Abstract
Critical self-reflection is a powerful tool in any teacher’s arsenal of survival skills. The ability to reflect critically on one’s own pedagogical practice becomes of vital importance when teachers are teaching in cross-cultural circumstances, especially when their cultural background is in the minority. Pedagogical thoughtfulness (Van Manen, 1991) is a form of critical self-reflection that requires understanding of the other’s individual life context. It is concerned with what is best for the other and involves a search for understanding experience. A potent implement for creating pedagogical thoughtfulness is autoethnographic inquiry using a narrative approach. The narrative produced enables the reader (or listener) to deeply grasp the author’s experience and relate this back to their own lived experiences, thus creating pedagogical thoughtfulness and meaningful selfreflection. In this presentation I will present examples of autoethnographic narrative that introduce the listener to the lived experiences of both Australian Aboriginal and NonAboriginal students and teachers in remote Australian cross-cultural contexts.