Conference Papers
Session E3.2.Teacher Training
1.Melodie Bat: Learning from the journeys: Quality in Indigenous teacher education in Australia
This paper presents the author’s doctoral research into quality in Indigenous teacher education in Australia, based on the learning journeys of three graduate teachers from Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education in the Northern Territory of Australia. Whilst the published literature often details the challenges and barriers, opportunities and intentions, the graduates speak of self-determination, learning and identity. Their stories provide the deeper story of Indigenous teacher education to which this research is responding—that there is a story of quality and success. We just need to be able to hear it. The findings of this research evidence the lived experience of graduate teachers learning in a both-ways program and generate some key determining factors of just what it is that constitutes quality in Indigenous teacher education in Australia today. In a time when the teacher education programs across the country are under intense scrutiny and regulation, this work proposes some fundamental aspects of quality necessary to ensure equitable experience and success.
Author bio: Melodie Bat is a non-Indigenous academic working in the field of Indigenous teacher education. She’s worked in the Northern Territory since she arrived at N’taria in 1994 to teach the Junior class. She is now the Senior Lecturer for Teacher Education at Batchelor Institute and has just completed her PhD in this field. Melodie lives in Alice Springs and is working out of the Desert Peoples Centre and has a strong commitment to Batchelor Institute and its vision for Indigenous education. She has developed strong and deep knowledge and practice within both-ways education and takes a leading role in learning and teaching within BIITE.
2. Ingrid Harrington: The steep cultural learning curve: reflections from UNE pre-service teachers in NSW Indigenous schools
A Federal report released by the Department of Families and Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FAHCSIA) (2009), entitled Closing the Gap on Indigenous Disadvantage: The Challenge for Australia, highlighted the inequality that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students based on a restricted access to resources, issues of isolation, staff and student retention, and cultural differences and challenges. In New South Wales (NSW), the Department of Education and Training (DET) and the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) in 2003/2004 undertook their own review of Aboriginal Education in NSW government schools that revealed significant concerns about the outcomes being achieved by Aboriginal students in NSW DET schools, confirming the more recent FAHCSIA (2009) findings. In 2006 the NSW DET implemented the Enhanced Teacher Training Scholarship Program (ETTSP) to empower twenty final year education students to successfully engage with Indigenous students in schools and their wider community during their Internship period. Using themes, paper explores the experiences of ten UNE scholarship holders at the end of their final year of teacher training and immersion/internship experience in 2010. The paper puts forward useful recommendations for both teacher universities and students intending to teach in schools with high Indigenous student populations.
Author bio: Dr Ingrid Harrington teaches the behaviour management, inclusive and special education units in the Bed (Primary) at the School of Education, University of New England, Armidale. Her doctoral research explored the reasons why boys left school early in QLD, and her findings were used to inform boy's education policy for Education Queensland. Her research interests include supporting beginning teachers in their first years of professional practice, improving the quality of experience for students diagnosted on the Autistic Spectrum, and improving the educational and school outcomes for Indigenous students. Dr Harrington coordinates the Bed (Primary) award for the School of Education and the NSW DET Enhanced Teacher Training (ETT) Scholarship Program for UNE that prepares and places selected final year education students during their Internship into schools with high Indigenous student populations. Dr Harrington is regularly invited as an international, national and local speaker to discuss her work on inclusive classroom practices and behaviour management for students with learning difficulties and disabilities.