Encounters along the road : researchers' journeys in Australian traveller education

The Australian Traveller education research project has been ongoing since 1992 involving academics from within and outside the Faculty of Education and Creative Arts at Central Queensland University, and collaboration with international researchers. In this paper four current members of the research team reflect upon their intellectual journeys in relation to Australian Traveller education, and particularly their respective influences on and by their shared itinerary. The goal of tracing the four researchers' individual and shared journeys demonstrates a desire to uncover the personal and theoretical dimensions of those itineraries. Effective and ethically grounded research demands such continuing self-reflection. A key benefit of collaborative research is the capacity of fellow researchers to facilitate that self-reflection and to foster conversations about the meanings of successive encounters along the research road.