Improving Services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students: A Critical Study

Abstract

This chapter introduces the first UNE study on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' experiences in our teacher education degrees. It acknowledges that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have historically been marginalised in Australian education in various ways. It argues that training more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to become teachers is one of many ways that this history can be redressed so that schools can become more proactive and inclusive contexts, amongst other pathways such as greater cultural inclusion across school curricula, greater consultation with communities and greater investment into other kinds of support. It outlines key research on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in relation to education, and the lack of information about what leads to various types of outcomes (successes, withdrawals and so on) in teacher education for this group. The chapter outlines the theoretical frames used in such research, and explains the researchers' preference for a more postmodern framing that foregrounds the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in their own understandings.