Troubling knowledge in Australian Indigenous Studies: how prior knowledge affects undergraduate student learning

Students’ prior knowledge may affect their learning of content in a compulsory Indigenous Studies course. Notably, non-Indigenous pre-service teachers’ bring conceptions and misconceptions to formal education, potentially influencing engagement with and/or resistance concepts affecting manifestation future classroom practices. Indeed, learning, unlearning, relearning often occur courses. Accordingly, this research aimed understand what informal students them university studies improve pedagogy. The survey data were collected from 357 teachers commencing course over four semesters. This analysis revealed two distinct clusters – those who valued schooling (Formal cluster) personal experience-based (Informal cluster). Unlike the Formal cluster, Informal cluster held extreme views social media as source more likely disagree that is limited/incomplete. Interestingly, institutional individual factors such gender, well exposure enduring discourses, also important but need further research. We argue school educators expertise identifying ‘troubling’ integrating sources skilfully ‘trouble’ transform student knowledge.