Abstract
This chapter outlines five features of the research on professional learning, highlighting the importance of collaboration with Indigenous communities and explicitly naming anti-racist practice and relationships in school. Although the literature often has an action-research design, this tends not to engage with teacher identity. Details on the content of professional learning activities were often absent, and only a little over half of the included research engaged with any theoretical framework. Engaging with theory is important because it enables a more robust account of impact, causal factors and the inclusion of different perspectives. Overall, the research on professional learning does not tend to engage with race, racism, intercultural relations or deficit theorising. However, professional learning activities that involve genuine collaboration with Indigenous communities can rebuild relationships and support better outcomes for Indigenous students.
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Notes
- 1.
The authors note that Indigenous is used to refer to Australia’s First Nations Aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples, the plural serving as a reminder that the terms refer to culturally diverse communities, and people will identify with their cultural identities accordingly (Gillan et al., 2017, p. 1).
- 2.
Some of this material was ‘grey literature’, such as conference papers or professional magazine stories, hence for many ‘quality’ was linked to the source context.
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Vass, G., Lowe, K., Burgess, C., Harrison, N., Moodie, N. (2023). Professional Learning and Teacher Identity in Indigenous Education. In: Moodie, N., Lowe, K., Dixon, R., Trimmer, K. (eds) Assessing the Evidence in Indigenous Education Research. Postcolonial Studies in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14306-9_6
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