This thesis is a narrative exploration of white teachers inhabiting Indigenous spaces in Central Australia. These stories are drawn upon to invoke autobiographical conversations on my processes of becoming an educator. These conversations with white teachers facilitate and help contribute to my unlearnings of whiteness and increase my understandings of living and teaching in cross-cultural spaces. I encapsulate this narrative journey exploring whiteness by drawing on the metaphor of textual pilgrimage to help clarify the roles of narrative and writing that are central to this research inquiry. / I understand a thesis to be a storied story, a narrative providing the writer textual space in which to chronicle ones reflections on their becoming, as one writes to articulate how ones research experiences have shaped and transgressed ones knowledge bases. My interests in positioning my concepts of a thesis are guided by the possibilities of discovering narrative meaning within a thesis. It is hoped that the reader will ascertain that the text they are holding in their hands is a result of me shaping my self while utilising writing as a method of discovery (Laurel Richardson 2000). I use this thesis as a personal narrative in which I seek awareness toward my own individual whiteness and illumination of the cross-cultural spaces in which I live and teach. The structure of this personal narrative is advanced through Michel Foucaults (1994) writings on hupomnemata, or reflective notebooks that I use to comprise this thesis. / The research employs personal narrative as its methodology. This personal narrative originates out of and is enriched by various narrative traditions of research such as narrative inquiry (Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly 1994, 2000), nomadic writing practices (Elizabeth St. Pierre 1997), writing as method (Laurel Richardson 1997, 2000), and autoethnography (Carolyn Ellis and Art Bochner 2000). These diverse traditions of utilising narrative in research have informed and led to the development of personal narrative as the research methodology within this educational inquiry. / This thesis explores the idea what white teachers perform their whiteness while teaching in Indigenous communities in Central Australia and that these performances of whiteness are constructed around particular relationships and understandings of space. I understand space and identity to be interconnected and that both shape the social constructions of one another. Understandings of space help to create notions of identity, and particular notions of identity help to construct understandings of space. / In exploring the social construction of space and identity I survey four discourses of the Central Australian desert and how these discourses help shape its social construction within the imagination of white Australian teachers. After elaborating upon these four desert discourses, I shift into noticing what I refer to as discursive identities. My attempt is to illumine the discursive identities of white teachers and how these identities may shape white teachers motivations for living and teaching in remote Aboriginal communities in Central Australia. I then explore the construction of an archetypal white teacher in Central Australia to help illumine what the intensity of the desert experience could be like for white Australian teachers. This archetype is performed through my own interpretations of the desert teaching experience by the thoughts, ideas, and feelings that are invoked within me while reflecting about teaching in Central Australia. / This thesis represents the physical and intellectual journeys that I have travelled through and experienced as part of my textual pilgrimage. This textual pilgrimage encapsulates nearly four years of full time study. Being a textual pilgrim has provided me with the gift of time in which to indwell within a research question that has greatly interested me. The learnings and self-awareness that have occurred in this time have been profound. The beauty of textual pilgrimages is that one seldom knows where ones journey will lead. This thesis documents my own growth, awareness, and unlearnings of whiteness while increasing my understandings of living and teaching in cross-cultural spaces. This thesis is a representation of my processes of becoming an educator. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2004.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267554 |
| Creators | Wojecki, William Andrew. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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