There is a plethora of education policy mandating teachers incorporate Indigenous perspectives across year levels and subject areas. But in practice, this is much harder to do without Indigenous perspectives becoming trivialised or tokenistic.

Without Indigenous perspectives in the classroom, or with only tokenistic inclusion, students’ views on Aboriginal peoples, colonialism and “Australian history” are more susceptible to negative media and social attitudes.

This leaves many non-Indigenous students ill-equipped to think critically about the world they live in.

Some teachers feel protective of the formal curriculum. In this instance, Indigenous perspectives become a tick-the-box policy, something to add into the lesson, but not so much that it interferes with the “real” learning outcomes.

Read the full article at The Conversation.