ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the procedures employed and through them to provide for the first time an account of the ways in which Aboriginal students manages their participation in the various literacy events of higher education. Western thought, it is argued, has progressively moved away from contextualisation towards decontextualisation since classical Greek times, supported by the growth in literacy. The literacy events we have been observing are contextualised within the higher education setting. Through the application of frame theory, we have highlighted the fact that Aboriginal students and their lecturers may bring quite different expectations to the literacy events in which they jointly participate, and sometimes maintain the symmetry of the oral and written texts they create with difficulty. In order to demonstrate the ways in which fixed and flexible framing operate within the discourse we need to show the options separately for lecturer and for student and also separately for oral and written texts.
