Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T03:54:34.258Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Learning Styles, Classroom Management, Teacher Characteristics and Rural-Urban Aboriginal People : Some Thoughts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2015

A-K. Eckermann*
Affiliation:
Centre for Multicultural Studies, College of Advanced Education, Armidale, NSW 2350
Get access

Extract

A good deal has been stated and hypothesised about the essence of Aboriginal learning styles and their implication for Aboriginal education generally (see Roper, 1969; Watts, 1970; Hart, 1974; Harris, 1982). Nowhere does this hypothesising become more explicit than in the Guidelines to Teachers accompanying the NSW Aboriginal Education Policy. It is perhaps time to reexamine some of these propositions and to introduce a note of caution before we develop and encapsulate a whole new range of over-generalisations which will serve to lock Aboriginal people into yet another cycle of disadvantage.

Education is essentially cultural transmission (Singleton, 1974:27). Indeed, as Singleton (1974) points out, culture itself is frequently defined in essentially educational terms as “the shared product of human learning”.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bell, D., 1984: Daughters of the Dreaming. Melbourne: McPhee Gribble/George Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Bereiter, C. and Englemann, S., 1967: Teaching disadvantaged children the language of instruction. Canadian Education and Research Digest, 8: 126136.Google Scholar
Department of Education, Queensland, 1984: Strategies: Teaching Aborigines and Islanders in Urban/Rural Areas. Queensland, Mimeo.Google Scholar
Deutsch, M. et al., 1967: The Disadvantaged Child. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Directorate of Special Programs, 1982: NSW Aboriginal Education Policy, Support Document 5: Strategies for Teaching Aboriginal Children. Sydney: Department of Education.Google Scholar
Eckermann, A-K., 1973: Contact: An ethnographic analyses of three Aboriginal communities including a comparative and crosscultural examination of value orientations. Unpub. M.A. Thesis, University of Queensland.Google Scholar
Eckermann, A-K, 1977: Group organisation and identity within an urban Aboriginal community. In Berndt, R.M. (Ed.): Aborigines and Change: Australia in the 70s. Canberra: AIAS.Google Scholar
Fanshawe, J.P., 1976: Possible characteristics of an effective teacher of adolescent Aboriginals. The Aboriginal Child at School, 4 (2): 323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, A., 1981: Nature and Nurture: Aboriginal Child-rearing in North-Central Arnhem Land. Canberra: AIAS.Google Scholar
Harris, S., 1984: Culture and Learning: Tradition and Education in North-East Arnhem Land. Canberra: AIAS.Google Scholar
Hart, M., 1974: Kulila. Sydney: ANZ Book Co.Google Scholar
Hausefeld, R., 1974: Basic value orientations, change and stress in two Aboriginal communities. Unpub. paper. Canberra: AIAS Biennial Conference.Google Scholar
Hess, R.D. and Shipman, V.C. 1968: Early experience and the socialization of cognitive modes in children. In Endler, N.S., Boutler, L.R. and Osser, H. (Eds): Contemporary Issues in Developmental Psychology. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winton.Google Scholar
Hunt, J., 1969: The Challenge of Incompetence and Poverty. Urban: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Jensen, A.R., 1969 How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement?. Harvard Educational Review. Reprint Series No.2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kluckhohn, F. and Strodtbeck, F., 1961: Variations in Value Orientations. Evanston: Row Peterson.Google Scholar
Lewis, O., 1966: The culture of poverty. Scientific American, 215 (4): 1925.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maddock, K., 1974: The Australian Aboriginal – A Portrait of Their Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Ramirez, , and Castaneda, H., 1974: Cultural Democracy, Bicognitive Development and Education. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Riesman, F., 1962: The Culturally Deprived Child. New York: Harper and Row Inc.Google Scholar
Ryan, M., 1976: Blaming the Victim. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Roper, T., 1970: The Myth of Equality. Melbourne NUAUS.Google Scholar
Toyne, D. Vachon, D., 1984: Growing Up the Country: The Pitjantjatjara Struggle for Their Land. Fitzroy: McPhee Gribble/Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Valentine, C.A. and Valentine, B., 1975: Brain damage and the intellectual defence of inequality. Current Anthropology 16, (117).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watts, B.H., 1970: Some determinants of the academic progress of Australian Aboriginal adolescent girls. Unpub. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Queensland.Google Scholar
Watts, B.H., 1974: Continuity/Discontinuity between home and school. Paper presented to the Eighth International Congress of the International Association for Child Psychiatry and Allied Professions. Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Watts, B.H. and Henry, M., 1978: Focus on Parent/Child. Canberra AGPS.Google Scholar
Watts, B.H., 1981: Aboriginal Futures: A Review of Research and Developments and Related Policies in the Education of Aborigines. Canberra: AGPS.Google Scholar
Witkin, H.A., 1959: The perception of the upright. Scientific American. 200: 5056.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed