This manuscript unfolds in the context of a Faculty of Education course that was designed in resp... more This manuscript unfolds in the context of a Faculty of Education course that was designed in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's call to post-secondary institutions to identify and meet teacher-training needs relating to the history and legacy of Canada's Indian Residential School system. The course instructor (Madden) begins by tracing how she is theorizing truth and reconciliation education through engagement with literature produced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and those who respond to their efforts. The pedagogical activity Wandering With/In the University of Alberta animates how she attempted to mobilize these emerging understandings through course design. We then introduce the collective processes we carried out as co-authors (i.e., course instructor and three graduate students who completed the course): creating, analyzing, and representing data, as well as generating the knowledge claims offered throughout. Next, data fragments that weave photographs of and narrative writing about campus sites anchor exploration of three central themes: wandering in relation to (a) evolving understandings of self, (b) a situated and significant historical moment (i.e., Canada 150), and (c) the (imagined) classroom as a site of reconciliation. We conclude with a discussion that explores the relationship between Faculty of Education coursework, identity, and place-based pedagogies for truth and reconciliation education.
Cette étude s'est déroulée dans le contexte d'un cours offert par la Faculty of Education et développé en réponse à l'appel de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada aux établissements postsecondaires pour qu'ils identifient les besoins en formation des enseignants quant à l'histoire et les séquelles du système des pensionnats indiens au Canada et qu'ils répondent à ces besoins. La chargée de cours (Madden) débute en expliquant ses démarches pour théoriser l'éducation de vérité et réconciliation en se penchant sur la littérature produite par la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada et sur la réaction des gens aux efforts de la commission. L'activité pédagogique Wandering With/In the University of Alberta est une animation de ses efforts pour mobiliser ces nouvelles connaissances par la conception de son cours. Ensuite, nous présentons les processus collectifs que nous avons entrepris comme co-auteurs (c'est-à-dire, la chargée de cours et les trois étudiants aux études supérieures ayant complété le cours): la création, l'analyse et la représentation des données, ainsi que l'élaboration des déclarations présentées dans l'ensemble du cours. Par la suite, des fragments de données tissent des photos et des récits narratifs portant sur des sites sur le campus et offrent des balises pour l'exploration de trois thèmes centraux: errer par rapport à: (a) une compréhension en évolution de soi-même, (b) un moment historique significatif (par ex., Canada 150) et (c) la salle de classe (imaginée) comme site de réconciliation. Une discussion portant sur le rapport entre
The author suggests that educators’ responses to the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of Canad... more The author suggests that educators’ responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada cannot be reduced or reducible to practice without also considering the theories that are enfolded into reconciliatory initiatives and actions. She is guided by the central questions: How do I understand prevailing constructions of reconciliation in circulation? and How might I theorize a philosophy of truth and reconciliation education that responds to and upholds my de/colonizing commitments? The author develops a de/colonizing theory that includes four interrelated components. They include: (a) the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s notion of reconciliation and education for reconciliation, (b) Indigenous land-based traditions for establishing and maintaining respectful relationships, (c) the central role of Indigenous counter-stories in truth and reconciliation education, and (d) critiques of the construction and enactment of reconciliation. Together, these components provide orientations, challenges, and possibilities for consideration when engaging theory building, community involvement, research design, policy development, and practice for truth and reconciliation education.
Describing methodological design in decolonizing research as the intersection of theory, practice... more Describing methodological design in decolonizing research as the intersection of theory, practice, and ethics, we share four focused micro-stories from our respective research projects. The metaphor of braiding represents the methodological design process within each of our research stories, significantly influenced by Dwayne Donald's (2012) Indigenous métissage. Heather grapples with notions of reciprocity, Brooke considers the role of place in the construction of teacher identity, Marc engages with reworking photovoice, and Julia brings relationships with plants into her methodological design. Intentionally interrupting each other and ourselves, we feature the moments and movements of research design that are iterative, recursive, messy, and sometimes stuck, in contrast to the linear, untainted and dogmatic methodologies that assert themselves around us. Meanings and relationships may be produced in braiding our micro-stories together, exceeding what might be possible if they were presented separately. Readers may be invited into imagining the design of decolonizing methodologies beyond those we enacted.
What might it mean to inflect the current focus on public memory encapsulated in monuments by con... more What might it mean to inflect the current focus on public memory encapsulated in monuments by considering an equally important yet more subtle or (not so) monumental agent: educational institutions as products and producers of colonial logics and ways of being in relationship? In this essay, the authors offer pedagogical orientations that seek to embed curriculum in a multiplicity of colonial here-nows and there-thens that always already constitute our places of learning and learning selves in the making.
Four emerging scholars of education extend the methodological space inspired by Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory through focusing on research design. The notion of de/sign is presented and employed to counter prescriptive method/ology that often sutures over pedagogical possibilities in research and educational settings. Key methodological themes (e.g., voice, agency, subjectivity, data) are (un)tailored in order to work within, against, and beyond conventional humanist qualitative methodology. Patchwork methodologies take shape as key theorists and theories pierce, (un)stitch, snag, embroider, patch, and mend the fabrics of distinct research contexts, components, and commitments. Previews of the productions that result from attending to the enacted and embodied relationship between research de/sign and theory are presented. A discussion of the ways in which patchwork(ing) methodologies provokes new questions, analytical frames, and types of findings concludes the manuscript.
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2017
Please access this article for free using the link provided above in the URL section or contact t... more Please access this article for free using the link provided above in the URL section or contact the author.
The author traces how discourse functions in the context of a school-based, urban Aboriginal education initiative, with a focus on the construction and organization of teaching subjects. Critical discourse analysis that traces spectres reveals some of the ways that whiteness and Eurocentrism create the possibilities for, and the conditions in which teachers take up, the positions: victim of racism, arbiter of authenticity, and rescuer. Consideration of the multiple, complex, and shifting positions teachers occupy within whiteness in general, and in colonial systems of education in particular, offers unique possibilities when untangling and reconfiguring teachers’ constructions of Aboriginality/Indigeneity and responses to Aboriginal/Indigenous education. This theory building also contributes to the larger field of curriculum studies by demonstrating how consideration of ‘unheroic tales’ can aid in theorizing teacher identity and difference, both within and beyond the markers Indigenous/non-Indigenous.
