“IT’S NOT THE SUBJECT IT’S THE TEACHER!” WHAT ABORIGINAL STUDENTS SAY ABOUT THEIR EDUCATION (original) (raw)
Related papers
We Learn A Lot from Mr. Hart": A Qualitative Study of an Effective Teacher of Aboriginal Students
1999
A profile of an effective teacher of Aboriginal Australian students was constructed based on research on the teaching of Aboriginal students. Using the profile as a framework, this paper reports on an ethnographic study of an effective teacher in action with Aboriginal students. The study consisted of semi-participative observation of a teacher of grades 6-7 in a Perth (Australia) metropolitan school in which 45 percent of the students were Aboriginal. Data were gathered via observation, conversation, and recorded interviews with the teacher, principal, and students. Elements identified as critical to effective teaching of Aboriginal students were: an understanding of Aboriginal culture and family background; the teacher's capacity to develop relationships based on openness, flexibility, empathy, and a collegial rather than authoritarian stance; a student-centered, relationship-based pedagogy featuring peer tutoring, small-group work, cooperative learning, and self-responsibility for learning and assessment; and the negotiation of curriculum and other educational processes with students. Behavioral boundaries were set in consultation with students. It is important to Aboriginal students that the behavior, not the student, be rewarded or sanctioned in private. Self-esteem, confidence, and social skills were enhanced in the classroom, although it seemed at times that academic teaching and learning were less intense than expected from a traditional Anglo perspective. (Contains 16 references.) (TD)
2016
Aboriginal Student education achievement in New South Wales languishes at the same levels it has for decades and is seen as one of the greatest challenges for educational policy and practice. One element of this problem relates to the significant social and cultural disconnect between Aboriginal students, their communities and teachers. Teachers have too often been appointed to schools without the requisite professional knowledge that would allow them to make authentic learning and cultural connections to these students. The purpose of the research is to gain an understanding of the nature and dynamics of community and school engagement in four sites with high proportions of Aboriginal students. It investigates the potential for positive interactions between Aboriginal people and schools and teachers' capacity to develop authentic pedagogic practices that is responsive to their Aboriginal students' needs and aspirations. It further investigates how these Aboriginal communities articulate their interactions with schools and teachers and how they in turn they are presented within school and teacher discourse. The thesis unpacks Aboriginal community standpoint and the initiation of purposeful collaboration at the cultural interface. The research questions the nature of these relationships and in particular how Aboriginal stakeholders have supported teachers to build their knowledge about Aboriginal students and their community. This research uses a critical Indigenous ethnographic methodology through interviews with Aboriginal community members, teachers and principals in four regional, rural and remote locations in NSW. Furthermore, it was seen that in each school site, there was varying evidence of deep and authentic engagement between Aboriginal people and a number of teachers. It was seen that in these instances, there was a shift in some teachers' professional knowledge, and teacher engagement. Finally, the research identified that Aboriginal parents and community members have a strong commitment to being party to the development of authentic collaborations with schools. This research argues that teachers need to honour, understand and actively reflect on community history, contexts and aspirations to develop the skills and knowledge to address the particular socio-cultural and educational needs of Aboriginal students.
Impacting practice: The undergraduate teacher and the Aboriginal student
2013
The purpose of this research was to explore through the lens of pre-service teachers, factors that impact on Aboriginal students’ learning and engagement. This paper explores how preservice teachers were able to understand, engage with and respond to Aboriginal students in a field-site reading program. Critical aspects of program success, such as cultural knowledge and engagement highlighted by Burridge and Chodkiewicz (2012), were investigated. Twenty-four second year pre-service teachers from a regional Australian university were matched in one-on-one teaching dyads with Aboriginal students from Kindergarten to Year 6. The reading program, which ran for one-hour sessions two afternoons each week for five weeks, was conducted as an after-school program ‘on their turf’ at a local Aboriginal housing estate. Each week, group cultural debrief sessions were conducted by an on-site Elder and gatekeepers to help pre-service teachers reflect on their engagement with students. Weekly on-cam...
