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This paper proposes a new theory of Conditional Social Equality (CSE) which in some ways challenges the theory of cumulative advantage/disadvantage (CAD), which postulates that inequalities and social divisions necessarily increase over time. Using evidence from informal learning groups in Men's Sheds in three countries, we conclude that some social divisions between homosocial groups, in this case groups of older men, may actually decrease -- but only under certain conditions. Male-gendered learning groups that were relatively homogeneous by age helped erase class divisions and softened gender stereotypes. Our theory of conditional social equality (CSE) predicts the following: (1) in-group homogeneity can enable the acceptance of some aspects of heterogeneity; (2) some other aspects of in-group heterogeneity may not be tolerated, thus maintaining in-group cohesion; and (3) in-group homogeneity and boundary setting towards out-groups may be prerequisites for the acceptance of (some) aspects of in-group heterogeneity. All of this has important implications for adult learning in both heterogeneous and homogenous groups.

Our paper focuses on delineating and scoping international Women's Sheds, a movement that has emerged within the past decade, mainly in Australia, Ireland and the UK. It addresses two main research questions. Firstly, what is the origin, distribution, nature and intent of Women's Sheds internationally to March 2021? Secondly, how might Women's Sheds be located within a typology inclusive of Men's Sheds and a range of community development models? We employed a systematic search via the internet in 2020-21, followed up by attempted email or phone contact to publicly reported Women's Sheds and like organisations internationally. In the process, we created a publicly shareable blog including a database of 122 existing, previously active, developing or planned Women's Sheds and like organisations to 13 March 2021. We identify four nations where self-identified Women's Sheds have operated or commenced within the past decade: Australia (61), the UK (30), Ireland (28) and New Zealand (3), particularly during the five years between 2014 and 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic seriously curtailed this previous momentum and development after March 2020. We identify some similarities but also important differences between Women's and Men's Sheds. We propose a typology that accounts not only for the different ways in which Women's Sheds operate and women participate within their communities but also the different ways in which they locally collaborate (or not) with Men's Sheds in different countries. We conclude that Women's Sheds have largely been created by women in order to claim the shed as a positive female gendered space, in order to create an alternative community of women's hands-on practice. Sheds have operated or commenced within the past decade: Australia (61), the UK (30), Ireland (28) and New Zealand (3), particularly during the five years between 2014 and 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic seriously curtailed this previous momentum and development after March 2020. We identify some similarities but also important differences between Women's and Men's Sheds. We propose a typology that accounts not only for the different ways in which Women's Sheds operate and women participate within their communities but also the different ways in which they locally collaborate (or not) with Men's Sheds in different countries. We conclude that Women's Sheds have largely been created by women in order to claim the shed as a positive female gendered space, in order to create an alternative community of women's hands-on practice.

This paper poses three research questions, based primarily on evidence from six decades of the Australian Journal of Adult Education (AJAL, 2000-present) and its antecedent journals dating back to 1961. Firstly, it asks what was the context for establishing a national adult learning association, Australian Association of Adult Education (AAAE) in 1960, renamed the Australian Association for Adult and Community Education (AACE) in 1989, and Adult Learning Australia (ALA) in 1998? Secondly, it asks how the association, the research in its journals and the field of adult education adapted to the rapidly changing context, opportunities and needs for lifelong learning in Australia? In doing so, the paper critically examines evidence of ongoing tensions and difficulties delivering on ALA's 2020 vision of 'lifelong and lifewide learning for all Australians'. It also asks what the current situation is for Australian adult education, and what possible new courses for the future ALA and AJAL might take. The first two research questions are addressed in the body of this paper. The third question is addressed primarily within the Discussion.

Our paper uses a qualitative, case study approach to critically examine the role of community involvement in learning to adapt and develop resilience in the face of disaster. Within a decade, the already disadvantaged, small, Australian rural community of 'Bellbird' faced three catastrophic, human induced disasters: the Millennial Drought (1996 to 2010), a March 2013 bushfire and the COVID-19 epidemic of 2020. Our interviews were conducted during late 2019 and early 2020 with men and women shedders as well as their significant others in the usually vibrant and unusually gender inclusive 'Bellbird Men's Shed'. For at least six months following the interviews, the Bellbird Men's Shed was shut as a consequence of the COVID-19 lockdowns. We opportunistically reflect on the data from our interviews and emerging literature on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to critically interrogate the role local community learning plays in responding to and developing resilience in the face of locally experienced global disasters. We conclude that Bellbird is a good example of a small, rural community where formal, top down decision making approaches to adult and community education in 2020 in Australia are sometimes impossible or inappropriate. Bellbird in effect exercised agency to create its unique, place and needs-based form of lifelong and lifewide learning 'bottom up' at its atypical community Men's Shed. The practices and commitments the Shed adopted have provided the community with opportunities for developing personal and collective wellbeing and the necessary resilience for adapting to likely future shocks.

