Retention and graduation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in initial teacher education

While the need to increase numbers of Indigenous teachers has been highlighted for many years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers are still significantly underrepresented in Australia making up less that 1% of teachers in schools. Nationally, little has changed since the 1980s when Hughes and Wilmot (1992) called for ‘1000 Indigenous teachers by 1990’. This paper constitutes the first stage of a national research project targeting improved retention, success and graduation rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teacher education students enrolled in Australian universities. As part of the research an initial review of teacher education as related to the preparation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders has been conducted and this paper examines what lessons can be learnt from this body of literature. Alongside the scholarly literature, the we have included an analysis of policy documents and government reports as well as web-based descriptions of historical and current models of Indigenous teacher education including both mainstream Education programs and cohort-based and community models. While the literature provides examples of successful models of Indigenous teacher education it also raises key questions in terms of the longstanding and interrelated factors that continue to impact on the success or failure of teacher education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.