Replacing Resentment with Hope: A Practical Leadership Framework for Indigenous Schools
By Dr Ian Mackie
Schools shape more than academic outcomes. The beliefs young people hold about themselves, their futures, and the institutions that serve them are formed, in large part, within school walls. After more than 40 years working across remote schools, senior government roles, and policy reform, I have come to understand that reality as both urgent and full of possibility.
The framework I want to share here addresses something rarely named directly in school improvement conversations. I call it a “common sense of resentment”: the belief, held by many young people in communities shaped by dispossession and limited economic opportunity, that school does not lead anywhere worth going.
I read this as a rational response to real structural conditions. The school’s power lies in its capacity to change those conditions from within.
The Structural Roots of Resentment
Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism offers a useful starting point. Human behaviour, Bhaskar argues, is shaped by deeper social structures: history, economic opportunity, and institutional trust. Resentment often reflects those structures accurately. Schools that respond with enforcement or compliance mechanisms are answering a structural problem with a procedural tool.
The more generative question is what schools can build instead.
Baruch Spinoza described emotions as forces that either expand or contract our capacity to act. Emotions like resentment belong to what he called “sad passions”: they reduce agency. Pride, belonging, and achievement produce what Spinoza called “joyful affects”, which increase the capacity to act. Schools have considerable power to cultivate one over the other.
Daniel Kahneman’s research on fast and slow thinking adds a practical layer. Students’ attitudes about school are often shaped by intuitive, System 1 narratives, formed quickly and resistant to argument. The narrative “school leads nowhere” operates below the level of conscious reasoning. Schools reshape it through visible evidence: success stories, employment pathways, and recognition of progress.
Martin Seligman’s research on learned optimism makes a complementary point. Optimism is a skill, developed through experiences of effort leading to improvement. Schools that systematically recognise growth, not just achievement, build that skill deliberately.
Roman Krznaric adds empathy and moral imagination: the capacity to envision a different future for one’s community, and one’s role within it.
Across these traditions, a consistent principle emerges. Hope grows where young people experience agency, belonging, and meaningful futures. Schools are well-positioned to provide all three.
Ten Actions That Shift the Climate
I have translated this theory into ten practical leadership actions. Several are worth drawing out here.
Collective and affirming language is foundational. The words “our school”, “our community”, and “our future” are doing structural work: they assign belonging and shared ownership. Shifting from corrective to affirming language repositions identity at the centre of school culture.
Creating visible pathways to employment is equally concrete. When students can draw a line between their time at school and a credible working future, and when they can see that line through apprentices, local employers, and community leaders who have walked it, the abstract promise of school becomes material.
Identity and strength mapping, through family history projects, cultural knowledge documentation, and personal capability portfolios, frames identity as resource. Students who understand their own knowledge and lineage as assets bring different energy to learning.
Student Decision Councils give young people real influence over school events, facilities, and partnerships. The experience of genuine agency, even in small domains, reduces the powerlessness that underpins resentment.
Future Vision Workshops ask students to imagine the community in 20 years: what jobs will exist, what businesses could they create, what skills will be needed. The exercise is deceptively simple. It positions young people as architects of their community’s future, shifting the emotional register from exclusion to authorship.
The Leadership Task
Cultural change of this kind requires consistency across all staff, genuine student participation, sustained community partnership, and time. Shifting the emotional climate of a school is a long-term undertaking. Over time, it produces measurable improvements in engagement, attendance, aspiration, and achievement.
The role of school leadership extends well beyond the academic. It is emotional and civic: shaping the beliefs young people hold about themselves, their community, and what is possible.
I will explore this framework in depth at the Stronger Smarter Education Masterclasses, held in Melbourne (4–5 June), Brisbane (11–12 June), and Sydney (2–3 July 2026). The two-day program covers attendance, emotional agency, and relational integrity in schools and workplaces. Participant fee: $1,800 + GST. Register here.
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