Beyond ‘Othering’: Rethinking Approaches to Teaching Young Anglo-Australian Children about Indigenous Australians

Abstract

Current early childhood literature concerning anti-racist and multicultural education discusses the importance of adopting a curriculum framework to counter the development of prejudice and racism in young children. This article draws on two separate research projects in Victoria, Australia that explore how this might best be done. One project was concerned with exploring young children's understandings of indigenous Australians and their cultures and the other investigated teaching practices of a group of early childhood practitioners with indigenous Australians and their cultures. The results from these two projects are compared in order to explore some current issues in adopting curriculum frameworks that counter the development of prejudice and racism in young Anglo-Australian children towards Australia's indigenous peoples and cultures.