The Visibility and Invisibility of Aboriginal Students in an Urban Classroom

Abstract

This paper describes the major findings of an ethnographic study investigating the first year of school in two urban classrooms for several Aboriginal students. It explores the adaptations to classroom life of these students and their teachers' consequent responses. It illuminates the culturally based skills, assumptions and values which these Aboriginal students bring from home to school relative to those of the Anglo students. It describes how a combination of cultural differences, ideology and subsequent micro-political processes resulted in the marginalising of some of the Aboriginal students, both academically and socially.