Indigenous Education

In his work with Brazilian peasants, Paulo Freire (McLaren and Leonard, 1993) saw reading and literacy not so much as a set of instructions regarding discrete skills, but as a constructive process of meaning and social critique. He established culture circles that would identify significant issues in the lives of the people and which would then discuss major ideas, concepts and action arising. These could be recorded in sketches as the initial basis for reflection and analysis, very similar to the technique of case writing now adopted in a number of academic disciplines including education (Cherednichenko et al., 1998). Critical literacy and active knowing of this type locates all learning within a socio-cultural context, dignifies the experience of daily life and encourages a broad range of expression for an explicit social purpose.

Educators who have the professional capacity to recognise the diversity of their students, who respect the knowledge and beliefs each individual brings to the learning situation and who use such knowledge to develop a better understanding of how individual students learn most effectively, are those who will achieve success in teaching Indigenous students (Jeannie Herbert, 2002, p. 41).