Two Presentations:The More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative and Initial Scoping and The European Commission SALEACOM project

This presentation will involve 2 presentation topics. The first deals a commissioned component research component of the More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative and the second with a current European Commission grant which we are currently collaborating with researchers in Spain, Hungary, Brazil, New Zealand and the USA

The More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative: Initial Scoping
In this presentation we will present on the findings of a component of the More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative (MATSITI), which ran from 2011 to 2016. Supported by the Australian Council of Deans of Education, the presentation will examine a stage of the project that consisted of collecting data on Initial Teacher Education across Australia to determine their recruitment, support and graduation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers. The audit identified a range of issues perceived as impacting on Indigenous pre-service teachers, and multiple recommendations provided by Aboriginal and Torres Strait teachers about how Schools of Education across Australia could design more supportive programs.  This Phase One activity resulted in the development of Memorandums of Agreements in some universities about their way forward in preparing more Indigenous teachers.

The European Commission SALEACOM project
In the second half of the presentation we share knowledge gained through our invited participation in a multinational network of scholars working together to address inequity. ‘Overcoming Inequalities in Schools and Learning Communities: Innovative Education for a New Century’ (known as the SALEACOM project) is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) supported by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation HORIZON 2020 (2015-2017). The research partners were selected on the basis of having led social justice programs and/or research perceived to have had substantial social impact in their home countries in improving the lives of young people. The main objective of SALEACOM is to address educational and social exclusion in schools and learning communities. The SALEACOM project is a funded collaboration between research groups in six countries (Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Hungary, Spain, USA) and one non-academic institution (Drom Kotar Mestipen) in Spain in order to promote international collaboration through research and innovation staff exchanges based in Europe (EU Member States and Associated Countries) and outside Europe (third countries).

Associate Professor Bruce Burnett works in the area of sociology of education with a particular interest in critical social justice issues within teacher education and the high poverty schooling sector. Bruce is co-director of the National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) Program and directs the majority of his research and teaching towards making a tangible impact in this space. He was a lead researcher on the Australian Council of Deans of Education/More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative research project and is currently working on both an ARC Linkage grant (partnering with DET) as well as a European Commission Horizon 2020 project with partners in Spain, Hungary, US, NZ and Brazil.

Associate Professor Jo Lampert is co-director of the National Ex ceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) Program, now offered at 7 universities across Australia. Regularly invited to collaborate nationally and internationally on research associated with teacher education for high poverty schools, Jo also has a long history of
teaching , publication and research in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education and equity. Springer Press published Lampert & Burnett’s co-edited book ‘Teacher Education for High Poverty Schools’ in 2016 and the NETDS Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Teacher Education has just been published. Jo is Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Critical Perspectives on Teacher Education.