This timeline focuses on the main developments in the field of Adult and Community Education (ACE) in Australia from the formation of the first national association, Australian Association of Adult Education, (AAAE) in 1960 to the present association, Adult learning Australia (ALA). It is based primarily on documentary evidence available in the association journals. The timeline starts in the early 1900s to provide the context for the formation of AAAE and includes several developments internationally, nationally and within states that affected the development of ACE in Australia as well as the association as it transformed over time to become AAACE and more recently ALA. It is necessarily selective and partial but provides references to other sources for those seeking a more detailed history.

Our article was commissioned by AONTAS, The National Adult Learning Organisation in Ireland. Using a critical and independent 'outsider' perspective, we analyse and examine the contents of The Adult Learner journal (ALJ), published in Ireland by the Adult Education Organisers' Association (AEOA) and later with AONTAS1 between 1985 and 2017. We also include an analysis of an antecedent journal, A Review of Adult Education, first published by AONTAS in 1971 and briefly reissued in 1979-80. As well as identifying trends in content and authorship in all 39 journals across almost five decades, our analysis also provides a window into the establishment of AONTAS, its journals, editors and editorial boards. Like the 50-year retrospective review of the Australian Journal of Adult Learning (Harris and Morrison, 2011) this review sought to identify evidence in the journal of recurrent and changing issues in adult education in the context of massive political, economic and social changes that have swept across the island of Ireland, and the increasingly interconnected and networked world during this period. It also sought to identify suggested methods of addressing these issues through policy and practice developments. Whilst we identify some things that are well known to AONTAS, journal readers and sectoral insiders, other less obvious trends emerge through our systematic, longitudinal, comparative and critical qualitative and quantitative analysis.

This specially themed ""Getting of Wisdom," Learning in Later Life" Edition of the "Australian Journal of Adult Learning" ("AJAL") is not so much concerned with the issue of ageing itself, but more about quality of life regardless of age. It is about taking, but also giving back as best as possible at any age. This special issue is a result of the one week "The Getting of Wisdom Exchange", a collaboration between around 100 adult education practitioners and researchers from ten countries from Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe. In this issue, papers are presented from Sweden, Ireland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Slovenia, Poland, Germany, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Papers cover different topics and open questions about various issues in older people's learning.

In our final paper we reflectively stand back and ask, "What do we know and what have we learnt about lifelong learning in later life from the international Getting of Wisdom Exchange program and process, including the research papers in this volume?" In critically addressing this question we draw not only on new insights from the papers in this themed volume and the wider literature of lifelong and later life learning, but also on insights from Indigenous knowledge(s). We sense an ideal opportunity to reflect on our insights into Indigenous learning and eldership in Australia and New Zealand to go beyond what research is actually included in this volume. In part, what we do is ask what voices, pedagogies and research tends not to be included here, that is also missing in most mainstream Western research, that typically seeks universal "truths" about learning through peer reviewed scientific perspectives and methods. We certainly do not regard learning shaped and re-shaped by governments through neoliberal and conservative discourses as the only or last word. We have chosen the ancient te reo Maori words, Ma te ora ka mohio/"Through life there is learning" as the title for our paper to emphasise that lifelong learning is an ancient and wise construct that regards life and learning as inseparable and mutually reinforcing.

Learning through life experiences as distinct from learning through the academy and courses have become increasingly important themes in later life adult education research and practice. Whilst the dominant discourse for most younger people is still about education and training for students in standardised and accredited courses, there is increasing concern to find ways of giving voice to empower people otherwise excluded, disempowered or missing from mainstream education, learning, research and the community. This paper specifically explores and actively mirrors ways of using techniques developed through academic autoethnography to empower older people to share and make sense of the lives they have lived by exploring some of the unexamined assumptions that govern everyday life, behaviour and decision making including in the many, often very informal contexts well beyond educational institutions, the academy and paid work. In essence, like autoethnography, our paper seeks to identify, interrogate and celebrate ways of revealing and displaying multiple layers of consciousness connecting the personal to the cultural for sharing and celebrating diversity in later life.

