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Individual Reflection for ACRP

Throughout the course of this semester, this unit has served as a valuable learning experience

for me in the ways of teaching Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander students. Importantly,

this unit has exceeded this, and has changed my world-view through the way that I view and

understand Indigenous culture and the value that this has in the classroom, as well as the

importance that I hold on the pedagogies to support and include these students in the

classroom. This personal reflection will serve to illustrate the learning that has occurred,

outlining how the readings, assignments, and the Stronger Smarter Institute (SSI) have been

catalysts for my learning. As a future educator, the learning of this unit has transformed the

way that I will approach the implementation of the Australian Professional Standards for

Teachers (APST) 1.4 and 2.1, as well as the cross-curricular priorities into my lessons as a

teacher.

The main learning that has occurred for me through the unit has been that of my

understanding of everything in regard to the understanding and teaching of Indigenous

students and cultural perspectives. To clarify, prior to the commencement of this unit, I

believed that due to my Undergraduate degree in History I had a strong platform from which

I understood Indigenous culture and had developed cultural competencies that would serve

me well as an educator. However, this unit has confronted me with how little I actually

understood Indigenous culture, and that the approaches that I would have taken toward the

teaching of Indigenous students would not have been cognizant with the belonging and

academic success of students. This unit has been a learning journey that has exposed all of

the fallacies and misconceptions that I have developed, highlighting that in order for me to be

a successful educator of Indigenous students, I need to constantly evolve my practices and

employ reflexivity to examine how I am approaching the classroom. Through the SSI and

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Sarra (2007), I have learned that I had to re-evaluate my understandings, and by the end of

the modules I had an entirely different outlook on what the successful teaching of Indigenous

students looks like. Beforehand, I would have thought that tokenistic artwork and Indigenous

texts would be adequate to the inclusion of Indigenous cultures and understandings in the

classroom. This module led to me understanding that community connections are pivotal, and

that it is integral that I talk about Indigenous culture in the present tense in the classroom. The

learning of the SSI has been furthered and reiterated through conversations our group had

with Shirley Gilbert, where I further learned how ingrained tokenistic Indigenous education

has become, and the role that I hold as a teacher in being a beneficial force for the teaching of

Indigenous students.

As an educator, this unit has led to me learning about how imperative my perspectives and

language is as a teacher, which has been highlighted through the SSI, and Yunkaporta and

McGinty (2009) who note the importance of teacher perceptions in the classroom. The first

assessment itself was a learning experience for me, and allowed for me to consolidate my

understandings of the SSI, and led to an understanding on the areas I need to develop in order

to be sufficiently prepared to teach Indigenous students in a way that is aligned with best-

practice. Through reading Beresford, Partington, and Gower (2012) I have learned about the

importance of Indigenous voices in the classroom, which can be achieved through

community links, and that when I am teaching Indigenous perspectives, students are not

receiving an Indigenous perspective but rather my rhetoric on these perspectives. This

reading was the most beneficial to me in terms of my learning of the unit, as through it I

gained a holistic understanding of the issues in Education, and of the best approaches to the

teaching of Indigenous students, which complemented my learning in the lectures and

tutorials. Another significant reading in terms of my learning of the unit was DiAngelo

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(2011) which confronted me with why prior to this unit I held the understandings of

Indigenous education that I held. DiAngelo (2011) highlighted to me the importance of anti-

racist and social-justice approaches to teaching regardless of the diversity of the classroom,

and that issues of race and culture are those that need to be understood regardless of the

environment which I am teaching.

Through The Report of the Review of Aboriginal Education (2004), I have learned how

initiatives have been insufficient so far in bridging the divide in Indigenous and non-

Indigenous achievement, and through reading Turnbull’s (2017) Closing the Gap Report, that

teachers are the most significant factor in the bolstering of Indigenous student’s level of

achievement in the education system. Price (2015) has also served as a valuable learning

experience in terms of my understanding of Indigenous education through the fact that the

reading has enabled me to understand how as a teacher I can improve the teaching in my

classroom, and how I can create change in a school by starting to build partnerships with

local community groups. The reason for the value of this reading is due to the fact that this

reading highlighted the changes that I can implement in the classroom, even when working in

an environment that does not already have a strong understanding of Indigenous cultures and

people. Overall, the readings of the unit have served as a foundation with me to interact with

and understand the discourse of Indigenous education, and has provided me with an

understanding of what I need to achieve as an educator in order to ensure that I am teaching

students in a way that will lead to students receiving a beneficial education.

The group work assessment allowed for me to collaborate with other students and practice

my learning in successfully implementing cross-curricular priorities and APST standards 1.4

and 2.4 into a cohesive set of lessons. Through this group work task, I was able to understand

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Yunkaporta and McGinty’s (2009) 8 ways learning, and understand that this form of learning

is beneficial to not only Indigenous students but all students in the classroom, through the

experiential activities that result from following the framework. Through the group work

task, I was directly involved in the creation of the unit outline and the poster with the other

group members, in order to ensure that the learning was cohesive and had strong links to

research-based practices for Indigenous education. Through the task, I also took

responsibility for the site description and two of the lessons of the unit outline, which were

supported through utilisation of the cross curricular strategies; ethical understanding,

intercultural understanding, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures.

Through the unit and lessons, we worked as a group to ensure that the APST standards 1.4,

and 2.4 were implemented through the way that we approached the task, and that standard 2.1

was achieved through ensuring that content specific pedagogies were utilised in the lessons.

This unit has positioned me to be able to teach Indigenous students in a way that is culturally

responsive and in a way where my pedagogies are respectful and supportive of the learning of

Indigenous students. as a result of this unit, I understand that in order for me to become a

successful educator of indigenous people, I will have to constantly adjust and evaluate my

teaching, and that this will be an ongoing process for me as a teacher. I also understand that I

as a teacher am central to the bridging of the gap in Indigenous education, and even if I am

working in an environment where there are not good practices, I can make changes and still

ensure that Indigenous students feel a sense of belonging and are valued in my classroom.

This unit has ignited a spark in me, and I understand that the responsibility of closing the gap

in Indigenous education is my responsibility as a teacher, and in my future practice I will

ensure that I will always work towards the achievement of this.

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Reference List

AITSL. (2014). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers: Professional Knowledge.

Retrieved from: http://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-

teachers/standards/list

Beresford, Q., Partington, G., Gower,G. (2012). Reform and resistance in aboriginal

education the Australian experience (Fully rev. ed.). Retrieved from

http://site.ebrary.com.

DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. The international journal of critical pedagog, 3 (3).

Retrieved from: http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/view/249/116

New south wales department of education and training (2004). The Report of the Review of

Aboriginal Education. Retrieved from:

https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/media/downloads/reviews/aboriginaledu/report/aer2003

_04.pdf

Price, K. (2015). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education: An introduction for the

teaching profession (2nd edition). Melbourne: Australia. Cambridge University Press

Sarra, C. (2007). Stronger, smarter, Sarra. Teacher: The National Education Magazine,

March, 32-34, 36-38, 40-41.

Turnbull, M (2017) Closing The Gap: Prime Minister’s report 2017. Retrieved from:

http://closingthegap.pmc.gov.au/

Yunkaporta, T., McGinty, S. (2009). Reclaiming Aboriginal Knowledge at the Cultural

Interface. The Australian Educational Researcher, 36(2).