2010/11/01 by Gawaian Bodkin-Andrews, Gawaian Bodkin‐Andrews, Virginia O'Rourke +3
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Education, Achievement, and Giftedness #Indigenous and Place-Based Education #School Choice and Performance
paper · doi:10.1177/000494411005400305
crossref issued 2010/11/01 · crossref published 2010/11/01 · crossref published-online 2010/11/01 · crossref published-print 2010/11/01 · openalex publication_date 2010/11/01 · crossref created 2013/03/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref deposited 2026/04/28 · crossref indexed 2026/07/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
It is only relatively recently that empirical research has begun to emerge that has sought to further understand the factors that may contribute to the educational inequities between Indigenous Australian and non-Indigenous Australian students. Although it has been argued that research has typically employed small, unrepresentative case studies and weak statistical approaches, a new wave of Indigenous educational research is seeking to understand the impact of psychological constructs on educational outcomes for Indigenous (and non-Indigenous) students. Embedded within this research is a careful consideration as to whether measures used are not only equivalent in meaning for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students but also equivalent in their ability to predict important schooling outcomes. Using this approach, this investigation tests the relation of multiple dimensions of self-concept to Indigenous and non-Indigenous students' educational outcomes. The validity of the quantitative measures was tested through a range of reliability, confirmatory factor analyses and invariance tests with the results demonstrating cross-cultural equivalence of the measures investigated. In addition, moderating structural equation modelling path analyses attested to the predictive power of specific dimensions of self-concept in relation to schooling outcomes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and some subtle differences were noted. The results imply that targeting domain-specific self-concepts to increase both Indigenous and non-Indigenous educational outcomes can provide potentially potent solutions for contributing to realising equitable educational standards in Australia.