The learning is always going both ways: early childhood education action research with remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory

Action research has been adopted as an ethical and effective way of working with remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory (NT) because of its capacity to engage people in defining and addressing issues of local concern. In this chapter, the authors reflect on the contribution that action research has made to their teaching and research in the sphere of early childhood education at the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BI) where all of the students are from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds. The early childhood education pedagogy and curriculum at the Institute has been driven by community-based action research for over 30 years. This has continued in some form despite the fact that many decisions affecting community life have been dominated by policies and programs which have originated from outside the communities concerned. Drawing on concepts of action research promoted by Stephen Kemmis and Batchelor Institute, the authors seek to renew the value and purpose of action research as underpinning the both-ways philosophy applied to early childhood education teaching, learning and research at the Institute.