The Impact of Professional Development and Indigenous Education Officers on Australian Teachersâ•Ž Indigenous Teaching and Learning

The study investigated the impact of professional development (PD) in Indigenous teaching on teachers’ psychological and behavioural aspects, and Indigenous students’ learning engagement. Adopting a multiple-indicator-multiple-indicator-cause model, frequency of PD was found to have positive paths to teachers’ self-concept in Indigenous teaching and all the teaching strategies, but had a non-significant path to students’ learning, suggesting the more frequently teachers are involved in PD in Indigenous teaching, the higher self-concept they had in teaching Indigenous children and the more frequently they adopted Indigenous teaching strategies. The availability of Aboriginal Education Officers (AEOs), however, had a significant and negative path on learning engagement. That is, Indigenous students’ were perceived to be less engaged in learning with AEOs present in the school. An interaction effect was also found between PD and AEOs, indicating that the effectiveness of AEOs in Indigenous students’ learning may depend on whether teachers actively attend PD programs. Professional development (PD) of teachers is widespread in many countries around the world with a common aim to enhance the quality of student learning. Research on PD abounds, however, there is a paucity of research on PD on the teaching of Indigenous students in Australia (referred to as Indigenous teaching hereafter). Furthermore, the extant studies, which have examined the effectiveness of PD, tend to use only a single indicator to gauge the effectiveness, either on teaching (such as teachers’ psychological wellbeing and teaching practice), or on learning (such as students’ learning outcomes). Research to date lacks strong investigations of the effectiveness of PD by employing multiple indicators to delineate impacts on both teaching and learning. For Indigenous education to be successful, teachers should be trained to gear their teaching towards a culturally appropriate way for Indigenous students (Chinn, 2007; Matthews, Howard, & Perry, 2004; Smith, 1999). A culturally appropriate way of teaching is characterised by incorporating Indigenous values, history, and perspectives into teaching, which can be achieved by incorporating Indigenous content into the curriculum and consulting local Indigenous community members in order to understand Indigenous ways of inculcating new ideas and concepts. In Australia, in order for teaching to be adaptive for Indigenous Australian students, there is the need for PD for nonIndigenous teachers to be equipped with culturally appropriate pedagogies. Indigenous personnel known as Aboriginal Education Officers (AEOs) are also employed in schools to help engage Indigenous students. The Department of Education and Communities in the state of New South Wales (NSW), for example, has established a program which allocates AEOs in various regions. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence of the impact of having Australian Journal of Teacher Education Vol 39, 8, August 2014 86 AEOs on Indigenous teaching and learning. This paper presents the results of a study which investigates the impact of PD in Indigenous teaching and the availability of AEOs on multiple measures of Indigenous teaching and learning, namely Indigenous teaching strategies, Indigenous teaching self-concept, and Indigenous students’ learning engagement, among primary school teachers in rural and urban NSW, Australia. The Need for PD in Indigenous Education in Australia Cooke, Mitrou, Lawrence, Guimond, and Beaven (2007) have pointed out that Indigenous Australians are known to be one of the most disadvantaged Indigenous populations in the world. For decades, they have been marginalized not only in socioeconomic status, health treatment, but also in acknowledgement of culture and values and opportunities of accessing education (Claremont, 2008; Hill, Barker, & Vos, 2007; Ring & Brown, 2003; Yeung, Craven, & Ali, 2013). Failure of Indigenous education in Australia is evidenced in the fact that Indigenous children lag behind their non-Indigenous counterparts from early stages of schooling, are frequently found to be alienated in mainstream school cultures, attain seriously low school retention rates, achieve poorly in academic work, have low school enjoyment and self-concepts, and some suffer from depression and suicide ideation (Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2008; Bodkin-Andrews, Ha, Craven, & Yeung, 2010; Claremont, 2008; Craven & Tucker, 2003; Yeung et al., 2013). Apparently, partial solutions to these problems reside in how educators can adapt to meeting Indigenous students’ genuine needs throughout education (National Board of Employment, Education, and Training, 1995). Through adapted teaching practice, Indigenous children can be empowered in the process of education so that their full potential can be realised (Craven & Parbury, 2013) and they can obtain desirable educational outcomes (Craven, 2005, 2011). In reality, however, in Australia, the majority of non-Indigenous pre-service teachers may not even have encountered an Indigenous person before they start teaching, and they only find themselves meeting Indigenous children for the first time in their teaching practice (Craven, 2005). Although teacher education programs in Australia are increasingly paying attention to incorporating Indigenous values and learning characteristics as important elements in the programs, not all pre-service teacher education degrees offer a course on Indigenous Studies or Indigenous Education. As a result, many pre-service teachers are found to be ill-equipped with knowledge about teaching Indigenous students, and are not wellprepared to cater for Indigenous children’s educational needs (Craven, 2005, 2011). If teachers are to be qualified and be successful in teaching Indigenous students they need to acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be effective teachers of Indigenous students. This may require in-service teachers to be constantly involved in a variety of PD training, courses, and workshops so that they can construct a useful Indigenous teaching repertoire. Such PD programs do exist today but the frequency of attending such programs varies from teacher to teacher. The present study examines the impact of the frequency of Australian primary school teachers’ participation in Indigenous teaching PD on Indigenous teaching and learning.