Maria Bennet

Pre-service Teachers, Aboriginal Students and the Cross-cultural ‘Playing Field’: Empowering Futures

Pre-service teachers have an impact on their classrooms. How they manage communication in a cross-cultural space remains a challenge in teacher education. Moving beyond classroom management, this chapter explores how pre-service teacher education candidates understand their subjectivities and impact on indigenous students.

Language, Relationships and Pedagogical Practices: Pre-Service Teachers in an Indigenous Australian Context.

This article focuses on the initial stage of a longitudinal study whose eventual aim is to produce educators with the capacity, knowledge and cultural competence to engage effectively with Indigenous students in cross-cultural environments. The initial stage of the study involved 24 second-year pre-service teachers working individually with students from Kindergarten to Year 6 with their reading twice weekly for 8 weeks in an Indigenous Australian housing estate. The Elder and two community members were the gatekeepers who negotiated with and between the community and the university and supported the pre-service teachers. The analysis of data from semi-structured questionnaires completed by the pre-service teachers and the two community members, informal interviews with the gatekeepers and informal, on-site observations indicated that how language was used was critical to relationship-building between the pre-service teachers and the students, gatekeepers and parents and to pre-service teachers’ development of culturally appropriate pedagogical practices. The findings have implications for teacher education because they highlight the importance of providing pre-service teachers with meaningful experiences in community, with particular emphasis on the critical role of language for building relationships, establishing trust and respect and learning. These factors must be in place before effective, cross-cultural engagement can begin.

Lifelong Learning Theory and Pre-Service Teachers' Development of Knowledge and Dispositions to Work with Australian Aboriginal Students.

Abstract This article draws on previous research by the authors and others as well as lifelong learning theory to argue the case for providing pre-service teachers with deep and meaningful experiences over time that help them to build their personal capacity for developing knowledge and dispositions to work with Australian Aboriginal students, their families and communities. These experiences, provided in partnership with the Aboriginal community, demonstrate how opportunities for deepening cultural understanding could help pre-service teachers to become key stakeholders in the partnership and to embrace the joint responsibility for working towards improving educational outcomes for Aboriginal students. The Healthy Culture Healthy Country Programme was developed by Dr. Shayne Williams of the New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) for practicing teachers and modified for pre-service teachers by its author. It was found from an exploration of the experiences of first year pre-service teachers during and following their participation in the modified programme that they showed evidence towards Delor’s Four Pillars of Lifelong Learning: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and with others and learning to be. The pre-service teachers who participated in the research provided suggestions for how their experiences could be extended and deepened over the later years of their degree. This research has important implications with regard to how participation in ongoing opportunities to increase cultural competence could help pre-service teachers to develop their personal capacity to work towards the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership’s Professional Teaching Standards.