Australia has around 1,000 Men's Sheds--informal community-based workshops offering men beyond paid work somewhere to go, something to do and someone to talk to. They have proven to be of great benefit for older men's learning, health and wellbeing, social integration, and for developing a positive male identity focusing on community responsibility and care. A Men's Shed is typically self-organized and "bottom-up," which is also a key success factor, since it provides participants with a sense of ownership and empowerment. Men's Sheds are now spreading rapidly internationally, but the uptake of the idea varies with the local and national context, and so too may the consequences. Our paper describes how the Men's Shed travelled to Denmark, a country with considerably more "social engineering" than in Australia, where Sheds were opened in 2015, via a "top-down" initiative sponsored by the Danish Ministry of Health. Using data from the study of the web pages of the Danish "Shed" organizations, from interviews with the central organizer, and from visits and interviews with participants and local organizers at two Danish Men's sheds, we describe how the idea of the Men's Shed on the Australian model was interpreted and translated at central and local levels. Preliminary data indicate that similar positive benefits as exist in Australia may result, provided that local ownership is emphasized.

This paper presents a case study of the experiences and reflections of four fourth year pre-service teachers from Federation University Australia who completed their three-week teaching placement in Anshan, Liaoning Province, China, in April 2014. The study also explores the perspectives and opinions of both the Chinese mentor teachers and Chinese students towards the Australian preservice teachers. The research confirms the mutual benefits of cross-cultural teacher education professional experiences for pre-service teachers, Chinese mentor teachers and Chinese students. The teaching experiences revealed major differences in educational concepts and teaching strategies and approaches between the two systems because of the different social and cultural contexts. The evidence from the voices of the participants indicates that the professional experience in these two Chinese schools fostered the Australian pre-service teachers' cross-cultural communication skills, developed their confidence and skills as teachers and generally enriched their personal and professional lives.

Despite evidence of the benefits of learning for well-being across diverse groups, little is known about older men's experiences of learning, the factors that influence whether they choose to engage in learning activities and what role learning plays in their lives as they grow older. The present study examines the attitudes and learning behaviours of older men participating in Men's Sheds in Ireland. Our findings point to the importance of Men's Sheds as sites of informal learning that encourage the sharing of skills, knowledge and wisdom between older men. We conclude that Men's Sheds facilitate sensitive conversations between older men as they actively engage in constructing masculine behaviours and identities in later life. (A bibliography is included.)

Consistent with the "looking back, moving forward" conference theme, in this paper we undertake a critical, research-based appraisal of the current, arguably neglected state of adult education in Australia in 2010, and proceed to paint a picture of how a different and potentially more positive future might be realised. Firstly, we emphasise situations (including states and territories) in Australia in which adult education is seen to be lacking or missing for particular groups of adults. Secondly we emphasise research evidence confirming the demonstrable value of learning for purposes other than those that are immediately vocational. We identify links between lifelong and lifewide learning on one hand, and health and wellbeing on the other. Part of the paper involves international comparisons with other forms of adult learning that Australia might learn from, adapt or borrow. We make particular reference to research underpinning the recent Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning by NIACE in the United Kingdom. Our first main conclusion has to do with equity. Adult and community education (ACE) in Australia is currently seen to be least available or accessible to those Australians with the most limited and most negative experiences of school education, but the most need to learn in non-vocational domains. These groups include older Australians, some men and women, people not in paid work, and rural, isolated and Indigenous people. Our second main conclusion is that, to realise adult learning's future potential, we need changes to government policies, research and practice that acknowledge and actively support the broader nature and value of learning for life across all age groups. To paraphrase research from Belgium by Sfard (2008), based around Beck's (1986) exploration of reflexive modernity, the adult education function of ACE is in dire straits, unless education is seen as being much more valuable than the sum of individual vocational competencies, and particularly unless it is also recognised, valued and supported as one of many valuable outcomes of social, lifelong and lifewide learning throughout the community.

This paper examines and compares learning narratives associated with older men's participation in three community organisations in an Australian rural setting: an adult and community education provider, an emergency service organization and an aged care facility. The interview data are from a larger Australian study of learning in community settings by older men (age 50+ years of age). The paper examines what factors influence older men's learning and wellbeing through community organisations. It concludes that preferred learning for older men in community organisations is typically through group participation in practical situations for pragmatic purposes. Community organisations aside from education providers are shown to provide critically important opportunities for older men to actively redefine and recreate personal meanings and rapidly changing identities beyond those developed through paid work.

