Teachers as "two-year tourists" in an Australian State School for Aboriginal children: dilemmas of curriculum, agency and teacher preparation

This paper analyses the authors’ interviews with teachers at a remote rural State school in an Aboriginal community in Australia. In our conversations with the teachers, we asked them to discuss the lack of Aboriginal material in the school’s curriculum, a question which many had not considered before. The interviews show the teachers in context, revealing their career stage, their perceptions of their pedagogy in an Aboriginal community, and their views about the adequacy of their university preparation for inter-cultural curriculum perspectives. The article raises critical questions about the role played by the State, universities, and teacher education programs as they prepare predominantly white teachers to teach in Indigenous communities. It argues that inappropriately trained teachers are likely to re/produce a neo-colonial regime through the implementation of a Eurocentric and thus inappropriate curriculum for Indigenous students, thus contributing to the underachievement of many of them. It concludes with a discussion of ways forward to address these serious deficiencies, in the interests of working for socially just and equitable schooling for all children.