Paper short abstract:

A few remote Indigenous students come to study at a Melbourne private school. In this 'mainstream' educational setting, various bottom-up programs indeterminately rise and fall to support the students' culture and language while off-Country, yet there is unintended learning for others too.

Paper long abstract:

Debates about the value of mainstream schooling have shaped educational possibilities in remote Indigenous communities. In the past, and arguably today, off-Country schooling may undermine cultural identity and local connections. Yet, many Indigenous students and their families continue to pursue schooling away from home, and programs that enable Indigenous students to attend wealthy urban private schools have grown in recent years. While such schools strive to support Indigenous students' success in mainstream education, some recognise the importance of maintaining connections to land, culture, and language. In this talk, I consider one such school in Melbourne, which has developed a relationship with a remote Arnhem land community. When students from this community came to Melbourne through a homestay program, school staff developed programs to support the students' cultural knowledge while off-Country, including a collaboration among the students and a linguist that focused on their community's languages. These programs developed in a bottom-up improvisational matter and were enabled by private funding from the school community. Intended to support the academic learning of the Indigenous students, they also contributed to the learning of non-Indigenous students, staff, and homestay families. Like many grass-roots programs, these programs are grounded in the long-term, committed relationships between key actors. The case study is important precisely because it (1) highlights the crucial, yet intense, nature of such relationships in learning, (2) shows how language can be used for wider cultural engagement and (3) illustrates how mainstream and alternative ideas of learning and success can co-exist.