Mitchell, Gail, Salter, Peta, and Steele, Carly (2026) Doing and undoing reparative educational futures for First Nations teachers in Australia. Race, Ethnicity and Education. (In Press)

Preview

PDF (Published Version) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (840kB) | Preview

Abstract

This study explores the experiences of teachers and stakeholders involved with an Australian First Nations initial teacher education pathway with a long history of working to secure a reparative educational future. Using the lens of Decolonising Race Theory (DRT), we critically analyse interview data to identify ongoing tensions between DRT tenets of the logic of elimination and reparative activism and explain how these forces work to simultaneously create and undo reparative futures of education. Whilst not diminishing the gains that have been made through reparative activism over time, we argue that a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the ongoing interactions between settler-colonialism and reparative activism is required, with attention to the everyday, implicit, and explicit experiences of First Nations peoples to ensure much more than a restorative gloss to the future of Australian education.

Item ID:	91050
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1470-109X
Keywords:	First Nations, Initial teacher education, Decolonising Race Theory, reparative futures
Copyright Information:	© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Date Deposited:	31 Mar 2026 03:17
FoR Codes:	39 EDUCATION > 3903 Education systems > 390307 Teacher education and professional development of educators @ 60% 45 INDIGENOUS STUDIES > 4502 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education > 450205 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander higher education @ 40%
SEO Codes:	16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1602 Schools and learning environments > 160201 Equity and access to education @ 50% 21 INDIGENOUS > 2102 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education > 210202 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education system performance @ 50%
	More Statistics