Please contact the author directly for a copy of this article.
This manuscript explores the ce... more Please contact the author directly for a copy of this article.
This manuscript explores the central question: According to teacher educators, what are prevailing pedagogical pathways to engage Indigenous education with/in Faculties of Education? Review of 23 studies that represent international perspectives anchors analysis of the underlying theoretical assumptions, purpose, and goals of teacher educators' approaches, as well as the central themes and pedagogical methods that are featured. Four pedagogical pathways that wind, meet, and diverge are organized and examined: Learning from Indigenous traditional models of teaching, Pedagogy for decolonizing, Indigenous and anti-racist education, and Indigenous and place-based education. The implications of tracing a fulsome network of Indigenous education for programs of teacher education and research in this emergent field are highlighted.
Alecia Y. Jackson and Lisa A. Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewi... more Alecia Y. Jackson and Lisa A. Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data Across Multiple Perspectives introduces a methodological and philosophical process with prismatic potential for analyzing data with and through theory. This book is a rich resource for qualitative educational researchers looking for new methods to approach their research differently. Searching for a way to read, think, research, and write with complex theory, the authors of this book review came together for a peer-led doctoral reading group. Given our disparate disciplinary commitments, as well as our uncertainty as to how to embark on such a task, our group coalesced around the approach offered in Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data Across Multiple Perspectives. Jackson and Mazzei implicitly propose the format of speed-dating theorists within their book, which we found ideal for our theoretically promiscuous reading group. We offer a window into our speed-dating experiences through a creatively flirty medium: dating service profiles. Like the profiles, the productivity of using Thinking with Theory as a guide for promiscuous theoretical thinking, researching, and writing is not in its prescription, but rather, in the emergence of different productions of knowledge that occur relationally.
This article extends upon Susan Dion’s theory of the ‘perfect stranger’ by exploring how this pos... more This article extends upon Susan Dion’s theory of the ‘perfect stranger’ by exploring how this position is articulated and embodied by white teachers (N = 67) involved in urban Indigenous education reform. On the lookout for deconstruction, we think with Derrida around the interrelated self/other and familiar/strange binaries that uphold the perfect stranger. We argue that Eurocentrism simultaneously centres and obscures whiteness, resulting in teachers’ misconceptions about culture. We also demonstrate how stereotypical representations of the ‘imaginary Indian’ that these white teachers ‘know’ inhibits their ability to foster and build upon relationships with Indigenous students. We conclude by conceptualizing a model for teacher education that, through a variety of teaching practices and policies, intentionally disrupts and destabilizes the perfect stranger position.
This narrative study contributes to the field of school-based Indigenous education by exploring t... more This narrative study contributes to the field of school-based Indigenous education by exploring the central research question: What are the decolonizing processes of practicing teachers involved in a provincially funded initiative to improve schooling for urban Aboriginal students? Excerpts from teachers’ narratives are organized using the Anishinaabe medicine wheel, anchoring the exploration of the following five directions and associated decolonizing processes: teachings from the centre/positioning, teachings from the east/honouring, teachings from the south/understanding, teachings from the west/doing, and teachings from the north/knowing. This paper concludes with a discussion of how White, Euro-Canadian teachers’ decolonization informs the fields of Indigenous education, teacher education, and narrative inquiry.
Current Canadian scholarly literature, education policy, and curricular documents encourage the p... more Current Canadian scholarly literature, education policy, and curricular documents encourage the participation of Indigenous community members as a key component of Indigenous Education reform. Guided by sharing circles conducted with Indigenous Elders, families, teachers, and support workers, we present community voices and experiences of Indigenous Education in an urban school board through poetic transcription. Our research suggests that four key barriers will have to be overcome in efforts to improve urban Indigenous Education: unwelcoming schools, professionalization of classroom teaching, colonized classrooms, and unilateral decolonization. Poetic transcription is used in this article to centre the voices of Indigenous participants as well as attempt to decolonize our approach to data dissemination of Indigenous voices as white, Euro-Canadian university-based researchers.
This research explores the experiences and perceptions of nine Aboriginal and ally early career t... more This research explores the experiences and perceptions of nine Aboriginal and ally early career teachers (1-5 years experience) who have completed university coursework and/or extended professional development on the topic of Aboriginal education. The inquiry places focus on how targeted teacher education, and transitions into educational work settings, shape teacher identity and practice.
Over an eight-month period, teachers participated in a series of three or four individual, semi-structured interviews on topics related to professional identity and engagement in Aboriginal education across institutions. Data fragments elicited from the research reveal ongoing, relational processes of momentarily occupying, exceeding, resisting, and/or reforming subject positions of teacher made available through discourse. The fragments are used to identify and trace significant forces that direct how participants become, and become undone as, teachers of school-based Aboriginal education.
Analysis concentrates on four key relationships between teachers and sources of knowledge about Aboriginal education that formed, reinforced, and challenged teachers’ emerging professional identities and associated practices as they navigated Faculties of Education, schools, and areas between (e.g., teaching practicum). They include: (un)becoming teacher and a) school-based sources of Aboriginality, b) pedagogical pathways for Aboriginal education with/in teacher education, c) significant place, and d) supports used for engaging Aboriginal education.
Contributions are made to the fields of teacher education, Aboriginal education, and decolonizing education and research. The research reveals the benefits and difficulties that coursework and professional development afford in preparing, and providing ongoing assistance to, teachers who foreground Aboriginal content and approaches. Learning from teachers’ processes, preparedness, and priorities enhances understanding about identity negotiation and movement of knowledge-practice across institutions. Further, theory building presents a decolonizing methodology for analyzing the construction of teacher identity that accounts for teachers’ complex and shifting positions beyond the binary opposition Aboriginal/non- Aboriginal.
A decolonizing theory of (un)becoming teacher of Aboriginal education, alongside early career teachers’ recommendations to improve university and school-based Aboriginal education, hold potential to shift Aboriginal education research beyond a discourse of transformation/resistance. This opens space to reconfigure Aboriginal education and teacher education, as well as subject positions therein, to support the needs and prerogatives of Aboriginal students and communities.
Decolonizing and Indigenizing education in Canada, 2020
*Please contact authors directly for a copy of this chapter*
As a collective of Indigenous and... more *Please contact authors directly for a copy of this chapter*
As a collective of Indigenous and ally scholars who lead and teach within the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) at the University of Alberta, we came together over a seven-month period to explore the intentions: How do the norms of knowledge and measurement that circulate in our faculty of education act as a barrier to decolonizing, Indigenizing, and reconciliation efforts? and how are Indigenous theories of education informing how we conceptualize evaluation and design assessments for Indigenous education coursework? Our process centred a series of four listening circles and was guided by ceremony and the wisdom of Elder Bob Cardinal.
We demonstrate how Indigenous theories of kihkipiw, teacher/teaching, intelligences, and analysis have inspired us to reconfigure research methodology, challenge knowledge and measurement norms that circulate in our faculty of education, and design creative assessment for Indigenous education coursework. We provide glances at our engagement in related circlework in four rounds: (a) the weight of evaluation and assessment, (b) the limitations of normative notions and enactments of evaluation and assessment, (c) reconceptualization of evaluation and assessment, and (d) examples of assessments that mobilize evolving understandings.
Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice and Research, 2019
In this chapter, we turn to Nxumalo’s (2016) ‘refiguring presences’ to attend to and trouble abse... more In this chapter, we turn to Nxumalo’s (2016) ‘refiguring presences’ to attend to and trouble absent presences (e.g. curriculum of Land as settler property and economic resource) and present absences (e.g. Indigenous resurgence) that shape response-able possibilities of engaging Indigenous and place-based education. From this orientation, we consider a) the Western modernist nature/culture binary and b) Indigenous forms of storying place to generate new analytic questions, types of findings, and possibilities for representing knowledge claims. Next, we provide glances at our place(d) stories of (re)learning to listen to and be taught by human, natural, and spirit worlds in relation with/in a month-long graduate-level summer institute in Lamas, Peru. Lastly, we discuss how Indigenous relational ontologies – with deep roots in living places and spiritual practices – enhanced our understanding of their role in reimagining pedagogy, practice, and research in higher education. We conclude with a call to labour the shared and divergent spaces between Indigenous and new materialist approaches to challenge (neo-)colonial logics and relationships, as well as enhance commensurate commitments and projects.
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, 2017
In this chapter we offer a response to the following questions: How is the process of Indigenizin... more In this chapter we offer a response to the following questions: How is the process of Indigenizing teacher education being taken up within international teacher education research? and How are Indigenous voices situated within the research? We detail the development of this chapter that engages and expands a previous and related review of literature that sorted studies according to pedagogical pathways (Madden, 2015). We then describe the methodology that guided our review and organization of the literature that concentrates on both Indigenous education coursework within Faculties of Education and studies of in-service teacher education. The analysis combines pathways across institutions in order to examine Indigenous voices and explores differences across Faculties of Education and school districts/individual schools to identify pedagogical pathways extensions. We conclude by looking forward to a future pathway for Indigenizing teacher education.
As Truth and Reconciliation educators, we recognize that one of our key tasks is to root the abundance of quality classroom resources in the places where we teach and learn. Papaschase Cree scholar Dwayne Donald characterizes North American societies and systems of education as “forgetful.” He traces how they are founded on the dual practice of forgetting that Western curriculum is “placed” – telling of a particular time, place, and ideal human transplanted from elsewhere – as well as omitting the ancient wisdoms and placed teachings that exist to instruct humans how to live well in our respective here-nows.
In response, we have developed a critical questioning framework that guides a place-based reconciliatory journey through children’s literature. It invites students to pivot between “leaning in” questions that consider the conditions of a text and related “leaning out” questions that focus on readers’ particular geographical location and the priorities articulated by local Indigenous Nations and collectives. We italicize the terms leaning in and leaning out throughout to emphasize the process of activating this framework within a teaching context. In this article, we model our leaning in/leaning out framework using the book Spirit Bear: Fishing for knowledge, catching dreams (see “Recommended Resources”). This text follows Spirit Bear as he learns about the history of First Nations children’s education and the activism that challenges ongoing underfunding of First Nations education by the Canadian government. We address five interconnected components of truth and reconciliation education (TRE): positionality, Indigenous land-based traditions, Canada’s Indian Residential School system, injustice that acts as a barrier to reconciliation, and counterstories.
What stories are educators drawing on as they engage truth and reconciliation education? Madden a... more What stories are educators drawing on as they engage truth and reconciliation education? Madden argues that truth and reconciliation education should not centre solely around stories of the residential school experience and portrayals of Indigenous people as victims. Indigenous counter-stories of refusal, resistance, resilience, and restorying and resurgence are also needed to shine “light on community processes that challenge historical and contemporary colonial relationships with Canada.”
This manuscript unfolds in the context of a Faculty of Education course that was designed in resp... more This manuscript unfolds in the context of a Faculty of Education course that was designed in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's call to post-secondary institutions to identify and meet teacher-training needs relating to the history and legacy of Canada's Indian Residential School system. The course instructor (Madden) begins by tracing how she is theorizing truth and reconciliation education through engagement with literature produced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and those who respond to their efforts. The pedagogical activity Wandering With/In the University of Alberta animates how she attempted to mobilize these emerging understandings through course design. We then introduce the collective processes we carried out as co-authors (i.e., course instructor and three graduate students who completed the course): creating, analyzing, and representing data, as well as generating the knowledge claims offered throughout. Next, data fragments that weave photographs of and narrative writing about campus sites anchor exploration of three central themes: wandering in relation to (a) evolving understandings of self, (b) a situated and significant historical moment (i.e., Canada 150), and (c) the (imagined) classroom as a site of reconciliation. We conclude with a discussion that explores the relationship between Faculty of Education coursework, identity, and place-based pedagogies for truth and reconciliation education.