Completing the Dreaming: Aboriginal and White Australian Teachers' Perception of Education
1983
The purposes of this study were to describe the teaching of Aboriginal and white Australian teachers in an Aboriginal preschool, to identify the culturally-shared meanings that guided their teaching behavior, and to abstract from these meanings a generalized understanding of education as a cultural system. The study was ethnographic in approach, using participant-observation methods that included description of teachers' behaviors, an instrument to quantify classroom processes used, and interviews with teachers. The research was conducted in the Northern Territory over a three-year period in one classroom where an Aboriginal teacher and a white Australian teacher taught as a team. During the research, three Aboriginal teachers and two white Australian teachers were observed. The study was guided by a theory of culture as a system of shared meanings and symbols. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz's concept of cultural systems that are shared by social actors whose behavior can be regarded as symbolic action was central to the conceptualization and subsequent analysis. Differences in teaching behavior were observed in language use, disciplining, playing, responding to children, working with puzzles, and in perception of school. Cultural themes of completeness and incompleteness were used to interpret these differences. Aboriginal teachers regarded reality as complete. Because children were perceived as almost complete, Aboriginal teachers placed less emphasis on actively encouraging children to commence and complete tasks, on exercising close control over children, and on differentiating adult or teacher roles from child or pupil roles. Because Aboriginal society was perceived as complete, Aboriginal teachers drew their educational models from it: home and community were models for school; "mother" was model for teacher. White Australian teachers regarded reality as incomplete. Because children were perceived as incomplete, they needed to be helped to become complete: teachers focused on verbal, social, and emotional development. At times, influenced by social change, Aboriginal teachers expressed a notion of incompleteness that differed from the white Australian teachers by stressing intellectual development and formal, teacher-centered teaching. The study suggests that, as a symbolic form, education has different representations in different cultural settings, but incompleteness, in some degree, is common to all.
2015
This study presents the outcomes of the first phase of a three phase research initiative which begins by identifying through the voices of Aboriginal students and community members the teaching practices that influence Aboriginal student engagement and learning. The study occurs within the Diocese of Townsville Catholic Education schools in North Queensland, primarily in the Mount Isa area. Through open-ended interviews, Aboriginal students and community members express their views of the characteristics of effective teachers and effective teaching. Considering that the national education discourse in Australia is monopolised by discussion on teaching and teacher quality, we problematize this discourse based upon what members of the local Aboriginal community assert as characteristics of effective teachers and their practice. Further phases of this research initiative, which investigate the effect of adjusted practice based upon community members' assertions, are also presented.
Unpublished doctoral thesis, 2016
When Aboriginal students are spoken of, or heard of, it is frequently within a narrative of deficit, disadvantage and failure. It is rarely recognised that such a destructive and normalised story is borne out of two centuries of colonisation that sought variously to civilise and Christianise; integrate, segregate protect and assimilate; and ultimately to dispossess. My thesis sought instead to reveal and develop a counterstory of Aboriginal education success through an investigation of what successful teaching of Aboriginal high school students in metropolitan Adelaide looks like. The study was framed by insights and approaches drawn from two interconnected theoretical frameworks. Firstly, Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) that emphasises the privileging of student distinct cultural ways of knowing, being and doing in the learning space; the significance and meaning of student education success; and critical cultural awareness. Secondly, the theoretical framework of Critical Race Theory (CRT) was utilised, with its tenets being modified and infused into the former to problematise racism in the investigation. My modified version of CRT, referred to as Colonial Critical Race Theory (ColonialCrit), responded to the distinct Australian story of dispossessing colonisation and racism that were revealed in the investigation as ongoing concerns. Additionally, while the investigation primarily focused on identifying the complex pedagogical practices of successful teachers of Aboriginal high school students, it also revealed what institutional and teacher characteristics contribute to improving Aboriginal educational outcomes and, in turn, what hindered such success. Australia’s problematic history of colonisation, justified through a diversity of raceologies, is shared by settler or colonised nations like Canada, the United States and New Zealand. Like Australia, Indigenous peoples of these three nations continue to be the most disadvantaged in terms of educational outcomes (Cotterell 2010). However, recognising this bleak situation, all three nations have made concerted efforts to redress this injustice. Recent national, state and provincial-level