Different Worldviews: Aboriginal and Western cultural effects on delivery of VET courses

In the remote parts of northwest Australia, VET teachers deliver courses to culturally strong Aboriginal communities. The guiding principles of this culture can be respected yet can bewilder teachers’ most enthusiastic intentions to impart the knowledge and skills that community people need to support their aspirations for employment and self-management. Why is this so, when cross-cultural knowledge, government funding to overcome Aboriginal disadvantage, and good will, is greater today than ever before? Research conducted in the 1970s by anthropologist and community development worker Margaret Bain introduces some concepts that mirror research into cultural types in the international arena of business by culturalist Fons Trompenaars (1993). Bain discovered a key difference between Aboriginal and Western conceptual systems and worldviews that affects the communication processes between them.