Cette étude s'est déroulée dans le contexte d'un cours offert par la Faculty of Education et développé en réponse à l'appel de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada aux établissements postsecondaires pour qu'ils identifient les besoins en formation des enseignants quant à l'histoire et les séquelles du système des pensionnats indiens au Canada et qu'ils répondent à ces besoins. La chargée de cours (Madden) débute en expliquant ses démarches pour théoriser l'éducation de vérité et réconciliation en se penchant sur la littérature produite par la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada et sur la réaction des gens aux efforts de la commission. L'activité pédagogique Wandering With/In the University of Alberta est une animation de ses efforts pour mobiliser ces nouvelles connaissances par la conception de son cours. Ensuite, nous présentons les processus collectifs que nous avons entrepris comme co-auteurs (c'est-à-dire, la chargée de cours et les trois étudiants aux études supérieures ayant complété le cours): la création, l'analyse et la représentation des données, ainsi que l'élaboration des déclarations présentées dans l'ensemble du cours. Par la suite, des fragments de données tissent des photos et des récits narratifs portant sur des sites sur le campus et offrent des balises pour l'exploration de trois thèmes centraux: errer par rapport à: (a) une compréhension en évolution de soi-même, (b) un moment historique significatif (par ex., Canada 150) et (c) la salle de classe (imaginée) comme site de réconciliation. Une discussion portant sur le rapport entre
The author suggests that educators’ responses to the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of Canad... more The author suggests that educators’ responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada cannot be reduced or reducible to practice without also considering the theories that are enfolded into reconciliatory initiatives and actions. She is guided by the central questions: How do I understand prevailing constructions of reconciliation in circulation? and How might I theorize a philosophy of truth and reconciliation education that responds to and upholds my de/colonizing commitments? The author develops a de/colonizing theory that includes four interrelated components. They include: (a) the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s notion of reconciliation and education for reconciliation, (b) Indigenous land-based traditions for establishing and maintaining respectful relationships, (c) the central role of Indigenous counter-stories in truth and reconciliation education, and (d) critiques of the construction and enactment of reconciliation. Together, these components provide orientations, challenges, and possibilities for consideration when engaging theory building, community involvement, research design, policy development, and practice for truth and reconciliation education.
Describing methodological design in decolonizing research as the intersection of theory, practice... more Describing methodological design in decolonizing research as the intersection of theory, practice, and ethics, we share four focused micro-stories from our respective research projects. The metaphor of braiding represents the methodological design process within each of our research stories, significantly influenced by Dwayne Donald's (2012) Indigenous métissage. Heather grapples with notions of reciprocity, Brooke considers the role of place in the construction of teacher identity, Marc engages with reworking photovoice, and Julia brings relationships with plants into her methodological design. Intentionally interrupting each other and ourselves, we feature the moments and movements of research design that are iterative, recursive, messy, and sometimes stuck, in contrast to the linear, untainted and dogmatic methodologies that assert themselves around us. Meanings and relationships may be produced in braiding our micro-stories together, exceeding what might be possible if they were presented separately. Readers may be invited into imagining the design of decolonizing methodologies beyond those we enacted.
What might it mean to inflect the current focus on public memory encapsulated in monuments by con... more What might it mean to inflect the current focus on public memory encapsulated in monuments by considering an equally important yet more subtle or (not so) monumental agent: educational institutions as products and producers of colonial logics and ways of being in relationship? In this essay, the authors offer pedagogical orientations that seek to embed curriculum in a multiplicity of colonial here-nows and there-thens that always already constitute our places of learning and learning selves in the making.
Four emerging scholars of education extend the methodological space inspired by Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory through focusing on research design. The notion of de/sign is presented and employed to counter prescriptive method/ology that often sutures over pedagogical possibilities in research and educational settings. Key methodological themes (e.g., voice, agency, subjectivity, data) are (un)tailored in order to work within, against, and beyond conventional humanist qualitative methodology. Patchwork methodologies take shape as key theorists and theories pierce, (un)stitch, snag, embroider, patch, and mend the fabrics of distinct research contexts, components, and commitments. Previews of the productions that result from attending to the enacted and embodied relationship between research de/sign and theory are presented. A discussion of the ways in which patchwork(ing) methodologies provokes new questions, analytical frames, and types of findings concludes the manuscript.
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2017
Please access this article for free using the link provided above in the URL section or contact t... more Please access this article for free using the link provided above in the URL section or contact the author.
The author traces how discourse functions in the context of a school-based, urban Aboriginal education initiative, with a focus on the construction and organization of teaching subjects. Critical discourse analysis that traces spectres reveals some of the ways that whiteness and Eurocentrism create the possibilities for, and the conditions in which teachers take up, the positions: victim of racism, arbiter of authenticity, and rescuer. Consideration of the multiple, complex, and shifting positions teachers occupy within whiteness in general, and in colonial systems of education in particular, offers unique possibilities when untangling and reconfiguring teachers’ constructions of Aboriginality/Indigeneity and responses to Aboriginal/Indigenous education. This theory building also contributes to the larger field of curriculum studies by demonstrating how consideration of ‘unheroic tales’ can aid in theorizing teacher identity and difference, both within and beyond the markers Indigenous/non-Indigenous.
Please contact the author directly for a copy of this article.
This manuscript explores the ce... more Please contact the author directly for a copy of this article.
