Curriculum as policy deception: a critical analysis of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge inclusion in the Australian Curriculum

Abstract Education systems founded on the legacies and structures of colonisation (for example, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada) have established curricular structures that have perpetuated and entrenched processes and practices that marginalise and delegitimise Indigenous people and knowledge. We argue that the approach to curriculum inclusion used within the Australian context is an act of policy deception, hiding in plain sight the hierarchical othering of Indigenous knowledges, such that they are positioned as points of epistemic contrast that legitimate the ‘inviolable assertions’ of Western knowledge embedded in the school curriculum. We argue that the inherent structures that rationalise the goals and organisation at the ‘institutional’ curriculum level of the Australian Curriculum contribute to the impossibility of teachers legitimising Aboriginal Knowledge systems as part of disciplinary thinking in genuine ways. Such knowledges are relegated to a surface-level treatment within existing school subjects, including their representation within formal curriculum materials and their authentic enactment within classrooms. We contend that as a national reconciliation and consensus-building project, the Australian Curriculum's inherent structures have not only failed to support the development of deep engagement and understanding of Indigenous worldviews but also constrain teachers’ agency to extend their disciplinary thinking beyond the bounds of Western knowledge. We invite consideration of the reparative work necessary to imagine new ways of structuring and approaching curriculum.