initiatives have repeatedly been informed by the expanding scholarship on cultural responsiveness and then modified to the local, geographical and cultural context. So, to reveal the Australian counterstory of Aboriginal student success, the methodological frameworks of critical ethnography, culturally responsive research and Critical Race Theory methodology are adopted. The use of these three research frameworks enabled me to undertake research ‘proper ways’ (borrowed from Aunty Nangala). This involved, for example, the ‘Aboriginalising’ of established data gathering and data analysis methods utilised in the research project. Additionally, the CRT method of counterstorytelling was instrumental in revealing a counterpedagogy of Aboriginal educational success. Overall, these research strategies disrupt terra nullius styled research and oppose the perpetuation of dispossessing colonisation. Through my analysis a number of arguments were developed. First, that there are three overarching and interacting dimensions to cultural responsive pedagogies of success—the institutional, personal and pedagogical. These three dimensions are referred to in the research as culturally responsive schooling, culturally responsive teachers and, culturally responsive pedagogy. Furthermore, the research supported existing international scholarship which argues that successful teachers of marginalised or minoritised students possess the characteristics and pedagogical practice of being caring-demanders. That is, teachers can make higher demands of Aboriginal students due to their established caring relationships. It is an approach to teaching that privileges an Aboriginal ethic of care and argues that participating teachers have earned the role and responsibility of being ‘classified kin’ within the Aboriginal kinship network (Pattel 2007, p. 3) My research argues that improving Aboriginal education outcomes will involve framing the current situation of Aboriginal education stress as a wicked problem. This is not ‘wicked’ as in evil, but rather wicked in the sense of being complex, difficult to understand and resistant to resolution (Ritter & Webb 1973). Furthermore, the research revealed that normalised narratives of ‘intervention’ and ‘closing achievement gaps’ secretly transmit (Harrison 2007) a racially based destructive narrative that needs to be critiqued and transformed. As a societal and community problem, the research revealed that improving educational outcomes for Aboriginal students will involve the re-culturing of schools, teachers and pedagogy as well as policy approaches. In this way, my research argues that Aboriginal students will then be able to get their education, stay as an Aboriginal person, and represent the Aboriginal peoples of Australia (borrowed from Uncle Pedro).
What form(s) of pedagogy are necessary for increasing the engagement of Aboriginal school students
This thesis was developed on the basis of Aboriginal educational practices that have been acknowledged in the field as best practice when engaging Aboriginal school-age students in their education. Within my history of engaging with Aboriginal school-age students and preparing pre-service teachers to work with Aboriginal students I have consistently supported many of the Aboriginal pedagogical theorists’ understandings of what stands for best practice when working with Aboriginal students. Some of these pedagogical understandings came as standard pedagogical practices as an Aboriginal person working with younger Aboriginal students. The recognition of these standard best pedagogical practices came from my working with Aboriginal students in a primary school setting as an Aboriginal Educational Assistant (AEA) and were later refined through exposure to other educational professionals and through my own studies as a teacher which I undertook whilst working as an AEA. I entered higher education as an academic in 1996 and started teaching pre-service teachers about working with Aboriginal students in 1997; this is a role I have continued to the present date. During this time I have extended my reading and my professional networks to include many of the authors who have developed the foundational understandings of what is considered best practice when working on the engagement of Aboriginal students in their schools. Whilst examining the existing research, I noted that many of these studies had been conducted on a small scale. The majority of them included single class or school samples, with some involving only teachers and administrative staff who were directly interviewed about which practices most effectively engage Aboriginal students in their schooling. There has been a more recent change in the approach to this process with Aboriginal parents now being interviewed about what they believe is best for their children. But, to date, there have been very limited research-based inquiries that have targeted Aboriginal students as the primary source of inquiry in gaining an understanding of what best engages Aboriginal school-age students in their schooling. This is where my research study fits within the current literature: it examines which form(s) of pedagogy are necessary for increasing the engagement of Aboriginal school students. I have used research practices that are grounded within Aboriginal cultural understandings that consider a culturally safe inquiry process and targeted school-age Aboriginal students from a variety of social, economic, geographical, and cultural settings and asked them what best engages them in their schooling. This study uses the Aboriginal students’ standpoint and understandings as the primary point of reference to ascertain which practices are most effective in engaging Aboriginal students.