Aboriginal world views and cosmologies.

 

As we have seen visiting teachers are imbued with a sense of responsibility and obligation. They have established relational schemas in place which permit interpretation and promote hybridity, so that ways of interacting with specific others, (the Indigenous teachers and communities of the homeland centres), have been negotiated. It is now a question of how non-Indigenous preservice teachers will be socialized into collectivist world views. We are dealing with ways of promoting, reflecting upon, interpreting and sustaining movements of cultural hybridity in which collectivism is promoted but not at the expense of the individual, and in which individual schemas can be examined in the light of collectivist achievements. Preservice teachers find their sense of social obligation is framed for them, that there is a scaffold to which they can cling, and that they have a precarious sense of agency stemming from intersubjectivity. This draws on those elements of social consciousness which Bhabha (1994: 185) considers imperative for agency - 'deliberative, individuated action and specificity in analysis'.

The importance of consensus and arriving at collective agreement is commented on by Martha who observes that

Contributing to the hybridisation process is the growing political awareness amongst student-teachers that the work of all teachers is supported by 'a very strong historical consistency'. The VT who made this remark stressed the historical nature of the workplace and the historical continuity that had been provided, referring to explanations and decisions made by others five or ten years ago that can be readily expressed. The fact that documents can be produced to substantiate the directions taken, creates a feeling of historical connection and purpose amongst the students who are used to everything happening in 'the time of the now'. As one of the Visiting Teachers pointed out the practicum provides a brief snapshot of where the process has got to. This analogy calls forth the fort/da, hither and thither aspect of border-crossing referred to by Bhabha in the extended quotation provided earlier.

Another important feature in promoting intentional hybridity is the reliance on negotiation, dialogue and journal sharing. Marika, Ngurruwutthun, & White (1990) insist on the need for collective responsibility and the promotion of group consciousness and group belongingness. They emphasise the importance of negotiation between the respective groups in establishing a cooperative working community. 'The Ngalapal,' they explain, 'use negotiation to make sure we are not doing things for ourselves as individuals'. The learning/teaching/researching process requires that everyone becomes a learner based on the Yolngu concept of 'bala lili' which means giving and then getting something back (ibid: 6-7)

This is not to imply that such negotiation is without violent contestation. There was acknowledgment of long standing disagreements and tensions within the different working parties and student-teachers were able to observe how staff worked around those tensions. How do strategies of representation or empowerment come to be formulated in the competing claims of communities where, despite shared histories of deprivation and discrimination, the exchange of values, meanings and priorities may not always be collaborative and dialogical, but may be profoundly antagonistic, conflictual and even incommensurable?

Hybridization and pedagogy

The process of hybridization is accompanied by mimesis which Baud (1997: 105) describes as an attempt not only to copy the 'outside' of the 'Other,' but also as a means of usurping its power, of appropriating its meaning. Baud (ibid) maintains that in this process, 'there is no desire to become the same as the Westerner, but rather to emphasise the identity and uniqueness of self'. In mimicry, on the other hand, 'the dominant function is one of mischievous imitation - the kind of imitation that pays an ironic homage to its object' (Huggan, 1997/8: 94). Hence mimicry 'disrupts the colonial discourse by doubling it' and allows the narratives of colonial power and dominant cultures to be subverted (Beya, 1998).

One of the major concerned expressed by student-teachers was the high degree of structure, rote-learning and repetition which appeared to accompany the work of the Visiting Teachers and the Homeland School Teachers. Ted commented that 'the visiting teacher was going through the workbook with the Homeland School Teachers and it's just so structured that there's no input from the Homeland School Teacher'. Martha also found the programs 'very rigid, like there isn't much room for extra things to be done' but she found choice of activities built into the program took this into account to a certain extent. In order to understand what is occurring here, it is necessary to make a distinction between the production of mimic-men and women who simply give back to the coloniser what he or she wants to hear, and mimicry which presents itself more in the form of a 'menace' or challen

 

References:

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