Embracing and resisting Indigenist perspectives in Australian pre-service teacher education

Australian teachers currently must demonstrate competence in seven professional standards, known as the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST). Each provides several Focus Areas. After a lengthy nation-wide consultation with Aboriginal elders and educators, the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) formulated two Focus Areas (1.4 and 2.4) for teachers concerning Indigenous education in Australia to address the chronic lack of skills, knowledge, and understanding demonstrated by primary and secondary teachers in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander matters. Focus Area 1.4 addresses the teaching of Australian Indigenous students and Focus Area 2.4 addresses the teaching about the lifeways of Indigenous Australians. By ‘lifeways’ we broadly mean ‘A way through life, a course of life; a way or manner of life, (in later use) especially one that is customary or traditional’. This chapter provides the background to these standards and presents a case study of best practice that outlines the approaches to our teaching and learning that was developed at Monash University in the Faculty of Education to bring Indigenous/Indigenist perspectives into teacher education and to help pre-service teachers build confidence in their professional and personal skills, knowledge, and understanding in these areas.