HAVING THE HARD CONVERSATIONS: Good practice in addressing individual and institutional resistance to Indigenous health and cultural safety education
Event Information
12:00pm – 1:30pm
Hugh Dixson Room of the AGSM Building
Many students and health professionals, alike, struggle to engage fully with Indigenous health curricula. Both content and the learning process can disturb. Where students respond with resistance – and in particular with disengagement - teaching and learning can fail (McDermott & Sjoberg, 2012)[1]. The development of an effective, culturally safe practitioner is jeopardised.
Institutions can also resist. Whether overt or covert, institutional resistance can operate to constrain, or deny the validity of, Indigenous leadership and pedagogical approaches. Funding, staffing, curriculum space, time-tabling, inclusion of strengths-based / non-deficit approaches, and Indigenous-preferred curriculum can all be compromised.
Dennis and Dave drew on their current collaboration in a National Senior Teaching Fellowship (OLT) and discussed what successful Indigenous health teaching looks like. They invited participants into a conversation on how best to make it happen. They also outlined the development of a Good Practice Framework (GPF) that aims to clarify and address barriers to, and enablers of, student progress along an often disquieting educational journey. Additionally, the framework aims to embed investigation of individual and institutional resistance into health professional course accreditation processes. When fully complete, the GPF will be disseminated by media, academic publication, and follow-up workshops - augmented by video and printed educational resources.
Brief information about the presenters can be viewed in the flyer below:
