Faculty of Education - Theses

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The Impact of indigenous Australian storytelling techniques on homogenous, rural, middle school students

Ryan, Sophie Louise ( 2002)

The purpose of this thesis is to show that students, who have limited access to Australia's Indigenous people, can develop meaningful understandings of Indigenous issues and culture, as they re-assess the relevance of Indigenous people to their own lives. Through the development and trial of alternative teaching strategies for use in Indigenous Studies classes, it is hoped this process may encourage cultural understanding in the students, resulting in more meaningful teaching and learning. Summary of the approach. The teaching strategies included storytelling; co-operative learning; and allowing many of the teaching resources to speak directly to the students involved, reducing the influence of teacher/facilitator in class discussion and direction. Overview of the methodology. A five-week case study, in which one of the investigators facilitated the teaching approach to volunteer classes of year seven and nine students, produced several types of qualitative data. Analysis of the data produced results that suggested varying success of different strategies, but overall encouraging outcomes for the approach as a whole.