Dr Marnee Shay

Marnee Shay is an Aboriginal educator and researcher who is passionate about social justice, equity and community-driven research. Marnee's maternal connections are to Wagiman country (Northern Territory) and she also has strong connections to Aboriginal communities in south east Queensland where she was raised.

Marnee is an experienced secondary school teacher in flexischools – that offer a flexible curriculum for marginalised students – and has worked in diverse community school and TAFE settings with disenfranchised young people. Her academic teaching for pre-service teachers has included programs on Indigenous education and how to create positive learning environments for students.

Marnee is a qualitative researcher who works with Indigenous peoples across urban, regional and remote communities, particularly in diverse school settings. She has developed a number of collaborative 'yarning' (story-telling) and creative methodologies for undertaking ethical research in Indigenous communities. This research has led to culturally and contextually relevant outputs developed by Indigenous young people including clothing items and text that creates voices on identity, health and wellbeing. Her research findings have resulted in school-wide reviews and changes to the way Indigenous education is undertaken, ensuring both suitability and sustainability of programs.

Additionally, as a consultant, Marnee helps with genuine inclusion of Indigenous people and communities within schools, thereby building the capacity of the educators implementing Indigenous education strategies within the school environment. She also assists schools to develop relevant, collaborative and highly contextualised professional development programs relating to Indigenous education.

Marnee's research interests are:

· Alternative schooling

· Indigenous education

· Indigenous education policy

· Indigenous research ethics and methodologies

My current funded research includes an ARC linkage investigating the significance of stories for Aboriginal young people from remote communities in narrating their experiences of life after school; a project that explores what excellent provision of education is in Indigenous education in Queensland secondary schools (funded by UQ and Edmund Rice Education Australia); an Associate Investigator on an ARC Centre of Excellence 'The Digital Child' (centre is based at QUT) and I am lead CI and DAATSIA fellow on an Indigenous Discovery 2021 'Co-designing Indigenous education policy in Queensland'.

I am particularly interested in, and committed to, undertaking research that results in policy and practice impact. Some of the non-traditional outputs from our CRC project on Indigenous youth identity and wellbeing, include clothing items designed by young people, posters and rap songs with film clips. These non-traditional and creative outputs by young people form part of our data set but they also assist in engaging communities, academics, policy makers and other end users in the research through sharing the powerful messages Indigenous young people shared throughout participating in the study. I am also a member of the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education and Training Advisory Committee (QATSIETAC), a ministerial advisory committee that provides advice to the Department of Education Queensland on implementing Indigenous education policy throughout the state.

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