This paper focuses on what is known internationally from research about some aspects of men's learning. It explores the similar and different factors that shape men's attitudes towards learning in diverse national and cultural contexts. It also identifies some possible parallels (and differences) between the experiences, participation and outcomes in education of men and boys. The paper proceeds to make a case for recognising and addressing the factors that affect gender parity in educational contexts, including Australia, in which several tertiary outcome measures tend to be skewed towards girls and women. The paper forms part of background research for Phase 1 (in several Anglophone nations) of a major international research project into men's learning in community settings that includes several Australian study sites. (Contains 3 figures.)

In this final, collaborative paper in the "Learning to be drier" edition, we reflect on and draw together some of the key threads from the diverse narratives in our four site papers from across the southern Murray-Darling Basin. Our paper title, "Wicked learning", draws on a recent body literature (Rittel & Webber 1973) about messy or "wicked problems" as characterised by Dietz and Stern (1998). It picks up on our identification of the difficulty and enormity of the learning challenges being faced by communities, associated, at best, with a decade of record dry years (drought) and severely over-committed rivers. At worst, drought is occurring in combination with and as a precursor to recent, progressive drying of the Basin associated with climate change. Our research is suggestive of a need for much more learning across all segments of the adult community about "... the big picture, including the interrelationships among the full range of causal factors ..." (Australian Public Service Commission, APSC 2007: 1) underlying the presenting problem of drying. We conclude that solutions to the messy or wicked problem of drying in an interconnected Basin will lie in the social domain. This will include building a wider knowledge and acceptance of the problems and likely future risks across the Basin including all parts of communities. The problem of drying as well as its causes and solutions are multidimensional, and will involve comprehensive learning about all five key characteristics of other "wicked" policy problems identified in previous research in the environmental arena. The narratives that we have heard identify the extreme difficulty in all four sites of rational and learned responses to being drier as the problem has unfolded. All narratives about being drier that we have heard involve a recognition of a combination of the five characteristics common to wicked problems: multidimensionality, scientific uncertainty, value confect and uncertainty, mistrust as well as urgency. All narratives identify the importance of social learning: to be productive, to be efficient, to survive, to live with uncertainty, to be sustainable and to share. Combating the extent and effects of drying, causality aside, will require new forms of learning through new community, social and learning spaces, apart from and in addition to new technological and scientific learning. (Contains 1 figure.)

This paper investigates learning related to the phenomena of drying over the past decade in the southern Murray-Darling Basin in Australia, as perceived in a mid-river site within the western Riverina of New South Wales, Australia. The insights from audio-recorded interviews, with a wide range of adults across the water-dependent community, mostly relate to the catchment of the Murrumbidgee River in the Shire of Hay. Our overarching theme is about how people are learning about, understanding and bearing the risks, of what is widely regarded as a prolonged drought. For some, the learning is about how to cope with less water in the Basin, and particularly from the river, as predicted in the climate change literature. Our narrative-based, empirical research registers the felt experience of those located, in situ, as a severe "irrigation drought" extends into 2009. The paper dramatises the many obstacles to learning how to think and act differently, in difficult and rapidly changing ecosocial circumstances. (Contains 3 footnotes.)

In this article, the authors set the scene for this research volume. They sought to emphasize and broaden their interest and concern about their "Learning to be drier" theme in this edition to the 77 per cent of Australians who live within 50 km of the Australian coast, the majority of whom also live in major cities and urban complexes. On 24 September 2009, a massive dust storm swept across New South Wales, dumping millions of tonnes of red dust on capital city areas of Australia unaccustomed to dust: (1) Canberra; (2) Sydney; and (3) Brisbane. Snow, laced with the same red dust fell the same day in the Australian Alps, as attempts at breaking the historic and prolonged deadlock between the Australian federal government and states about water trading rules, as part of achieving a national "plan" for the Murray Darling-Basin, again broke down. On 1 October 2009 the New South Wales Office of Water circulated a news release, making "an initial allocation (in the Murray Valley) to general security users of 1 per cent" of their entitlements, and asking all water users "to be as conservative as possible with their use in what continues to be the worst drought ever experienced". Eight researchers contributed team papers to this special edition from the four sites in the southern Murray-Darling Basin. Collectively, they bring wide and deep academic backgrounds, theoretical perspectives and experiences from a wide range of work, research and life contexts, in mainly rural and regional Australia. While the research plan detailed in this article was essentially common, each two-person team grappled with and selected its own preferred combination of theoretical perspectives for their paper. The method and the qualitative (mainly interview) data were therefore treated somewhat differently across different sites. While the four site papers were researched, developed and written relatively independently by two-person teams, their joint, sixth paper attempts to "stand back". In sum, they collaboratively seek to critically analyse and draw some conclusions about what might be common or different about the diverse approaches to learning about being drier, drawn from four very different land use contexts, in the same Basin, across three different Australian states. (Contains 1 table, 1 figure and 1 footnote.)