This manuscript explores the central question: According to teacher educators, what are prevailing pedagogical pathways to engage Indigenous education with/in Faculties of Education? Review of 23 studies that represent international perspectives anchors analysis of the underlying theoretical assumptions, purpose, and goals of teacher educators' approaches, as well as the central themes and pedagogical methods that are featured. Four pedagogical pathways that wind, meet, and diverge are organized and examined: Learning from Indigenous traditional models of teaching, Pedagogy for decolonizing, Indigenous and anti-racist education, and Indigenous and place-based education. The implications of tracing a fulsome network of Indigenous education for programs of teacher education and research in this emergent field are highlighted.
Alecia Y. Jackson and Lisa A. Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewi... more Alecia Y. Jackson and Lisa A. Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data Across Multiple Perspectives introduces a methodological and philosophical process with prismatic potential for analyzing data with and through theory. This book is a rich resource for qualitative educational researchers looking for new methods to approach their research differently. Searching for a way to read, think, research, and write with complex theory, the authors of this book review came together for a peer-led doctoral reading group. Given our disparate disciplinary commitments, as well as our uncertainty as to how to embark on such a task, our group coalesced around the approach offered in Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data Across Multiple Perspectives. Jackson and Mazzei implicitly propose the format of speed-dating theorists within their book, which we found ideal for our theoretically promiscuous reading group. We offer a window into our speed-dating experiences through a creatively flirty medium: dating service profiles. Like the profiles, the productivity of using Thinking with Theory as a guide for promiscuous theoretical thinking, researching, and writing is not in its prescription, but rather, in the emergence of different productions of knowledge that occur relationally.
This article extends upon Susan Dion’s theory of the ‘perfect stranger’ by exploring how this pos... more This article extends upon Susan Dion’s theory of the ‘perfect stranger’ by exploring how this position is articulated and embodied by white teachers (N = 67) involved in urban Indigenous education reform. On the lookout for deconstruction, we think with Derrida around the interrelated self/other and familiar/strange binaries that uphold the perfect stranger. We argue that Eurocentrism simultaneously centres and obscures whiteness, resulting in teachers’ misconceptions about culture. We also demonstrate how stereotypical representations of the ‘imaginary Indian’ that these white teachers ‘know’ inhibits their ability to foster and build upon relationships with Indigenous students. We conclude by conceptualizing a model for teacher education that, through a variety of teaching practices and policies, intentionally disrupts and destabilizes the perfect stranger position.
This narrative study contributes to the field of school-based Indigenous education by exploring t... more This narrative study contributes to the field of school-based Indigenous education by exploring the central research question: What are the decolonizing processes of practicing teachers involved in a provincially funded initiative to improve schooling for urban Aboriginal students? Excerpts from teachers’ narratives are organized using the Anishinaabe medicine wheel, anchoring the exploration of the following five directions and associated decolonizing processes: teachings from the centre/positioning, teachings from the east/honouring, teachings from the south/understanding, teachings from the west/doing, and teachings from the north/knowing. This paper concludes with a discussion of how White, Euro-Canadian teachers’ decolonization informs the fields of Indigenous education, teacher education, and narrative inquiry.
Current Canadian scholarly literature, education policy, and curricular documents encourage the p... more Current Canadian scholarly literature, education policy, and curricular documents encourage the participation of Indigenous community members as a key component of Indigenous Education reform. Guided by sharing circles conducted with Indigenous Elders, families, teachers, and support workers, we present community voices and experiences of Indigenous Education in an urban school board through poetic transcription. Our research suggests that four key barriers will have to be overcome in efforts to improve urban Indigenous Education: unwelcoming schools, professionalization of classroom teaching, colonized classrooms, and unilateral decolonization. Poetic transcription is used in this article to centre the voices of Indigenous participants as well as attempt to decolonize our approach to data dissemination of Indigenous voices as white, Euro-Canadian university-based researchers.
This research explores the experiences and perceptions of nine Aboriginal and ally early career t... more This research explores the experiences and perceptions of nine Aboriginal and ally early career teachers (1-5 years experience) who have completed university coursework and/or extended professional development on the topic of Aboriginal education. The inquiry places focus on how targeted teacher education, and transitions into educational work settings, shape teacher identity and practice.
Over an eight-month period, teachers participated in a series of three or four individual, semi-structured interviews on topics related to professional identity and engagement in Aboriginal education across institutions. Data fragments elicited from the research reveal ongoing, relational processes of momentarily occupying, exceeding, resisting, and/or reforming subject positions of teacher made available through discourse. The fragments are used to identify and trace significant forces that direct how participants become, and become undone as, teachers of school-based Aboriginal education.
Analysis concentrates on four key relationships between teachers and sources of knowledge about Aboriginal education that formed, reinforced, and challenged teachers’ emerging professional identities and associated practices as they navigated Faculties of Education, schools, and areas between (e.g., teaching practicum). They include: (un)becoming teacher and a) school-based sources of Aboriginality, b) pedagogical pathways for Aboriginal education with/in teacher education, c) significant place, and d) supports used for engaging Aboriginal education.
Contributions are made to the fields of teacher education, Aboriginal education, and decolonizing education and research. The research reveals the benefits and difficulties that coursework and professional development afford in preparing, and providing ongoing assistance to, teachers who foreground Aboriginal content and approaches. Learning from teachers’ processes, preparedness, and priorities enhances understanding about identity negotiation and movement of knowledge-practice across institutions. Further, theory building presents a decolonizing methodology for analyzing the construction of teacher identity that accounts for teachers’ complex and shifting positions beyond the binary opposition Aboriginal/non- Aboriginal.
A decolonizing theory of (un)becoming teacher of Aboriginal education, alongside early career teachers’ recommendations to improve university and school-based Aboriginal education, hold potential to shift Aboriginal education research beyond a discourse of transformation/resistance. This opens space to reconfigure Aboriginal education and teacher education, as well as subject positions therein, to support the needs and prerogatives of Aboriginal students and communities.
