What Educators Can Do to Help Aboriginal Students Stay at School and Succeed

Educators can have a powerful influence on both the immediate and long-term educational outcomes for Aboriginal students. This paper draws on personal research into school and teacher factors that can support the retention and attainment of Aboriginal students, and is part of a larger study which identified a variety of factors which influenced ten successful senior secondary Aboriginal students to stay at school and succeed. These research findings are corroborated by more recent research in South Australia. However, a large scale Western Australian study failed to identify two of the factors my study had and possible reasons for these significant omissions are discussed. This indicates possible future directions for research into improving Aboriginal education outcomes.