Community-Informed Teacher Education: "What Do We Want Teachers to Know About Our Kids?"

• In Event: Collaborative and Community-Informed Teacher Education

Abstract

For teacher education, the challenge of engaging more deeply with community is about righting imbalances and giving community members a voice in how those teaching their/our children will be prepared and informed. It involves a shift in governance and power. This shift requires an institutionally embedded strategy to allow Indigenous, refugee, poor and other historically vulnerable communities an audible voice at the decision-making table, in central rather than tokenistic ways. This conceptual paper reports on the community-building stage of the Australian Nexus program, a teacher education intervention designed to recruit, prepare, support and graduate teachers from diverse backgrounds to work in the hard-to-staff schools.

Author

• Jo Lampert, La Trobe University