Introduction from Promising Practices in Indigenous Teacher Education

Abstract

The need to re-launch who we are as Indigenous peoples working in Indigenously involved Teacher Education has never been greater. We also live in an exciting time of rapid change, growth and global opportunity. This opportunity of promise allows us to appreciate different ways of knowing, traditions, and understandings and enables us to share more coherently our educational futures together. However, and despite the positive and committed efforts occurring in many teacher education programs today, the challenge associated with meeting the wider educational needs of Indigenous peoples as learners, parents, teachers, decision makers and community remain vulnerable to cultural bias, minimalization, shifting priorities and poor recruitment strategies. In a time of Indigenous resurgence and renewal around the world, education ought to play a foundational and fundamental role in bringing forth the hopes, dreams and aspirations of Indigenous peoples, and their communities. The contributors acknowledge that bringing Indigenous peoples together to discuss the many challenges in Teacher Education requires a collective, committed and consistent effort. The need, therefore, to embody a comprehensive view of Indigenous Teacher Education primarily from the lived realities and experiences of Indigenous peoples themselves, was considered deeply necessary, and timely. Moreover, the parts in the book speak to how we can all—Indigenous and non- Indigenous—work together to enact social change, build international educational coherence and promote cultural inclusion. This book includes 48 contributors from across four different countries who together answered the call to share a number of exemplary teacher education practices that are making a distinct difference. Across the twenty chapters that make up this book, thirteen are led by Indigenous scholars, five are in collaboration with Indigenous scholars and two chapters are written by non-Indigenous scholars who have long-standing relationships working with/in Indigenous communities.