In an attempt to better understand some of the issues at-risk Indigenous early readers faced in learning to read Standard Australian English (SAE) print-based texts, one group of Education Queensland Reading Recovery teachers embarked upon a one year project. This was not because Aboriginal English or the students' local dialects of English were not valued; rather that competencies of SAE were also valued and seen as fundamental to giving the students skills to participate in the wider society where they might be able to access different forms of power. At its most general level, their research explored why it was that Indigenous students tended to spend longer in Reading Recovery Programs than their non-Indigenous counterparts
