Empowering Indigenous learners in remote Australian communities

Remote schools in predominantly Indigenous (Australian) towns and communities are confronted by staffing challenges unimaginable in urban areas. Ideally, remote schools should be staffed largely by teachers who have strong social and cultural ties to their communities and who want to live and work in them. However, for a range of complex cultural, social and economic reasons, many Indigenous people living in remote Australia who would make excellent teachers are not in the position to participate in mainstream higher education programs to qualify as teachers, nor are they able to participate in regular external studies or 'open' learning programs because of limited ICT access and skills and other social and communication challenges. This paper outlines the pedagogical underpinnings of Growing our Own and particularly, ways in which community informatics are used to empower learning. Growing our Own addresses the long standing problem of engaging remote Indigenous learners in higher education, and in the longer term, building sustainable, Indigenous teaching workforces by delivering teacher education in situ in remote Northern Territory communities. Growing Our Own is a partnership between Charles Darwin University and Catholic Education Northern Territory. The program is delivered 'in-place' and empowers students by valuing and actively embracing cultural knowledge as it builds relevant ways of knowing and doing 'schooling' to meet the graduate professional standards for teacher registration in the Northern Territory. All students are employed as Teacher Assistants. Growing Our Own employs one-to-one and small group tutoring along with digital technologies to personalise learning, build learning communities, provide access to the wider world of education, teaching and learning and build on students' cultural knowledges and existing teaching skills. Simultaneously, digital tools are used to support academic staff and co-teachers enrich their understandings of local Indigenous cultures and blend local ways of knowing, being and doing with contemporary "school" knowledge. This 'two ways' approach infuses local cultural knowledges across all aspects of the program to empower learning. Its culturally responsive focus values Indigenous educators' strong sense of cultural identity and learning styles including collaborative work. Importantly, digital technologies are instrumental in scaffolding personalised learning approaches, including assessment, that empower students and the wider community to calibrate personal and local knowledges with mainstream curriculum knowledge and effective teaching strategies.