Decolonizing and Indigenizing education in Canada, 2020
*Please contact authors directly for a copy of this chapter*
As a collective of Indigenous and... more *Please contact authors directly for a copy of this chapter*
As a collective of Indigenous and ally scholars who lead and teach within the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) at the University of Alberta, we came together over a seven-month period to explore the intentions: How do the norms of knowledge and measurement that circulate in our faculty of education act as a barrier to decolonizing, Indigenizing, and reconciliation efforts? and how are Indigenous theories of education informing how we conceptualize evaluation and design assessments for Indigenous education coursework? Our process centred a series of four listening circles and was guided by ceremony and the wisdom of Elder Bob Cardinal.
We demonstrate how Indigenous theories of kihkipiw, teacher/teaching, intelligences, and analysis have inspired us to reconfigure research methodology, challenge knowledge and measurement norms that circulate in our faculty of education, and design creative assessment for Indigenous education coursework. We provide glances at our engagement in related circlework in four rounds: (a) the weight of evaluation and assessment, (b) the limitations of normative notions and enactments of evaluation and assessment, (c) reconceptualization of evaluation and assessment, and (d) examples of assessments that mobilize evolving understandings.
Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice and Research, 2019
In this chapter, we turn to Nxumalo’s (2016) ‘refiguring presences’ to attend to and trouble abse... more In this chapter, we turn to Nxumalo’s (2016) ‘refiguring presences’ to attend to and trouble absent presences (e.g. curriculum of Land as settler property and economic resource) and present absences (e.g. Indigenous resurgence) that shape response-able possibilities of engaging Indigenous and place-based education. From this orientation, we consider a) the Western modernist nature/culture binary and b) Indigenous forms of storying place to generate new analytic questions, types of findings, and possibilities for representing knowledge claims. Next, we provide glances at our place(d) stories of (re)learning to listen to and be taught by human, natural, and spirit worlds in relation with/in a month-long graduate-level summer institute in Lamas, Peru. Lastly, we discuss how Indigenous relational ontologies – with deep roots in living places and spiritual practices – enhanced our understanding of their role in reimagining pedagogy, practice, and research in higher education. We conclude with a call to labour the shared and divergent spaces between Indigenous and new materialist approaches to challenge (neo-)colonial logics and relationships, as well as enhance commensurate commitments and projects.
The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, 2017
In this chapter we offer a response to the following questions: How is the process of Indigenizin... more In this chapter we offer a response to the following questions: How is the process of Indigenizing teacher education being taken up within international teacher education research? and How are Indigenous voices situated within the research? We detail the development of this chapter that engages and expands a previous and related review of literature that sorted studies according to pedagogical pathways (Madden, 2015). We then describe the methodology that guided our review and organization of the literature that concentrates on both Indigenous education coursework within Faculties of Education and studies of in-service teacher education. The analysis combines pathways across institutions in order to examine Indigenous voices and explores differences across Faculties of Education and school districts/individual schools to identify pedagogical pathways extensions. We conclude by looking forward to a future pathway for Indigenizing teacher education.
As Truth and Reconciliation educators, we recognize that one of our key tasks is to root the abundance of quality classroom resources in the places where we teach and learn. Papaschase Cree scholar Dwayne Donald characterizes North American societies and systems of education as “forgetful.” He traces how they are founded on the dual practice of forgetting that Western curriculum is “placed” – telling of a particular time, place, and ideal human transplanted from elsewhere – as well as omitting the ancient wisdoms and placed teachings that exist to instruct humans how to live well in our respective here-nows.
In response, we have developed a critical questioning framework that guides a place-based reconciliatory journey through children’s literature. It invites students to pivot between “leaning in” questions that consider the conditions of a text and related “leaning out” questions that focus on readers’ particular geographical location and the priorities articulated by local Indigenous Nations and collectives. We italicize the terms leaning in and leaning out throughout to emphasize the process of activating this framework within a teaching context. In this article, we model our leaning in/leaning out framework using the book Spirit Bear: Fishing for knowledge, catching dreams (see “Recommended Resources”). This text follows Spirit Bear as he learns about the history of First Nations children’s education and the activism that challenges ongoing underfunding of First Nations education by the Canadian government. We address five interconnected components of truth and reconciliation education (TRE): positionality, Indigenous land-based traditions, Canada’s Indian Residential School system, injustice that acts as a barrier to reconciliation, and counterstories.
What stories are educators drawing on as they engage truth and reconciliation education? Madden a... more What stories are educators drawing on as they engage truth and reconciliation education? Madden argues that truth and reconciliation education should not centre solely around stories of the residential school experience and portrayals of Indigenous people as victims. Indigenous counter-stories of refusal, resistance, resilience, and restorying and resurgence are also needed to shine “light on community processes that challenge historical and contemporary colonial relationships with Canada.”
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Cette étude s'est déroulée dans le contexte d'un cours offert par la Faculty of Education et développé en réponse à l'appel de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada aux établissements postsecondaires pour qu'ils identifient les besoins en formation des enseignants quant à l'histoire et les séquelles du système des pensionnats indiens au Canada et qu'ils répondent à ces besoins. La chargée de cours (Madden) débute en expliquant ses démarches pour théoriser l'éducation de vérité et réconciliation en se penchant sur la littérature produite par la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada et sur la réaction des gens aux efforts de la commission. L'activité pédagogique Wandering With/In the University of Alberta est une animation de ses efforts pour mobiliser ces nouvelles connaissances par la conception de son cours. Ensuite, nous présentons les processus collectifs que nous avons entrepris comme co-auteurs (c'est-à-dire, la chargée de cours et les trois étudiants aux études supérieures ayant complété le cours): la création, l'analyse et la représentation des données, ainsi que l'élaboration des déclarations présentées dans l'ensemble du cours. Par la suite, des fragments de données tissent des photos et des récits narratifs portant sur des sites sur le campus et offrent des balises pour l'exploration de trois thèmes centraux: errer par rapport à: (a) une compréhension en évolution de soi-même, (b) un moment historique significatif (par ex., Canada 150) et (c) la salle de classe (imaginée) comme site de réconciliation. Une discussion portant sur le rapport entre
Reconciliation Commission of Canada cannot be reduced or reducible
to practice without also considering the theories that are
enfolded into reconciliatory initiatives and actions. She is guided
by the central questions: How do I understand prevailing constructions
of reconciliation in circulation? and How might I theorize a
philosophy of truth and reconciliation education that responds to
and upholds my de/colonizing commitments? The author develops
a de/colonizing theory that includes four interrelated components.
