Tasha Riley

• BFA Hons, MA Sociology of Education, PhD Sociology of Education
• Senior Lecturer at Griffith University

Having pursued policies of human rights and multiculturalism, Canadians regard themselves as tolerant. Yet some critics say that when it comes to Aboriginals, Canadians seem xenophobic and discriminatory. This study is the first empirical test of whether Canadian preservice teachers' judgments about the performance of Aboriginal students are discri...

This qualitative study focuses on the potential influence students’ English as a second language (ESL) status has on teachers’ placement decisions. Specifically, the study examines 21 teachers’ responses to and decisions regarding fictional student record cards. Findings reveal that some teachers’ placement decisions were influenced by factors beyo...

Critical race theorists assert that racism in society and schools is a factor that impedes the progress of minority students. Whiteness theorists argue that white racialized teachers and students assume entitlement to privileges within an educational system that promotes white privilege as natural and allows it to remain unchallenged. Researchers o...

Educational decisions made about students often have consequences for their subsequent employment and financial well-being, therefore it is imperative to determine whether teacher decisions are discriminatory. This study examines how factors such as race, class, and gender influence the decisions teachers make regarding Aboriginal students. The stu...

The issue of low graduation rates among Indigenous learners transcends borders. Some argue that racism and discrimination in schools and in wider society impede the success of Indigenous learners. Although teachers may not intend to make discriminatory decisions based on a learner's ascribed characteristics, research has demonstrated that teachers...

Around the world, youth expressing their voices and interests are often unfairly dismissed, portrayed by settler-colonial systems as divergent from White-patriarchal standards. With space and opportunity, however, young people have proven effective in utilising their polyvocality—the multiplicity of their voices and interests—to agitate dominant sy...

Settler colonialism layers the intentional displacement, subjugation, and genocide of Indigenous Peoples by means of physical control over land, sea, rivers, and material resources. While functioning as a profoundly violent and exploitative system, settler colonialism also serves as a theatre of enduring resistance and activism. As schools operate...

In this article, we discuss the role of affective learning and arts-based inquiry as a catalyst for providing transformative learning experiences in teaching social justice issues related to Indigenous cultures and histories. The research was conducted with first-year pre-service teachers studying an Indigenous Knowledges course as part of their Ba...

This experimental article provides an immanent alternative to the neo-positivist outcomes-driven turn currently cannibalising the Academy. It offers a stitched together, multiphrenic creature, formed in darkness, gore and toil; a co-generative performance embodying coming-to-know as a process of creative co-inquiry. It writes into existence an unga...

Within Australia, The Australian Professional Standard for Teachers’ Standard 1.4 dictates that teachers should have an understanding and awareness of the histories, cultures and languages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Yet non-Indigenous teachers seem reluctant to integrate Indigenous perspectives in the classroom. This study ex...

Grading and the interpretation of grades are inextricable facets of teachers’ work. Nonetheless, teachers find it challenging to explain the inferences they draw from grades and the decisions they make based upon grades. This article explores teachers’ thinking about the grades assigned by their peers. This study used a think-aloud task in which 21...

Although Indigenous and non-Indigenous teachers, administrators, and educational policy makers have made efforts to improve Indigenous educational outcomes, slow progress limits the opportunities available to Indigenous learners and perpetuates social and economic disadvantage. Prior Canadian studies demonstrate that some teachers attribute low abi...

This article offers insights around how a posthumanist framing might allow us to know our teaching practices, performances and identities otherwise. Influenced by Baradian philosophy and the work of Sara Ahmed, it uses an ethico-onto-epistemology to conduct a diffractive rendering of the affective experiences of three female teaching academics (the...

Research demonstrates that teachers’ expectations of students have long-term effects on students’ educational, occupational, health and well-being outcomes. In this Australian-based study, teachers were invited to explore the questions Do teachers have different expectations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students? Why/why not? The findin...

Bayesian methods provide a more general approach to statistical analysis that mathematically includes Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) and classical statistical modelling as special cases. This expanded, Bayesian, approach provides several benefits, which we illustrate using a case study about decision-making by teachers. We focus on a r...

In 2011 to 2012, 48 schools in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland participated in the Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities (PALLIC) project. Central to this project was the establishment of positive working relationships between school principals and Indigenous community leaders in order to improve Indigeno...

Since teachers' decisions and behaviour potentially influence learners' future academic and occupational status, it is imperative that these decisions be unbiased. In the study reported here, 21 teachers were invited to place 24 fictional student record cards into regular, advanced, or supplementary learning assistance classes. Study findings revea...

Since teachers’ decisions potentially have consequences for learners’ future educational and life opportunities, it is imperative to determine the basis of teachers’ decision-making in order to determine whether it is discriminatory. This study combines qualitative and quantitative methods towards a multi-school, multi-region study of Australian te...

This paper describes the process involved in creating a community-based training curriculum designed to build capacity and foster new knowledge in support of HIV/AIDS education. Highlighted are the challenges and triumphs incurred while working with community and academic partners to ensure the production of an adaptable curriculum designed to acco...

The authors use narrative inquiry as a vehicle to theorize the ways in which curriculum in Canada leaves little room for individual identities to emerge.