ABSTRACT

Big Ideas is a humanities subject in a semester-long, Indigenous-specific, university enabling course. In addition to academic skill development, the key aims of this enabling course are to develop Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ confidence, self-efficacy and sense of belonging in academic culture. To achieve this, Big Ideas applies an innovative pedagogy which combats stereotype threat – the process whereby students unconsciously believe stereotypes that suggest that being Aboriginal is intrinsically pejorative to academic achievement. Basing our philosophical rationale on principles of intersectional identity politics, Big Ideas critically engages with contentious issues that are relevant to a broad range of socio-political and cultural contexts. The intersectional approach encourages students to consider that many of the obstacles they face are not directly linked to their Aboriginality. Rather, they are connected to broader structural and societal issues of class, gender and race-based discrimination, which impact students from diverse backgrounds. This chapter offers curriculum exemplars to illustrate this pedagogy-in-practice. These exemplars are analysed in light of both tutor observations of classroom interactions and data collected from student journal entries, over seven semesters, to illustrate the potential in this intersectional curriculum to combat stereotype threat and normalise the notion of Indigenous students thriving at university.