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