Informal learning has often been seen as formal learning's "poor cousin". Our paper explores and discusses new and different ways of thinking about defining, valuing and researching the breadth and importance of informal learning in diverse national and cultural contexts. This includes a consideration of the power relations that can act to devalue informal learning. It is underpinned by a recognition that not only do a relatively small proportion of adults currently engage in formal learning, but those who do tend already to be dedicated and successful lifelong learners. It leads to a discussion about how informal learning might be framed as part of the solution to adult exclusion, seen to be aggravated by unnecessary adult educational hierarchies, accreditation, assessment and formality. (Contains 2 tables.)

This article reviews research into the genesis and spread of both neighbourhood houses and learning centres in Victoria and community-based men's sheds in Australia to identify some similarities and differences. Our article asks questions about the gendered communities of practice that underpin houses for women on the one hand, and sheds for men on the other. Our particular interest is with the gender issues associated with the development of the relatively mature neighbourhood house "sector", and those associated with the very recent and developing community-based men's sheds "sector". Our underpinning research question has to do with the desirability (or otherwise) in each of these sectors of political and strategic decisions being either gender specific or gender neutral. We identify a number of tantalising parallels between the rationale behind the establishment of both sectors, for women and men, albeit in very different circumstances, along with some obvious differences. (Contains 1 footnote.)

Our paper examines and analyses the contexts and organisations in rural and regional communities that informally and effectively encourage men to learn. It is based on a combination of local, rural adult education practice and a suite of studies in Australia and elsewhere of learning in community contexts, most recently into community-based men's sheds. It is underpinned by both experience and research evidence that many rural men tend to have an aversion to formal learning. The intention of our paper and its specific, practical conclusions and recommendations is to focus on and share positive and practical ways, demonstrated through practice and validated through research, of encouraging rural men to learn. (Contains 1 footnote.)

This paper begins by teasing out the nature of social capital and its particular and current relevance to adult learning policy and practice in Australia. The paper identifies a number of benefits and significant problems with social capital as an organising construct for adult learning research and policy in Australia. Some connections are made between social capital and lifelong learning, and important distinctions are drawn between "bonding" and "bridging" social capital. I draw on my experiences and insights over the past seven years using network diagrams as a research tool. Network diagrams are identified as a useful tool for charting relationships between learning organisations and individuals. The paper suggests ways of using the network relationships in these diagrams as a proxy for social capital in a range of formal and informal settings in which adult learning occurs in Australia. Network diagrams are seen to have particular utility in situations where communities and organisations become too small for surveys, where relationships become complex and ambiguous as well as in rural and remote communities where distance and spatial relationships affect access to learning.

This paper explores some important aspects of the generation of practical knowledge through later life. It is about the relationship between knowledge generation, agency and capability, developed informally through the life experiences in and through the Company of Others. It emphasises how the everyday processes of socialisation create invaluable opportunities to know how to navigate the diverse and complex changes thrown up in the journey through later life. It asks where and how knowhow is generated after workforce participation ceases and pays particular attention to "third places", opportunities in the community that enable social connections beyond the first and second places, home and work, respectively. The empirical and theoretical data come from two main Australian sources amplified by new international research in cognate fields. The first is a study about "Generating knowhow in later life". The second derives from insights from research for a book into the origins and nature of the now international "Men's Shed Movement".

To date, little attention has been placed on older men (aged 50+ years) as learners, with much of the literature on adult learning concerned with younger age-groups and issues around gender equity directed mainly at women. This article examines the impact of community-based men's sheds on informal and nonformal learning by older men in Ireland. It considers older men's attitudes to learning, learning behavior, and the noncognitive attributes--motivation, perseverance, and beliefs about capabilities--that underpin learning behavior. This descriptive study used a mixed-methods approach, involving questionnaires and focus groups, with all sheds registered with the Irish Men's Sheds Association invited to participate. It is concluded that men's sheds provide space for hands-on learning activities that add value to the lives and experiences of men beyond work, fostering a yearning to carry on learning. Crucially, shed-based conversations have an important role in helping older men with difficult life transitions and are an important site for future studies of masculinity in later life.

