The Country as Teacher research project was a formative exploration of how Indigenous pedagogies might be taken-up as part of mainstream schooling for all Australian students. This paper reports on the first phase where participant teachers were guided and supported, through professional learning, to initiate their own ‘relating with Country’ practice. A Country as teacher pedagogy is enacted through cultivating the practice of reciprocal ‘relating with Country’, resulting in gratitude and learning about, from and how to care for the places we live. Enacting Country as Teacher in school-based curriculum operates as a ‘critical pedagogy of place’, contesting Eurocentric epistemic power in Australian curriculum, to provide a balanced ‘both ways’ education for all. We argue that for teachers to be able to appropriately facilitate Country as teacher pedagogies with students, they must first cultivate their own practice of ‘relating with Country’. In this paper, we examine the stories of 26 teachers in Canberra public schools as they develop their practice of relating with Country. These stories highlight the process, and participant’s challenges and successes. This paper contributes to foundational knowledge and experience for the uptake of Country as teacher pedagogies in Australian schools. Our emerging findings suggest that the practice of ‘relating with Country’ is within the reach of all teachers.

No abstract

This article reports on phase two of our school-based Country as Teacher research, focusing on teacher’s learning and experiences through their efforts to enact Country as Teacher curriculum and pedagogy with students in ACT schools. Cultivating their own practices of reciprocal Relating with Country (Phase 1, see Spillman, Wilson, Nixon & McKinnon, 2022) prepares teachers to enact Country as Teacher with students. A yarning circle focus group and semi-structured interviews were again used to unpack teacher’s reflections and learnings regarding their attempts to enact Country as Teacher curriculum and pedagogies through units of work. Due to major disruptions in schooling caused by a long COVID lockdown, during Term Three 2021, participation in data collection for Phase 2 of the Country as Teacher research was on a voluntary basis. Thirteen of the original twenty-six teachers offered to participate. Despite the COVID disruptions, many teachers felt that the high levels of student engagement with Country as Teacher, expressions of wellness through these experiences, and the emergence of inquiry approaches, conferred ‘permission’ to continue enacting these pedagogies in their day-to-day teaching and learning, even when perceived not to be a direct enactment of the Australian Curriculum. This flagged a clear theme in the qualitative data, of teacher’s growing desire to enact a ‘moral imperative’, to ‘do it for the students’. Teacher’s own experiences Relating with Country were also deemed essential to the motivation and courage necessary to enact Country as Teacher pedagogies. This formative research suggests that high levels of student engagement motivated teachers to reinterpret systemic accountabilities and imperatives. We propose that in this way, among others discussed below, Country as Teacher operated as a ‘critical pedagogy of place.’