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'Aboriginal Education is everyone's business'

(Craven, 2011, p.233)

Research overview

The aim of this project was to develop an innovative approach to up-skilling Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs)

using iPad technology, providing information on pathways to further study, and educating pre-service and in-service teachers about AEWs’ critical role in classrooms today.

In researching the role of AEWs, the project focused on using technologies for research and development in three key areas encapsulated by the themes of Enabling skills, Pathways in higher education and Understanding of AEW roles (particularly for pre-service teachers).

The following overarching questions framed and guided the Skilling Up Project:

    1. What are the potential educational roles for AEWs that are enabled by mobile and e-learning ICTs?

    2. What are appropriate strategies for professional learning? (AEWs and pre- and in-service teachers)

    3. What pedagogical strategies facilitate the use of e-learning and mobile learning devices in Indigenous primary school settings?

    4. What pedagogical principles can guide the use of mobile technology to empower AEWs?

Acknowledgements

The Skilling Up Project team would like to acknowledge the many Aboriginal lands that we have travelled through during the course of the Skilling Up project.

We respectfully acknowledge all past and present Traditional Owners, Elders and Custodians of these lands. It has truly been a privilege to stand upon your country, to look and to listen, which provided us with the best way forward.

The project team would also like to acknowledge that this project has been penned on Nyungar Boodjar.

I would also like to acknowledge the members of the project team and all the participants of the project without whom the project would not have developed and evolved in the ways that it did.

Elizabeth Jackson-Barrett (Project Leader)

References

Craven, R. Ed. (2011). Teaching Aboriginal Studies: A practical resource for primary and secondary teaching. 2nd Ed. St Leonard's, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1999.