Indigenous student literacy outcomes in Australia: a systematic review of literacy programmes

ABSTRACT

Improving Indigenous students’ literacy is a major priority area for the Australian Government, receiving significant funding to address below benchmark English literacy standardised test results. Despite this, recent benchmark tests suggest Indigenous students continue to achieve well below the national average. This systematic review discusses peer-reviewed and evidence-based publications that report on significant literacy programmes to investigate which aspects of literacy are their focus, which are identified as successful, conditions needed for success, barriers to success and measures of success. While most programs reported significant literacy improvements, all identified barriers to success and/or sustainability as outlined in this paper. This review also utilises the four resources literacy model and multiliteracies theories to map literacy gaps. When considering decades of literacy research, there were significant gaps in the represented literacy skills, with the dominant focus on codebreaking, and very few programs addressing critical literacies, multiliteracies or creativity skills. The review of the papers highlighted the need for consideration of ways to design balanced and place-based literacy programs; school-community literacy partnerships; access to training and resources for schools and communities around literacy and school/community research projects and agency for teacher and school leaders to be professional context-based decision-makers.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous student literacies
• systematic review
• literacy programs

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Fiona Gibson from the Melbourne ACU library for the significant time and effort she put in to assist in developing the search parameters for the systematic review.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amanda Gutierrez

Amanda Gutierrez is a Senior Lecturer in Education specialising in Professional Practice, English CPA and Literacy with the Australian Catholic University, based in Brisbane.

Kevin Lowe

Kevin Lowe is a Gubbi Gubbi man from southeast Queensland. He is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Macquarie University working on research to develop a model of sustainable improvement in Aboriginal education.

John Guenther

John Guenther is the Research Leader for Education and Training with the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, based in Darwin.