What makes for successful numeracy education in remote Indigenous contexts: An ethnographic case study approach

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The project involves remote and very remote schools across states and territories and across sectors (State, Catholic and Independent), and encompasses a wide range of schools (primary, secondary, area schools, boarding schools, early years, etc.) and systems (AISWA). The stories uploaded here represent a comprehensive collection of the multitude of approaches being adopted across these sites. This project has been funded by the Australian Research Council under the Discovery Grant scheme (DP130103585).

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Three criteria have been used to select schools (schools need to meet only one criterion). The first two criteria involve NAPLAN scores. Schools that have performed better than similar schools in numeracy (that is, schools that have several “green” NAPLAN scores) on several occasions over the past four years have been invited to participate. In addition, schools whose NAPLAN numeracy scores changed from poorer than similar schools (“red” scores) to better than similar schools (“green” scores) were invited to participate. Thus, the first two criteria are used to identify, respectively, schools that are performing better in numeracy than similar schools and schools whose numeracy scores have improved over time. However, there are limitations to the use of NAPLAN scores as indications of success in numeracy; the success of some schools in numeracy is not yet reflected in NAPLAN data. Consequently, the third criterion for school selection was recommendation.

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The map below shows the distribution of participating schools.

Remote Numeracy: Numeracy success in remote Indigenous contexts