Practitioner Spotlight
Flexi Schools, Kin, and Country: A More-Than-Human Review of the History of Flexi Schools
The context
I am a non-Indigenous educator of Irish, Scottish and English descent, raised on Wiradjuri Country and now living and working on Wurundjeri Woiwurrung Country.
My doctoral project, The Problem Is the System, Not the Students, evaluated a government flexi school on Wurundjeri Country using a relational and participatory approach. Flexi schools enrol tens of thousands of young people across Australia, many of them First Nations students who have been pushed out of mainstream schooling. Yet the history of these schools is barely researched, and they are still framed through deficit discourses. I wanted a literature review that honoured First Nations knowledges, placed the school in its Country and history, and resisted the linear, human-centred conventions of academic writing.
The Kin and Country Framework became the central organising structure of the literature review.
Under the guidance of Woiwurrung language holder Dr Mandy Nicholson, we adapted its perspectives to local Wurundjeri kin:
- Bunjil (wedge-tailed eagle) gave the wide view: education versus schooling, and the tension between neoliberalism and inclusion.
- Poorneet (tadpole) and Ngarrert (frog) followed the local waterways to the school’s origins and its antecedent, Northlands Secondary College.
- Balayang (flying fox) turned things upside down to challenge deficit stories about “naughty kids” and “drop-outs”.
- Gugung (grandmother) connected the past and present through ragged, industrial and mission schools, including the Cummeragunja schoolhouse.
- Bubup (baby) closed the review with an eye to the futurities.
Each section opens with a short, non-academic story from that being’s perspective, and then this theme guided my review of the relevant literature.
The place-based and adaptable nature of the Framework reveals patterns that conventional approaches can sometimes miss.
With its focus on positionality and relationality, the Kin and Country Framework supports everyone to honour First Nations knowledges in ethical ways.
Key Learnings
The Framework is an offering for everyone. As a non-Indigenous researcher working alongside Kamilaroi and Gandangarra supervisor Scott Alterator, I found it gave me an ethical, relational way into this work, with careful attention to positionality.
Localising the Framework through community authorisation and language made it grounded and accountable to Country.
Shifting perspectives surfaced patterns a conventional review would miss. Flexi schools emerged not as a new "fix" for disengagement but as part of a long lineage of community-led education.
Flexi Schools, Kin, and Country: A More-Than-Human Review of the History of Flexi Schools
Stay tuned for an upcoming article in Australian Education Researcher, ‘Collaborative Analysis Storying: Working with young people to analyse qualitative research data’