Making Space for Knowledge Intersections in Remote Teacher Education Research – Ways of Being and Tools for Doing

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe doctoral research that this paper is based on focused on the low number of young Aboriginal teachers currently undertaking and completing teacher education in remote communities in central Australia. What became clear from the research was that the biggest barrier to Aboriginal people becoming qualified teachers is the legacy of settler colonialism and the ongoing neocolonial structures of education and knowledge systems. What also emerged is that there are powerful possibilities for co-creation of knowledge if participants and researchers are willing to engage in a process of decolonising the knowledge work done in intercultural spaces. In addition to the findings of the research the thesis also became a documentation of how the teacher participants and I intentionally inhabited this decolonising way of working. Through this process we were able to discover ways of working together in what Helen Verran calls ‘good faith’. This paper explores the knowledge intersections that are possible if we intentionally work in decolonising ways. It offers a number of ways of ‘being’ and a number of ‘tools’ that help researchers and participants to work together in ways that allow knowledge systems to co-exist and co-create new knowledge without one blocking or erasing the other.