They include: (a) the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
of Canada’s notion of reconciliation and education for reconciliation,
(b) Indigenous land-based traditions for establishing and
maintaining respectful relationships, (c) the central role of
Indigenous counter-stories in truth and reconciliation education,
and (d) critiques of the construction and enactment of reconciliation.
Together, these components provide orientations, challenges,
and possibilities for consideration when engaging theory
building, community involvement, research design, policy development,
and practice for truth and reconciliation education.
Four emerging scholars of education extend the methodological space inspired by Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory through focusing on research design. The notion of de/sign is presented and employed to counter prescriptive method/ology that often sutures over pedagogical possibilities in research and educational settings. Key methodological themes (e.g., voice, agency, subjectivity, data) are (un)tailored in order to work within, against, and beyond conventional humanist qualitative methodology. Patchwork methodologies take shape as key theorists and theories pierce, (un)stitch, snag, embroider, patch, and mend the fabrics of distinct research contexts, components, and commitments. Previews of the productions that result from attending to the enacted and embodied relationship between research de/sign and theory are presented. A discussion of the ways in which patchwork(ing) methodologies provokes new questions, analytical frames, and types of findings concludes the manuscript.
The author traces how discourse functions in the context of a school-based, urban Aboriginal education initiative, with a focus on the construction and organization of teaching subjects. Critical discourse analysis that traces spectres reveals some of the ways that whiteness and Eurocentrism create the possibilities for, and the conditions in which teachers take up, the positions: victim of racism, arbiter of authenticity, and rescuer. Consideration of the multiple, complex, and shifting positions teachers occupy within whiteness in general, and in colonial systems of education in particular, offers unique possibilities when untangling and reconfiguring teachers’ constructions of Aboriginality/Indigeneity and responses to Aboriginal/Indigenous education. This theory building also contributes to the larger field of curriculum studies by demonstrating how consideration of ‘unheroic tales’ can aid in theorizing teacher identity and difference, both within and beyond the markers Indigenous/non-Indigenous.
This manuscript explores the central question: According to teacher educators, what are prevailing pedagogical pathways to engage Indigenous education with/in Faculties of Education? Review of 23 studies that represent international perspectives anchors analysis of the underlying theoretical assumptions, purpose, and goals of teacher educators' approaches, as well as the central themes and pedagogical methods that are featured. Four pedagogical pathways that wind, meet, and diverge are organized and examined: Learning from Indigenous traditional models of teaching, Pedagogy for decolonizing, Indigenous and anti-racist education, and Indigenous and place-based education. The implications of tracing a fulsome network of Indigenous education for programs of teacher education and research in this emergent field are highlighted.
Over an eight-month period, teachers participated in a series of three or four individual, semi-structured interviews on topics related to professional identity and engagement in Aboriginal education across institutions. Data fragments elicited from the research reveal ongoing, relational processes of momentarily occupying, exceeding, resisting, and/or reforming subject positions of teacher made available through discourse. The fragments are used to identify and trace significant forces that direct how participants become, and become undone as, teachers of school-based Aboriginal education.
Analysis concentrates on four key relationships between teachers and sources of knowledge about Aboriginal education that formed, reinforced, and challenged teachers’ emerging professional identities and associated practices as they navigated Faculties of Education, schools, and areas between (e.g., teaching practicum). They include: (un)becoming teacher and a) school-based sources of Aboriginality, b) pedagogical pathways for Aboriginal education with/in teacher education, c) significant place, and d) supports used for engaging
Aboriginal education.
Contributions are made to the fields of teacher education, Aboriginal education, and decolonizing education and research. The research reveals the benefits and difficulties that coursework and professional development afford in preparing, and providing ongoing assistance to, teachers who foreground Aboriginal content and approaches.
Learning from teachers’ processes, preparedness, and priorities enhances understanding about identity negotiation and movement of knowledge-practice across institutions. Further, theory building presents a decolonizing methodology for analyzing the construction of teacher identity that accounts for teachers’ complex and shifting positions beyond the binary opposition Aboriginal/non- Aboriginal.
A decolonizing theory of (un)becoming teacher of Aboriginal education, alongside early career teachers’ recommendations to improve university and school-based Aboriginal education, hold potential to shift Aboriginal education research beyond a discourse of transformation/resistance. This opens space to reconfigure Aboriginal education and teacher education, as well as subject positions therein, to support the needs and prerogatives of Aboriginal students and communities.
As a collective of Indigenous and ally scholars who lead and teach within the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) at the University of Alberta, we came together over a seven-month period to explore the intentions: How do the norms of knowledge and measurement that circulate in our faculty of education act as a barrier to decolonizing, Indigenizing, and reconciliation efforts? and how are Indigenous theories of education informing how we conceptualize evaluation and design assessments for Indigenous education coursework? Our process centred a series of four listening circles and was guided by ceremony and the wisdom of Elder Bob Cardinal.
We demonstrate how Indigenous theories of kihkipiw, teacher/teaching, intelligences, and analysis have inspired us to reconfigure research methodology, challenge knowledge and measurement norms that circulate in our faculty of education, and design creative assessment for Indigenous education coursework. We provide glances at our engagement in related circlework in four rounds: (a) the weight of evaluation and assessment, (b) the limitations of normative notions and enactments of evaluation and assessment, (c) reconceptualization of evaluation and assessment, and (d) examples of assessments that mobilize evolving understandings.
