Research question: Can portraiture inform cultural border crossing research?

Research purpose: Using tools drawn from narrative life-history work and portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis, 1997), this study explored professional interactions between Indigenous student teachers and the authors, 2 non-Indigenous teacher educators in an Australian university. Although deeply contextualised, the findings suggest principles of relationship that may guide other educators working across cultural borders in Europe and elsewhere.

Context: In the final tutorial session of a three year degree targeted for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, the group decided to work together with us- the authors- to share the stories of the professional pathways of the graduating student teachers, in order to both celebrate their achievements and work towards affecting policy development both within the university and in the wider sphere of government decision-making. The work was thus initiated in collaboration with Indigenous graduates who we had taught, progressing through several stages of ethical permissions, data collection, member checking and publication, including a government report (Cassady,  Fleet,  Hughes & Kitson-Charleston, 2005), academic article(Fleet, Kitson, Cassady & Hughes, 2007) and an accessible community publication (Fleet & Kitson, 2009). During this time we worked with the degreed graduates of this university program to explore their professional pathways and to identify factors that have both helped and hindered university success (Fleet, Kitson, Cassady & Hughes, 2007). Through this work it has become evident that educator self-study is as necessary as the data collection which is program-related. Otherwise, this component of researcher voice is a silence in a notionally collaborative enterprise.

Theoretical framework: Portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005),  presumes that otherwise silenced voices can be made more visible through narrative inquiry. In this case, both the whiteness of the teacher educators and the marginalisation of the Indigenous student teachers provide possibilities for giving voice. The study has focussed therefore on cultural points of connection, considering them ‘touchstones’- those solid points of reference in a wanderer’s life - for future relationships. Imagery of border-crossing (Anzaldua, 1999; Giroux, 2005) helps to inform the conceptualisation. Principles of inclusion and protocols for ethical research have been employed to avoid Othering either the Indigenous graduates or the non-Indigenous teacher educators.

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