Creating an inclusive curriculum
Addressing bullying through the curriculum provides schools, staff and students with opportunities for open discussions about bullying. The curriculum can also be used to celebrate the culture of your Aboriginal students in a way that provides an opportunity for staff and students to have an open discussion.
- Points to consider about including Aboriginal students at your school:
- Does the curriculum communicate to all students a respect for Aboriginality?
- Does the curriculum communicate to Aboriginal students a pride in their identity and enhance their self-esteem?
- Does the curriculum provide all students with information and knowledge about Aboriginal cultures?
- Is the curriculum content actively inclusive of Aboriginal perspectives?
- Is the content offensive to, or discounting of, Aboriginal people, their experiences and aspirations?
- Are Aboriginal Studies courses provided for all students?
- Are all learning resources used in the school accurate about, and respectful of, Aboriginal cultures?
- Have old resources that reflect a lower level of awareness about Aboriginal cultures and perspectives than is presently acceptable been removed from the curriculum?
Teaching students to respect cultural diversity
Respecting and promoting cultural diversity was a prominent theme from participants of the Information Sharing Days. Sharing Day participants wanted their students to have the opportunity to learn about and celebrate different cultures as a means to recognise the strengths of their culture.
Learning about bullying in the classroom
In some instances Aboriginal students may be encouraged in their home environment to fight back. It is important that Aboriginal students are supported with opportunities to learn new strategies to stop bullying from happening. Sharing stories can be a useful way to help your students learn new strategies and words to use. Scenarios that ask the students to develop a solution also help the children to put these strategies into practice. All children need to know:
- what bullying is
- what to do if they are bullied
- how to get help if they are bullied
- how to get help if they are bullied
- what to do if they know someone else is being bullied
Peer influence against bullying – bystander intervention
Classroom learning and whole-school responses to bullying need to build upon students’ pro-social desires for bullying to stop and their inclinations to help people being bullied. By mobilising positive peer influence against bullying behaviour, students who are bullied will feel supported and more confident to apply the skills they have learnt.
Supporting peer/bystander intervention
Once students are encouraged to take action against bullying, they must feel secure that teachers understand their need to stay safe. For some students this means ensuring that the information they share with adults will not cause them to lose status in their peer group.
To ensure peer participation, teachers and school administrators must reinforce peer intervention efforts and model consistent responses to bullying. Peer intervention is complementary to a whole-school approach to tackling bullying. By alerting adults to bullying incidents, students can work with school staff to disrupt the power imbalance present in bullying.
Social skills development
The curriculum needs to include social skills development that incorporates Aboriginal protocols into the learning program. Students with good social skills are better able to succeed in school. These students are also more likely to intervene when they see bullying happening.
The teaching and learning program can promote student personal development by addressing:
- friendship and relationship skills development
- self-esteem building
- protective behaviours training
- assertiveness skills training
- conflict resolution skills training
- decision-making skills education
- empathy building development
Cooperative learning
Cooperative learning methods are very important for Aboriginal students and should be utilised within the curriculum to promote pro-social behaviour. A cooperative curriculum promotes communication, provides opportunities for students to tolerate differing perspectives, and encourages both a positive sense of self and concern for others. Cooperative skills include:
- negotiating
- dealing with fights and arguments
- suggesting and persuading (instead of bossing)
- making decisions in a group
- respecting other people’s opinions
- sharing
- including others
A decision-making approach
Students will have many excellent ideas to deal with social situations when they are encouraged to suggest them. Aboriginal students feel encouraged when they are listened to and their thoughts and ideas are taken seriously. They also have ownership of the responses and are motivated to take action when they have some control. Teachers report that students are more willing to cooperate when they are involved in the decision-making process.
To make good decisions about bullying, and other, situations all students need to be provided with the opportunity to learn and practise decision-making skills. It is useful to provide students with a framework to use when making these decisions. Such a framework encourages alternatives to be considered and explored before a decision is made. Students need also to be encouraged to recognise their values and feelings toward different alternatives.
A decision-making process model should involve discussion of the following:
- What is the issue/what’s going on?
- What do I know about the issue?
- What can I do?
- What might be good and not-so-good outcomes?
- What am I going to do?
