Preparing Preservice Teachers’ Minds, Hearts and Actions for Teaching in Remote Indigenous Contexts

Abstract

This paper examines some challenges we confront working with preservice teachers prior to serving in remote Indigenous communities. Some challenges include what preservice teachers bring to their studies - subjectivities, experiential understandings of teaching and notions of childhood/adolescence, culture and social justice, all of which involve minds, emotions and our notions of our places in society. Some challenges involve linking new notions of teaching to what they already know which may entail unlearning before relearning. Some challenges involve making sense of the theory/action dialectic - teasing out links between strongly held but unarticulated values, beliefs and actions that derive from them. Some challenges involve anticipating what it might be like to live and teach in a remote setting and preparing to work effectively across cultures. I then discuss how we might tackle them in the light of productive pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy (Osborne, 2001a, 2001b).

Dangerous Practices: The Practicum Experiences of Non-Indigenous Pre-Service Teachers in Remote Communities

“…The dangerous practices would be reduced where the nonAboriginal pre-service teachers and teacher educators had a strong sense of the purposes of these alliances that lead to full student participation and community control of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education. Pre-service teachers can play an important role in effective teaching when their practices are aligned to the ontological and epistemological grounding of the community (Osbourne, 2003). The experience in teaching in a remote community provides pre-service teachers with opportunities to change their world view through an active learning with another culture that has the power to change their future teaching (Jay, Moss and Cherednichenko, 2009).…”

“…Given the focus on the active participation by pre-service teaches in this kind of work, there is a real danger that waiting and listening might be overlooked as a way to build these alliances which are informed by community ideals. The literature strongly identifies the need for non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers to listen to community members as a way of forwarding educational opportunities for students and teachers (Herbert, 2007;Osbourne, 2003;Smith, 1999). Perhaps the alliances formed as a result of the pre-service teachers engaging in deep listening to community members offer an important way preservice teachers can have agency over the dangers outlined in this paper.…”

“…Yet while pre-service teachers have a limited capacity to make structural changes in schools, they do have open hearts and minds (Osbourne, 2003), which is essential to enacting and sustaining structural change in their future professional life. Even though we shall be exploring the way their preconceptions posed obstacles to fully engaging with Indigenous communities, the pre-service students who have chosen this site for their professional experience with whom we have been working have at least made a beginning when it comes to thinking about and practising education in a more inclusive way.…”

Teaching Indigenous Children: Listening To And Learning From Indigenous Teachers

“…In general, schools that have high populations of students from low socio-economic status and/or diverse ethnic groups, are challenging schools to work in and staff turnover is often high (Cochran-Smith, 2004;Osborne, 2003;Sharplin, O'Neill, & Chapman, 2011). As Grant, one of our informants who teaches in a remote rural school with ninety percent Indigenous population says, 'We get a massive turnover.…”

Exploring the lived experience of one Rural Teacher in Indigenous context in Chilean Northern Territory: A narrative inquiry

“…International research suggests that teachers' professional development must include skills improvement to work in rural contexts (Ma Rhea, 2015;Osborne, 2003;Vera, Osses, & Schiefelbein, 2012). However, there are several unanswered questions in the literature: What skills and knowledge do teachers need to teach successfully in rural and Indigenous contexts?…”