Critical Challenges of Cultural Competence Professional Development

Abstract

Driven by increasing inequities in health, education and social outcomes for Aboriginal people, cultural competence professional development has become more commonplace in many organizations. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, or cultural competence professional development workshops held throughout Australia each year. However, there is an uncertainty about whether some professional development approaches improve one’s knowledge, skills and attitudes towards diverse cultures. This article presents one of the key findings of a doctoral study which explored early years educators’ understandings of cultural competence and presents several viewpoints towards professional development. This article calls for approaches to professional development that move beyond passive transmission modes of learning towards localized, participatory models that encourage engagement with local community to privilege a diversity of voices and that also inspires critical self-reflection.

Aboriginal cultural educators teaching the teachers: mobilisng a collaborative cultural mentoring program to affect change

“…With an increasing concern about the need for teachers to understand and respect the cultural backgrounds of Indigenous students (Lowe et al, 2019a), teacher professional learning models that focus on cross-cultural competency are in demand (Sinclair, 2020). Across diverse Indigenous Australian contexts (such as urban, rural, remote), very few culturally-based teacher professional learning programs exist (cf, Bainbridge et al, 2014;Burgess et al, 2020;Harrison, et al, 2016;Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009) even though there is a growing acknowledgement that "Aboriginal ways of seeing, knowing and being should be at the forefront of any professional learning for school leaders and classroom teachers" (Buxton, 2017, p. 198).…”

“…Teachers also noted that an ever growing list of administrative tasks (Sinclair, 2020) made it challenging to accommodate the weekly mentoring meetings as Kate (mentee) lamented, "it got hard towards the end of term, 'cause I just had no time to sleep let alone have a mentoring meeting". Teachers often felt distracted by these pressures, disappointed that they couldn't always give their full attention to the project and that it was only for a short period of time.…”