Dr. Al Strangeways

Biography

Dr Al Strangeways has taught at CDU since 2010, and is currently the Alice Springs Professional Experience co-ordinator and lecturer, and lecturer for the Growing Our Own Indigenous Teacher Preparation BEDP programme at Santa Teresa (Ltyentye Apurte). Dr Strangeways has delivered a range of online units in the undergraduate and graduate teacher courses, including those on Middle Years Pedagogies, Partnerships, Curriculum Planning and Theory to Practice in Professional Experience. In the UK she worked as a teacher of English at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Since her arrival in Australia in 1998, she has taught high school English, History and Arts (middle and senior years), and undertaken management (curriculum and pastoral) at a range of schools in the public and independent sectors in Sydney and Alice Springs.

Research Interest

Teacher education, resilience, arts-based methodologies: as part of my everyday work I engage in research to refine and extend practice, contributing to a developing knowledge base about teacher education, with particular regard to non-traditional learners and remote settings. Particular threads are: the challenges of situated learning, particularly for pre-service teachers with a background in education support or training the theory-practice disjunction in teacher education and professional learning arts-based and narrative approaches to inquiry and reflection: using creative and other non-analytical approaches to break the cycle of confirmatory-biased inquiry building resilience in educational settings the development and negotiation of professional teacher identity effective practices in remote Indigenous pre-service teacher education