Building Cultural Integrity with ‘Country as Teacher’

This project is implementing and assessing the effectiveness of the ‘Country as Teacher’ professional learning approach, pedagogy and curriculum design. This approach was trialled during a Teachers as Researchers program in 2020 and the current project will build upon the learning from this pilot. Based in Indigenous knowledge and ways of being, the ‘Country as Teacher’ program aims to embed classroom practice in deep respect for place-focussed, Country-centric pedagogies that have been part of teaching and learning in Australia for tens of thousands of years. This project will assess the transformative impacts of participation for teachers, students, and the school community, exploring how well it builds capacities to know, understand, and care for the places they inhabit. Learning from Country through embodied experiences and storytelling are central to the educative processes practised as part of Indigenous teaching and learning in Australia. The place-focussed, Country-centric Indigenous pedagogical approaches which are informing this project will build skills for cultural integrity alongside building the capability to address ecological challenges and nurture capacity for genuine reconciliation.

This project uses a narrative inquiry approach through individual interviews and within yarning circles to enable collective sense-making reflective conversations. These intensive conversational methods are supplemented by classroom observations.

Output One:

This first paper reports on the first phase where participant teachers were guided and supported, through professional learning, to initiate their own ‘Relating with Country’ practice. A Country as Teacher pedagogy is enacted through cultivating the practice of reciprocal ‘Relating with Country’, resulting in gratitude and learning about, from and how to care for the places we live. We argue that for teachers to be able to appropriately facilitate Country as Teacher pedagogies with students, they must first cultivate their own practice of ‘Relating with Country’.  In this paper, we examine the stories of 26 teachers in Canberra public schools as they develop their practice of Relating with Country. These stories highlight the process, and participant’s challenges and successes. This paper contributes to foundational knowledge and experience for the uptake of Country as Teacher pedagogies in Australian schools, with our emerging findings suggest that the practice of ‘Relating with Country’ is within the reach of all teachers.

Spillman, D., Wilson, B., Nixon, M., & McKinnon, K. (2023). Reinvigorating Country as teacher in Australian schooling: beginning with school teacher’s direct experiences, ‘relating with Country’. Curriculum Perspectives, 43(1), 13-23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-022-00176-6

Output two:

This article reports on phase two of our school-based Country as Teacher research, focusing on teacher’s learning and experiences through their efforts to enact Country as Teacher curriculum and pedagogy with students in ACT schools. The article demonstrate how many teachers felt that the high levels of student engagementwith Country as Teacher, expressions of wellness through these experiences, and the emergence of inquiry approaches, conferred ‘permission’ to continue enacting these pedagogies in their day-to-day teaching and learning, even when perceived not to be adirect enactment of the Australian Curriculum. This flagged a clear theme of teacher’s growing desireto enact a ‘moral imperative’, to ‘do it for the students’. This formative research suggests that high levels of student engagement motivated teachers to reinterpret systemic accountabilities and imperatives. We propose that in this way, among others discussed below, Country as Teacher operated as a ‘critical pedagogy of place.’

Spillman, D., Wilson, B., Nixon, M., & Mckinnon, K. (2023). ‘New localism’ in Australian schools : Country as Teacher as a critical pedagogy of place. Curriculum Perspectives, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-023-00201-2

Output Three:

Our final report provides an overview of the project, aims and contexts, approach and methods, key findings and Outcomes.

Output Four:

We also published a smaller piece in the conversation, which highlighted the benefit of a Country as Teacher approach for all children.

The following papers provide further detail regarding the approach taken in— and the rationale for—this research project:

• Spillman, D., Wilson, B., Nixon, M., & McKinnon, K. (2023). Reinvigorating Country as teacher in Australian schooling: beginning with school teacher’s direct experiences, ‘relating with Country’. Curriculum Perspectives, 43(1), 13-23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-022-00176-6
• Spillman, D., Wilson, B., Nixon, M., & Mckinnon, K. (2023). ‘New localism’ in Australian schools : Country as Teacher as a critical pedagogy of place. Curriculum Perspectives, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-023-00201-2
• Spillman, D., Wilson, B., McKinnon, K., Nixon, M. (2022). Affiliated Schools Research Program Final Report. Centre for Sustainable Communities.
• Wilson, B. and Spillman, D. (2022.). ‘I am Country, and Country is me!’ Indigenous ways of teaching could be beneficial for all children. [online] The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/i-am-country-and-country-is-me-indigenous-ways-of-teaching-could-be-beneficial-for-all-children-187424.
• Karulkiyalu Country, Paul Gordon, Spillman D. (2021) Embracing Country as Teacher in Outdoor and Environmental Education. In: Thomas G., Dyment J., Prince H. (eds) Outdoor Environmental Education in Higher Education. International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75980-3_18
• Wilson, B., & Spillman, D. (2021). Country as Teacher: Using stories from and for Country in Australian education for social and ecological renewal. In S. Riddle, A Heffernan & D. Bright (eds). New Perspectives on Education for Democracy (pp. 52-63). Routledge.
• Karulkiyalu Country, Gordon, P., Spillman, D., & Wilson, B. (2020). Re-placing schooling in Country: Australian stories of teaching and learning for social and ecological renewal. Australian Aboriginal Studies Journal, (2). AIATSIS, Canberra.