Looking for a common ground: a reflection on Batchelor Institutes teacher education training programs for remote Aboriginal education professionals in the Northern territory

Batchelor’s history in Aboriginal teacher education reflects and is reflected by a small institution’s ability to navigate through forty years of politics and practice surrounding both Indigenous affairs and teacher education. This chapter considers the long engagement of Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE) in meeting the needs of Aboriginal students enrolled in its teacher education program and makes a call for a renewal of purpose in teacher education.

For the purposes of this chapter, the term ‘teacher education’ is used to include education and training programs for all Aboriginal Educators: the university Higher Education (HE) programs which prepare fully qualified ‘teachers’ as well as the Vocational, Education and Training (VET) programs which ‘train’ in-classroom paraprofessional. The chapter presents a brief chronological overview of BIITE’s various programs and considers them in terms of what a ‘quality’ program looks like, importantly noting that where common ground was found among the issues, tensions, contradictions and paradoxes, lived some of the best quality teacher education programs for remote Aboriginal Australians.