some learning instances where a teacher might want to put a problematic text in front of students for the learning that arises, for example, identifying racist depictions of First Nations people in order to develop skills in countering such depictions.”
Quin says this needs to be handled extremely carefully to ensure a safe learning environment for any First Nations students. It’s also about students developing the critical analytical skills to see how such racist depictions are a product of power.
“Evaluation is also needed to consider images, words used – terminology, and the resource itself,” Quin says.
“Older texts may contain offensive words or present a homogenous view of diverse First Nations people, for example, images may be stereotypes of ‘traditional’ activities in ‘the bush’.”
“First Nations knowledge is most often conveyed in narrative, people-connected and place-connected ways, while teachers in the Anglo-Australian education system are often looking for resources in a factual, depersonalised, generalised mode,” she says.
The preservice teachers Quin has taught appreciated the opportunity to complete the text-evaluation activity and develop their skills in a supported space.
Quin says that for many of the preservice teachers who had limited classroom experience, it was an opportunity to begin the planning cycle.
“Developing critical analysis skills with real texts and having the responsibility of selecting texts for intended learning makes what can feel theoretical, real,” she says.
Creating a masterclass
Quin and Hamling decided to take the next step and develop a masterclass to empower library staff and teachers with the skills and tools to undertake their own cultural stocktakes and text evaluations.
As part of this, Quin created the Evaluating text for First Nations curriculum inclusion guide. It gives participants a straightforward framework to assist their evaluation decisions.
“Unsurprisingly, so many teacher librarians are grappling with the subject as there are significant gaps in the literature in this area,” Hamling says.
Since the initial masterclass, Quin and Hamling have hosted several more sessions, with demand among the education profession surging.
So far, staff from a variety of libraries and schools at local, national and international levels have completed the masterclass, in a bid to reflect on and improve their professional practice.
Quin and Hamling have also presented to the North Brisbane Teacher Librarian Network Group, the National Education Summit 2023 in Brisbane and the Australian School Library Association Conference in 2023.
The masterclass sessions are an opportunity for self-identified professional development addressing the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers at the Proficient level:
2.4 Understand and respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people to promote reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians
3.4 Select and use resources
6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice
6.4 Apply professional learning and improve student learning
