What Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in North Queensland say about effective teaching practices: measuring teacher pedagogical cultural competence
Conference Contribution ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
Similar to most Indigenous peoples, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait (Indigenous Australians) people of northern Queensland presently participate in a school system that has been drawn from the predominantly white Australian culture. Although Indigenous staff work in schools, especially elementary schools, the majority of teachers, principals, and school operations administrators are non-Aboriginal and the curricula and pedagogy of classrooms are based on models derived from the dominant culture. Because of this, school practices such as the content of curricula and pedagogical practices have both intentionally and unintentionally denied the inclusion of those aspects of culture that have value and are important to children (Bishop, 1996). With the imperative to address issues of inequity in terms of Indigenous student achievement in education, Catholic Education has established an imperative to move towards an educational system grounded in culturebased intentions to address inequity in student achievement and validate community practice and aspiration. The study described here presents the outcomes of all phases of a four phase research initiative which arose in response to this cultural denial to support a move towards a better understanding of classroom practices that have value in the learning of Indigenous students. The following questions guide the four phases of our research: (1) What do Indigenous students and their parents identify as the pedagogical practices influencing their (child’s) learning? (2) What are the statistically validated factors that are identified as composites of a culturally competent teacher for Indigenous students in this context, and to what extent are these represented in Catholic Education classrooms? (3) What teaching behaviours are identified as statistically significant in influencing Indigenous students’ learning and (4) What teacher thinking processes are influential in promoting teaching practice shifts towards cultural competence?
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AERA 2017: Achieving the Promise for Indigenous Peoples: research and praxis I
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4
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San Antonio, TX, USA
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American Education Research Association
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Washington, DC, USA
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