METHODS

Essential aspects of Indigenous research include: respect; inclusive decision making; equality of input and control (including the objectives, processes, and data interpretation); privileging Indigenous voices, perspectives, and knowledge systems; and benefits for all who participate (Kovach, 2009; Smith, 1999). We selected yarning circles as the primary mode for data collection because they provide a culturally responsive research space in which both information can be collected and relationships can be built (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010). To yarn is to converse—in a mutual, reciprocal dialogue, where interjections, interpretations, and additions are welcome (Geia, Hayes, & Usher, 2013; Rogers, 2017). Yarning is being used more and more frequently as a qualitative research tool (e.g., Bessarab and Ng’andu, 2010; Carlson & Frazer, 2018; Rogers, 2017). The yarning circle, a “focussed, directed discussion based on principles of respect, inclusion and democratic participation” (Carlson & Frazer, 2018, p. 44) has an ancient history in Aboriginal Australia. Similar practices, such as hui in Aotearoa/New Zealand, occur in other Indigenous nations throughout the world (Aseron, Greymorning, Miller, & Wilde, 2013).

In the Shooting Stars Yarning with the Stars project, there are three groups of people involved in the yarning process: Shooting Stars staff, Shooting Stars steering committees, and Shooting Stars program participants. Shooting Stars staff are predominantly Aboriginal (85% at time of writing), all are women, and all come from diverse backgrounds in terms of age, cultural heritage, work background, education, and life experience. At each site, Shooting Stars steering committees are comprised of Shooting Stars staff, host school representatives, Aboriginal community representatives, and relevant local stakeholders. Steering committee representatives are also diverse in terms of age, cultural heritage, work background, education, and life experience. Shooting Stars program participants are all girls and young women, predominantly Aboriginal (75 to 100% depending on site demographics), vary in age and education from Year 3 to Year 12, and currently live in a remote/regional area.

In considering this research and its diverse participants, we identified that a culturally responsive, decolonized methodology, which gives epistemological equality to western, Aboriginal, and other ways of knowing, being, and doing, was paramount. We selected relatedness as a theoretical framework because it is situated within Aboriginal ways of knowing, being, and doing, and is both inclusive and subjective, requiring “identities, interests, and connections to determine our relatedness, drawing on what we know through elders and community, as proper ways of being” (Martin, 2003, p. 210). Relatedness is a suitable framework since the central tenet of the Shooting Stars program is the relationships connecting individuals and communities, with staff embedded within the communities where this research is conducted. Comprising both insiders and outsiders in these communities, we, as Shooting Stars staff, are able to use relatedness to acknowledge our position and privilege others’ knowledge alongside our own. Similarly, the program participants are from diverse Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, which are often quite transient. Relatedness provides an inclusive, subjective space for the participants to relate to each other and staff and a method by which to privilege their ways of knowing, being, and doing. Finally, relatedness theory helps us to understand that the implications of this research will continue past its undertaking (Martin, 2003), which belies the sustainability that is built into the program so that it will have a positive legacy beyond the discontinuation of funding.

There are two types of yarning circles conducted in this research: “yarning about yarning” yarns, in which the yarning circle methods are discussed, and yarning circles, in which participants’ attitudes toward their education, health and wellbeing, and future are gauged. Yarning circles are audio recorded (no video or photos are taken for safety and confidentiality). The audio files are transcribed by Digital Transcripts. We, the authors, cross-code the transcripts to establish a collaborative coding tree, using NVivo for Mac qualitative software, and prepare biannual reports on the yarning circles, in which data are presented thematically, with representative quotes, word clouds, tables, and figures.

Yarning in Ten Steps

We developed a simple ten-step process to aid staff when conducting yarning circles (see Figure 3). This ten-step process divides yarning into three stages in relation to netball session planning, which staff are all familiar with. The first phase, the “warm up,” comprises planning, informing parents/caregivers and participants in order to get their consent, and preparing the participants for yarning. The preparation phase could occur in the moments prior to the yarning circle, for example, an icebreaker activity, or could involve several health and wellbeing sessions over several weeks. These preparation methods have varied and evolved across time and between sites from simple questions and brainstorming on butcher’s paper to photovoice (e.g., Wang, 2006), where participants take photos that represent specific elements and bring these to the yarning circle for discussion. Staff have used both Indigenous tools (e.g., message stick) and non-Indigenous tools (e.g., scaffolding and differentiation techniques) to make sure that the yarning space is always safe, inclusive, and accessible to participants.