In order to critique the notion of "learner voice" in vocational education and training (VET) policy, this paper draws from a project conducted by the authors on behalf of the Australian National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC). The term "learner voice" is used extensively throughout NVEAC documentation to describe the engagement of "disadvantaged" students within the VET system. However, the concept of "voice" being advocated, we argue, is a particularly "thin" one which is linked to notions of client feedback, managed participation and the commodification of training rather than any broad sense of democracy, equity or social transformation. The paper critically examines current practices in relation to learner voice within the VET policy framework and their implications for the contested role of VET in contributing to social equity and redress of social and economic disadvantage.

The health and wellbeing benefits of Men's Sheds to the men who participate have had significant research attention for over a decade. However, there has been little research into the broader impacts of Men's Sheds, particularly in relation to the impacts on significant others in the lives of the men who participate. Our paper aims to redress this lack of research by focusing on the interrelated perceptions and experiences of men and those closest to them in four Men's Sheds in regional Victoria, Australia. The research shows that the partners and carers of 'shedders' reported that the men's participation not only benefited the men but also had benefits for their significant others. The study also showed that the partners of shedders in the study found that their individual and joint adjustment to retirement was in some cases assisted by the men enjoying the social and structured environment of the Men's Shed, while in other cases it was seen by partners as an over-commitment and impacting negatively on the marriage. The findings also shed some important light on some tensions experienced by the partners associated with carer burden and adjustments to retirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The informal learning that older (age 50+) men experience in Australia has been the subject of a suite of recent, intensive, mixed methods research projects in community-based voluntary organizations. The purpose of the research was to examine where men are learning in these contexts beyond work and formal education rather than to assume and problematize older men as nonlearners. This article draws together strands of completed field research to suggest that learning is effective for older men in community settings when it is social, local, practical, situated, and in groups, particularly for older, sometimes isolated men who have experienced a range of setbacks in life. While older Australian men tend to be missing from adult and community education (ACE) providers, they are able to informally share hands-on skills from their work lives with other men of all ages, with a range of important benefits to their own well-being, the well-being of other men, and the well-being of their communities. Some future areas for comparative international research are identified.

The "men's sheds" movement is a grassroots phenomenon that has engaged and inspired men from communities across Australia in hands-on, workshop-based social activity. This article seeks to "unwrap" one of several forms of learning that have been found to be enthusiastically embraced by older men previously thought of, almost patronisingly, as being "unreached learners". In the process, the author is seeking to "join some of the dots" between learning and several of the World Health Organisation social determinants of health: (1) social exclusion; (2) unemployment; (3) difficult past lives; and (4) a stressful current life. His broader intention is to demonstrate that it is possible for older men to create new grassroots organisations in which transformational learning takes place through the activity in a community or practice rather than as the object of the activity. In essence, the author's argument is that learning and wellbeing are not necessarily maximized as outcomes by educational intervention that presupposes higher formal literacies or pedagogies.

This paper explores the dynamics and outcomes from a collaborative, cross-cultural approach to teaching an Indigenous education elective unit in a Bachelor of Education (Primary) undergraduate degree at University of Ballarat in 2009. The three facilitators, one non-Aboriginal and two Aboriginal were a lecturer, an Aboriginal Centre Manager and Local Aboriginal Education Consultative Group member from the Ballarat and District Aboriginal Cooperative respectively. The paper explores the open-ended and collaborative approach used to facilitate the learning, including pedagogies, activities and assessment. The paper, and the collaborative cross-cultural teaching approach it arguably embodies, is presented as a model of desirable practice with undergraduate education students, in particular for pre-service teachers undertaking a P-10 Bachelor of Education degree. As we describe later in the paper, these pre-service teachers, with some exceptions, in general had very limited and often stereotyped knowledge and experience of Aboriginal education, Aboriginal students or Aboriginal perspectives in other areas of the school curriculum. The teaching process we adopted and that we articulate in this paper attempted to address this previous lack of engagement with the subject matter of Indigenous education by actively modelling the processes of local Aboriginal consultation and collaboration that we were trying to teach. (Contains 1 table.)