Decolonising Knowledge Work in Teacher Education

This paper comes from doctoral research
focusing on the low number of young Aboriginal
teachers currently undertaking and completing
teacher education in remote communities in central
Australia. The premise of this research was that by
listening to the stories of a group of fully qualified
and experienced Aboriginal teachers from these
communities we might better understand the complex
array of barriers, as well as supports, that
Aboriginal people from remote communities
encounter when they undertake to become qualified.
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 neo-colonial structures of education
and knowledge systems. What also emerged is that
there are powerful possibilities for co-creation of
knowledge if we are willing to engage in a process of
decolonising the knowledge work we do.