Figure 3 – Yarning with the Stars project: Yarning in ten steps

The second phase, “the game,” is the yarning circle itself, where staff turn the audio on and reintroduce the yarning circle topic. During this phase staff act as a yarning circle “umpire,” creating and monitoring boundaries with the participants to keep them safe and facilitating the conversation to help it flow. While staff have done all that they can in the first phase to ensure that the circle will be safe, it is after the topic has been reintroduced that staff will set yarning circle boundaries with the girls. Staff start each yarn by discussing not just the purpose of the yarn and how it will work, but also by identifying, and helping the participants to identify their relatedness. Together, the facilitator and the participants establish what they know to be appropriate and proper ways of acting in the circle—the “rules” that the umpire upholds for the duration of the game. The umpire as facilitator has been a very useful analogy for our staff, who were initially feeding a lot of answers into the yarning circles but who now understand that like the umpire, the facilitator’s role is not to play the game, but to enable the game/yarn to proceed in fairness and safety.

Facilitation does not stop when the audio turns off—consensus must be facilitated in the third and final phase or “cool down,” which also comprises uploading the yarning circle audio to a secure folder and reflecting on the yarning circle process. The session plan template, which staff use for netball training, health and wellbeing classes, and yarning circles, includes a small section for staff to write two to three sentences about what worked and did not work.

Participant and Steering Committee Yarning Circles

From December 2016 to December 2018, the main topic across participant and steering committee yarning circles was school— what participants’ attitudes were toward school and what barriers they faced in attending school and/or remaining in class. The results have been used to improve program delivery. Reports generated during this time period were discussed during steering committee yarns, where they were used as context for the yarning circle about participants’ attitudes toward school and the barriers that the participants had discussed. From these yarns, staff and steering committees selected two of the top five barriers identified across the Shooting Stars program sites for Shooting Stars to focus on in 2019: bullying and alcohol/drugs. Shooting Stars has now employed a full-time Aboriginal curriculum developer both to write health and wellbeing sessions specifically for this purpose and to train staff to deliver these sessions.

Shooting Stars has also used yarning circles to make program changes and additions based on direct feedback from steering committees and participants. Changes to program delivery vary from the adjustment of netball training times and the inclusion of others (such as boys or girls from other schools) in netball games to the development of the Shooting Stars Leadership Project. The development of the Shooting Stars Leadership Project by the Shooting Stars leaders themselves has further embedded yarning within the program’s logic model, since yarning now directly contributes to empowering Aboriginal women to lead projects within their communities and to make the changes that they have identified. For example, in Carnarvon, one student noticed a lack of education around sexually transmitted diseases among her peers, so for her Leadership Project in 2018, she organized for a nurse to run a health and wellbeing session on sexual health. The yarning circles enable participants to drive the direction and content of their local program in three ways: through analysis of summary reports of participant attitudes; through direct feedback from steering committees and participants; and via the Leadership Project, in which the participants both identify the need and drive the change. The yarning circles are themselves a tool for empowering the participants, since they provide a platform for student voice and agency, where student feedback is honored and acted upon (Bahou, 2011; Bamblett, Harrison, & Lewis , 2010; Fielding, 2004).

Yarning circles have been a central part of the Shooting Stars evaluation protocol since December 2016. The appropriate approvals had been sought from host schools and institutions, and the results of the yarning circles were shared internally or with key stakeholders (schools, funding bodies, steering committees) under strict confidentiality agreements. In August 2018, a formal ethics approval was sought from, and granted by, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, so that the results of the research could be publicly disseminated moving forward.

Challenges and Limitations

The reality of staff-driven research has proven to be both the greatest limiting factor for this project and its greatest asset. Our relationships with our participants and communities are not simply an advantage over an external researcher, who must spend a large quantity of time building rapport with their participants (see, e.g., Sharif, 2001), it is through these relationships, and our relatedness, that we are truly able to decolonize our program’s theorization, policy, practice, and evaluation. However, facilitating participant and steering committee yarns provides an additional administrative pressure on staff, who are already time poor. Operating within the school context, staff must respond to behavioral events ad hoc, which can throw a day’s planning out the window. Therefore, while staff have planned and discussed the tools they will use for their yarning circles and how they will make them contextual, staff time and access to those participants might become restricted and improbable during the week that those activities were planned. While running yarns on reward camps does alleviate some of this pressure, only participants who are readily engaged in the program and have earned the camp (participants with school attendance 80% and above or an improvement of 20% or more from the previous term and those who have made positive behavior decisions in class) will be present in the yarn. Additionally, staff capacity, turnover, and time between opportunities for training mean that staff are at different levels of understanding and engagement with the research, its methods, and its possibilities.

The biggest learning for us has been a reflection on how the professional development around yarning circles is delivered to and with Shooting Stars staff. In the beginning, we facilitated the first staff yarn without ever having conducted a yarning circle ourselves. We assumed that because social and therapeutic yarning (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010) is the Shooting Stars Program Coordinator’s bread and butter that the yarning circle would be a straightforward activity. We discussed theory, the reasons behind the yarning circles—with little reference or instruction to staff in how they would be delivered on the ground, besides ethical necessities such as consent and participant safety. Over time, and with staff feedback, we have learned what practical information is useful for staff, who have the skills and relationships to facilitate yarning circles successfully but are often daunted by the prospect of “doing research” and are self-conscious in front of the audio recorder.