Identifying the fairy dust effect for Indigenous Australian students : is positive psychology truly a [Peter] Pan theory?

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an example of the methodological progress in educational and psychological research focusing on Indigenous Australian students, and how such progress may protect against the risk of accepting Eurocentric theoretical paradigms that more often than not ignore the unique perspectives and experiences associated with being a member of a stigmatised cultural group. More precisely, we shall examine some of the assumptions within the 'new-found' Positive Psychology movement (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) from a quantitative approach to Indigenous Australian Educational research. Critiques of quantitative research involving Indigenous Australians has often stressed such a methodology fails to understand more unique cultural perspectives and experiences that fall outside the lens of limited Western understandings (Fraillon, 2004). Indeed, quantitative research has too often failed to come from the foundation of cultural understanding that may more accurately be understood by in-depth qualitative research. This is especially true for Indigenous and other unique minority groups worldwide. It has been argued that Eurocentric quantitative research was a key tool in the formation of cultural deficit theorising, whereby it was thought that minority group students were deprived of environmental and intellectual qualities that would facilitate educational success (Partington, 1998). Although such deficit reasoning targeting Indigenous Australians has largely been rejected in today's educational research, recent discrepancies between quantitative research and the unique experiences of Indigenous Australians can still be noted. An example of this can be found in research examining the issue of racism.