Reporting on a qualitative study, informed by Australian Government Indigenous education and literacy policies, this article unveils early career teacher reflections about infusing Aboriginal perspectives in the English curriculum using multimodal texts. Forging a praxis between the Aboriginal practice of yarning (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010) and Freire’s (1974, 1996) frameworks for conscientisation and teachers as facilitators, the project overlays the work of Ladson-Billings (1995) and Foster, Halliday, Baize & Chisholm (2020), to unravel how culturally responsive pedagogy manifests in early career primary school teaching. We discuss teacher starting points and challenges to be culturally responsive educators, who use appropriate Aboriginal texts in classrooms. Results suggest that yarning is useful for meeting English curriculum outcomes and for collaboratively developing decolonising knowledge, which can impact multiple stakeholders. Recommendations for future research include co-designed projects to support teacher education through multimodal texts and yarning practices with Aboriginal Elders.
Details
Title
Aboriginal perspectives matter: Yarning and reflecting about teaching literacies with multimodal Aboriginal texts
Authors/Creators
Wendy Cumming-Potvin - Murdoch University, School of Education
Elizabeth Jackson-Barrett - Murdoch University, Ngangk Yira Institute for Change
D. Potvin
Publication Details
Issues in Educational Research, Vol.32(4), pp.1342-1363
Publisher
Western Australian Institute for Educational Research Inc.
Identifiers
991005583170007891
Murdoch Affiliation
School of Education; Ngangk Yira Institute for Change