Enhancing intercultural education: strategies for challenging Eurocentrism and centring Indigenous perspectives in teacher education

Navigating Eurocentric teacher education settings presents significant challenges for both educators and learners, particularly when engaging with issues of race, privilege, and Indigenous perspectives. This paper draws on interviews with 16 Indigenous experts from Australia, Canada, the US, and New Zealand, woven together with reflective practice from compulsory Indigenous studies courses in Queensland, Australia. Our analysis reveals three key strategies: critical self-reflection, the use of metaphors, and intergenerational mentorship, which enable initial teacher education (ITE) programs to challenge deficit thinking and promote meaningful inclusion of Indigenous Knowledges. Our paper examines the affective and intellectual tensions experienced by preservice teachers when they are invited to confront their cultural positioning, whiteness, and colonial complicity. We contend that scaffolded engagement with Indigenous epistemologies provides a potent means for challenging deficit discourses and fostering more ethically responsive educational practices. Methodologically, our paper integrates dialogic reflection and Indigenous-led analysis to generate a praxis-oriented contribution for those engaged in curriculum and pedagogical reform. While grounded in the Australian context, comparative references to other settler-colonial nations enhance global debates on decolonising teacher education, offering applied strategies for critical reflexivity, relational accountability, and the ethical inclusion of Indigenous knowledges.