‘We make no discrimination’: Aboriginal education and the socio-spatial arrangements of the Australian classroom

Abstract

School space shapes pedagogical practice and student identities, yet how this happens has culturally differentiated significance and effects. This chapter develops a case for seeing school classrooms as racialised spaces, and does so by considering the aims and provision of education for Indigenous children in 1960s Australia. Widespread educational reforms were underway in Australia during this period, with rapid expansion in the building of state secondary and technical schools (Minister of Education 1968; Campbell and Proctor 2014) and renewed interest in progressive and child-centred education (Potts 2007; McLeod 2014). Both old and new progressive ideas were gaining ground concerning th..