Pedagogy Shaped by Culture: Teaching Narrative Approaches to Australian Aboriginal Health Workers

In this paper we describe our practice of teaching narrative approaches in a diploma course for Australian Aboriginal Health Workers. The shifting practice of teaching as it is shaped by Aboriginal cultural knowledges, skills, and ceremony and by the lived experience of the Course participants is explored. The pedagogy that is emerging through this work is founded upon principles of cultural partnership and of accountability as non-Aboriginal teachers. Understandings of learning as an identity project are also explored as a framework for a pedagogy that maintains a focus on the social political context of experience. The two-year Course is an initiative to support the Indigenous health workforce by providing training that is responsive to the social, emotional wellbeing, and mental health of Indigenous communities in the context of the history of colonization in Australia. This Course has followed from the work of Michael White and the partnerships made with Aboriginal colleagues and communities throughout Australia.