Search results

Teacher assistants and support staff play a critical role in the educational outcomes of Indigenous students. Small steps are being made in ‘Closing the Gap’ in Australia between Indigenous and non-Indigenous educational outcomes (Australian Government, 2013), and the trends are similar throughout other Indigenous populations. However, there is still much that needs to be done. This chapter will describe the role of teacher assistants and other support staff, and share pedagogy and practices that have been successful in engaging Indigenous students within an inclusive and responsive curriculum. The chapter will conclude with a summary of key concepts and recommendations for further research.

Many opportunities for a service-learning experience are available to education pre-service teachers at the University of Notre Dame Australia, and the Whale of a Tale Reader Mentor Program is one of these. The Whale of a Tale developed as a service-learning experience as a result of a partnership between the University of Notre Dame Australia School of Education (UNDA) and the Western Australian Department for Child Protection and Family Support (DCPFS). The programme aimed to address some of the needs of children in out-of-home care (referred to as ‘children in care’) who have experienced trauma. This chapter initially describes how the Whale of a Tale Reader Mentor Program came into being. This description is followed by the rationale for basing the structure of the reading programme on a service-learning pedagogy. The results of a subsequent research study that evaluated the reading programme are then presented. Finally, the chapter discusses the concept of inclusion and how the Whale of a Tale Reader Mentor Program has facilitated a designated outreach approach to children on the margins. In particular, the programme focused on how these children could engage with reading stories that would hopefully inspire a lifelong love of reading and learning.