This alignment reveals something profound: Indigenous pedagogies aren't alternatives to quality education. They embody it.
The Delors Report proposed a holistic and integrated vision of education based on lifelong learning and four foundational pillars. Meanwhile, the 8 Ways framework expresses Aboriginal pedagogy as eight interconnected pedagogies involving narrative-driven learning, visualised learning processes, hands-on/reflective techniques, use of symbols/metaphors, land-based learning, indirect/synergistic logic, modelled/scaffolded genre mastery, and connectedness to community.
At first glance, these frameworks emerged from entirely different contexts—one from an international commission, the other from Aboriginal communities in Australia. Yet when we look deeper, we might find they're describing the same educational treasure from different vantage points.
The Delors Report defines "learning to know" as acquiring instruments of understanding rather than just accumulating codified knowledge. This pillar emphasizes learning how to learn, developing curiosity, and understanding connections between different forms of knowledge.
The 8 Ways framework embodies this through:
Story Sharing - Approaching learning through narrative, which creates coherent frameworks for understanding how knowledge connects across time, place, and experience. Stories don't just convey facts; they reveal relationships between ideas and demonstrate how to think about complex situations.
Learning Maps - Explicitly mapping and visualising processes helps learners see how knowledge is structured and interconnected. This aligns perfectly with learning to know, as it makes the architecture of understanding visible and teachable.
The 8 Ways framework recognizes that Aboriginal learning processes have rich overlap with the best mainstream pedagogies, creating common ground between diverse pedagogical systems. Both UNESCO and 8 Ways understand that knowledge isn't passive accumulation but active sense-making through connection and relationship.
"Learning to do" addresses the development of competencies to deal with diverse situations and work in teams, recognizing that doing goes beyond specific technical skills to include the capacity to adapt and innovate.
The 8 Ways brings this to life through:
Non-Verbal - Applying intra-personal and kinaesthetic skills to thinking and learning. Kinaesthetic, hands-on learning is a characteristic element of Aboriginal pedagogy, along with the role of body language and the use of silence as features of Aboriginal learning. This recognizes that competence develops through physical practice, observation, and embodied understanding—not just intellectual comprehension.
Symbols and Images - Using images and metaphors to understand concepts and content. This specifically Indigenous pedagogy involves the use of both concrete and abstract imagery, utilizing all the senses to build symbolic meaning in support of learning new concepts. Creating and interpreting symbols is itself a sophisticated form of doing—making meaning visible and communicable.
Both frameworks recognize that competence emerges through practice, reflection, and the ability to apply understanding in varied contexts. The doing isn't separate from knowing; it's how knowledge becomes real and useful.
Perhaps the most profound pillar, "learning to be" concerns the development of one's personality, identity, and ability to act with growing autonomy, judgment, and personal responsibility. This is education for human flourishing, not just skill acquisition.
The 8 Ways framework addresses this through:
Land Links - Place-based learning, linking content to local land and place. Aboriginal pedagogies are intensely ecological and place-based, drawn from the living landscape within a framework of profound ancestral and personal relationships with place. Learning through connection with Country develops identity, responsibility, and deep understanding of reciprocal relationships that sustain both human and ecological communities.
Deconstruct/Reconstruct - This way of learning organizes holistic, global, scaffolded and independent learning orientations, involving successive approximation and learning wholes rather than parts. This develops autonomy and judgment—the capacity to see patterns, understand systems, and make wise decisions independently.
The 8 Ways framework provides points of entry into Aboriginal ways of knowing while developing ways to work with local Aboriginal communities. This cultural grounding enables learners to develop authentic identity and values, fulfilling the "learning to be" pillar's vision of education fostering complete human development.
The fourth pillar, "learning to live together," addresses developing understanding of others and appreciation of interdependence, participating in cooperative projects, and managing conflict peacefully. In our interconnected world, this may be the most critical educational outcome.
The 8 Ways framework centers this through:
Community Links - Connectedness to community, bringing new knowledge home to help our mob. Learning isn't for individual advancement alone but for contributing to collective wellbeing. This directly embodies the UNESCO vision of education fostering peaceful interchange and mutual understanding.
Non-Linear - This pedagogy encompasses Indigenous ideas of overlap and synergy, choosing to view different knowledge systems as complementary rather than oppositional, avoiding dichotomies by finding common ground between diverse viewpoints. This is precisely what "learning to live together" requires—the capacity to hold multiple perspectives, recognize interconnections, and collaborate across difference.
Despite the often dichotomous portrayal of Aboriginal and Western pedagogies, focusing on their commonalities rather than differences may be a more useful place to start. The 8 Ways framework itself models learning to live together by creating bridges between knowledge systems.
What becomes clear through this comparison is that Indigenous pedagogies don't need to be retrofitted into quality education frameworks. They already embody them.
The 8 Ways framework grew out of research finding rich overlap between Aboriginal learning processes and the best mainstream pedagogies, developed through cross-cultural dialogue using an Indigenous standpoint methodology. This wasn't about making Aboriginal education acceptable to Western standards—it was about recognizing that Aboriginal pedagogies already represent educational excellence.
The Delors Report called for education that is holistic, lifelong, and fosters complete human development. The 8 Ways provides exactly this—interconnected pedagogies that can be adapted to different settings while maintaining cultural integrity.
This alignment matters because it demonstrates that:
Quality education is culturally diverse - There are many valid paths to the four pillars. Indigenous pedagogies offer sophisticated, time-tested approaches that achieve UNESCO's educational vision while remaining culturally grounded.
Common ground exists - Teachers can focus on core curriculum content while embedding Aboriginal perspectives through Aboriginal learning techniques. The 8 Ways framework enables this by showing where different pedagogical traditions converge.
Learning enriches everyone - When we bring our best and highest ways of learning together, we connect at a truly deep and productive level. Non-Indigenous students benefit from Aboriginal pedagogies just as Aboriginal students benefit from access to diverse knowledge systems.
Local knowledge has global relevance - Every place, every People, has its own unique pedagogies, and the 8 Ways offers a starting point for dialogue. What emerges from Western NSW Aboriginal communities speaks to universal principles of human learning.
The oppertunity of both the Delors Report and the 8 Ways framework is their recognition that education must do more than transmit information. It must develop complete human beings capable of knowing, doing, being, and living together in regenerative and meaningful ways.
The 8 Ways pedagogy is a bridge between Aboriginal and Western teaching and learning practices, but it's more than that. It's a demonstration that the treasure within—the educational wisdom UNESCO called for—has always existed in at least some Indigenous communities in this ancient land.
When we honor this, we don't diminish either framework. We reveal their shared commitment to education that serves human flourishing, cultural vitality, and our collective future.
The question isn't whether Indigenous pedagogies align with international standards of educational excellence. The question is whether we're ready to recognize that they already embody those standards—and perhaps have something more to teach us about what education, at its best, can be.