Engaging With Place: Foregrounding Aboriginal Perspectives in Early Childhood

• In Event: 58.082 - Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: 58.082-4 - Disrupting the Status Quo in Early Childhood Research: Shifting Toward New Possibilities

Abstract

As a settled country, Australia’s education system has been built on settler colonial ideals and knowledges, with Aboriginal perspectives in curriculum and pedagogy often made invisible (Martin 2007). This paper focusses on revisions in the first year of an Australian undergraduate early childhood teacher education program, disrupting the homogenous and tokenistic approach often taken when including Aboriginal perspectives in early childhood curricula. Actions include rethinking the first year professional experience and academic course of study, foregrounding and re-centering local, specific Aboriginal knowledges. This rethinking is a response to the call for engaging with complexity (Author, 2015, Lenz-Taguchi, 2010, Pacini Ketchabaw et al 2015, Tuck & McKenzie, 2015) by attending to the political, intellectual and ethical responsibilities of activating postcolonial perspectives in early childhood education.

Latour’s (2004) notion of ‘learning to be affected’ and Watt’s (2013) conception of Place-thought offer a way to move towards authentic, reconciliation pedagogies. Latour presents the idea that learning to be affected ‘means exactly that: the more you learn the more differences exist’ (p. 213). Latour uses the concept of ‘learning to be affected’ as a way to move beyond the binary of subject/object and to become aware of the multiple ways we can pay attention to the world around us. Watt’s concept of ‘Place-thought’ presents the idea of paying attention to Place in a way that engages with Aboriginal knowledges in an authentic and respectful way. Connecting these two ideas provides the opportunity to engage with both Aboriginal knowledges and settler colonial knowledges, not as a binary but as a ‘cultural interface’ (Nakata, 2002) .

Examples of this theoretical framework described will be shared through narrative vignettes. These narratives constructed by data collected through the Engaging with Place placement situate early childhood teachers as ‘being present’ (Aguis et al, 2015) and activate a move towards reconciliation pedagogies. Further, these examples demonstrate the entanglements and complexity of teaching while supporting first year pre-service to engage with teaching as a political and ethical act. Mentor teachers working with teachers in the sites offer another layer to work as the changes in how teaching is discussed by practicing teachers reflects an understanding of learning to be affected and place-thought.

Author

• Catherine Hamm, Victoria University - Melbourne