Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2015
It is quite likely that at the start of a teaching career at an Aboriginal school, a teacher would know how to teach reading. He would have received the theoretical background at college or university, and applied this knowledge with varying degrees of success at practice-teaching sessions and possibly with increasing success at an urban school. Therefore, when an obviously talented teacher finds that previously used strategies simply do not work, and even his knowledge of how to cope with disadvantaged and remedial children seems to be of no use, it is time to look a little deeper into what motivates his pupils.