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Un-braiding deficit discourse in Indigenous education news 2008–2018: performance, attendance and mobility

ABSTRACT This article presents a time sensitive critical text analysis of Australian news reporting that has identified, mapped and analysed news reporting about Indigenous education from 2008 to 2018. Three key themes were identified: school attendance; performance as measured by national testing, and boarding school education. A braiding metaphor is introduced to illustrate how the three themes operated independently over time, intersected and together wove a discursive braid steeped in deficit. The analysis is an act of ‘unbraiding’ that aims to reveal how news media coverage was integral to constructing Indigenous education as an unquestioned problem for society, a policy problem for governments to solve and an intractable pedagogical conundrum.