Aboriginal Adults as Classroom Assistants

Abstract

Increasing attention has been given in recent years to the effects of various factors upon the academic achievement of ethnic minority group children. In those Australian states where there are schoolswith significantly large proportions of Aboriginal children, special programs have been devised and implemented.

The Department of Education in Queensland has been involved throughout the past decade in the development and refinement of both techniques and materials designed to foster the academic attainments of Aboriginal children. One program involved the employment of Aboriginal adults from a local community to work along side of teachers in and out of the classrooms as para-professional teachers’ assistants. This program is currently in the ninth month of a twelve month pilot study in the Cherbourg Community School.

The role of these assistants is regarded as being essentially mediatory. Primarily the objective has been to increase the degree of home/school and parent/teacher contact with a view to closing the knowledge and understanding gap existing between the school and the community generally. It is hoped to increase parental awareness and appreciation of the aims, ideals, and processes operating within the school environment. Conversely, it is hoped to acquaint the teachers with a more thoroughgoing understanding of the cultural, socio-economic, and familial backgrounds of the children they teach.

In implementing the project it has been considered that changes within the school itself can have only limited effect on the educational development of children, and that the ultimate success of any intervention program depends on the involvement of the children’s families.