As Truth and Reconciliation educators, we recognize that one of our key tasks is to root the abundance of quality classroom resources in the places where we teach and learn. Papaschase Cree scholar Dwayne Donald characterizes North American societies and systems of education as “forgetful.” He traces how they are founded on the dual practice of forgetting that Western curriculum is “placed” – telling of a particular time, place, and ideal human transplanted from elsewhere – as well as omitting the ancient wisdoms and placed teachings that exist to instruct humans how to live well in our respective here-nows.
In response, we have developed a critical questioning framework that guides a place-based reconciliatory journey through children’s literature. It invites students to pivot between “leaning in” questions that consider the conditions of a text and related “leaning out” questions that focus on readers’ particular geographical location and the priorities articulated by local Indigenous Nations and collectives. We italicize the terms leaning in and leaning out throughout to emphasize the process of activating this framework within a teaching context. In this article, we model our leaning in/leaning out framework using the book Spirit Bear: Fishing for knowledge, catching dreams (see “Recommended Resources”). This text follows Spirit Bear as he learns about the history of First Nations children’s education and the activism that challenges ongoing underfunding of First Nations education by the Canadian government. We address five interconnected components of truth and reconciliation education (TRE): positionality, Indigenous land-based traditions, Canada’s Indian Residential School system, injustice that acts as a barrier to reconciliation, and counterstories.
Cette étude s'est déroulée dans le contexte d'un cours offert par la Faculty of Education et développé en réponse à l'appel de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada aux établissements postsecondaires pour qu'ils identifient les besoins en formation des enseignants quant à l'histoire et les séquelles du système des pensionnats indiens au Canada et qu'ils répondent à ces besoins. La chargée de cours (Madden) débute en expliquant ses démarches pour théoriser l'éducation de vérité et réconciliation en se penchant sur la littérature produite par la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada et sur la réaction des gens aux efforts de la commission. L'activité pédagogique Wandering With/In the University of Alberta est une animation de ses efforts pour mobiliser ces nouvelles connaissances par la conception de son cours. Ensuite, nous présentons les processus collectifs que nous avons entrepris comme co-auteurs (c'est-à-dire, la chargée de cours et les trois étudiants aux études supérieures ayant complété le cours): la création, l'analyse et la représentation des données, ainsi que l'élaboration des déclarations présentées dans l'ensemble du cours. Par la suite, des fragments de données tissent des photos et des récits narratifs portant sur des sites sur le campus et offrent des balises pour l'exploration de trois thèmes centraux: errer par rapport à: (a) une compréhension en évolution de soi-même, (b) un moment historique significatif (par ex., Canada 150) et (c) la salle de classe (imaginée) comme site de réconciliation. Une discussion portant sur le rapport entre
Reconciliation Commission of Canada cannot be reduced or reducible
to practice without also considering the theories that are
enfolded into reconciliatory initiatives and actions. She is guided
by the central questions: How do I understand prevailing constructions
of reconciliation in circulation? and How might I theorize a
philosophy of truth and reconciliation education that responds to
and upholds my de/colonizing commitments? The author develops
a de/colonizing theory that includes four interrelated components.
They include: (a) the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
of Canada’s notion of reconciliation and education for reconciliation,
(b) Indigenous land-based traditions for establishing and
maintaining respectful relationships, (c) the central role of
Indigenous counter-stories in truth and reconciliation education,
and (d) critiques of the construction and enactment of reconciliation.
Together, these components provide orientations, challenges,
and possibilities for consideration when engaging theory
building, community involvement, research design, policy development,
and practice for truth and reconciliation education.
Four emerging scholars of education extend the methodological space inspired by Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory through focusing on research design. The notion of de/sign is presented and employed to counter prescriptive method/ology that often sutures over pedagogical possibilities in research and educational settings. Key methodological themes (e.g., voice, agency, subjectivity, data) are (un)tailored in order to work within, against, and beyond conventional humanist qualitative methodology. Patchwork methodologies take shape as key theorists and theories pierce, (un)stitch, snag, embroider, patch, and mend the fabrics of distinct research contexts, components, and commitments. Previews of the productions that result from attending to the enacted and embodied relationship between research de/sign and theory are presented. A discussion of the ways in which patchwork(ing) methodologies provokes new questions, analytical frames, and types of findings concludes the manuscript.
The author traces how discourse functions in the context of a school-based, urban Aboriginal education initiative, with a focus on the construction and organization of teaching subjects. Critical discourse analysis that traces spectres reveals some of the ways that whiteness and Eurocentrism create the possibilities for, and the conditions in which teachers take up, the positions: victim of racism, arbiter of authenticity, and rescuer. Consideration of the multiple, complex, and shifting positions teachers occupy within whiteness in general, and in colonial systems of education in particular, offers unique possibilities when untangling and reconfiguring teachers’ constructions of Aboriginality/Indigeneity and responses to Aboriginal/Indigenous education. This theory building also contributes to the larger field of curriculum studies by demonstrating how consideration of ‘unheroic tales’ can aid in theorizing teacher identity and difference, both within and beyond the markers Indigenous/non-Indigenous.
This manuscript explores the central question: According to teacher educators, what are prevailing pedagogical pathways to engage Indigenous education with/in Faculties of Education? Review of 23 studies that represent international perspectives anchors analysis of the underlying theoretical assumptions, purpose, and goals of teacher educators' approaches, as well as the central themes and pedagogical methods that are featured. Four pedagogical pathways that wind, meet, and diverge are organized and examined: Learning from Indigenous traditional models of teaching, Pedagogy for decolonizing, Indigenous and anti-racist education, and Indigenous and place-based education. The implications of tracing a fulsome network of Indigenous education for programs of teacher education and research in this emergent field are highlighted.
Over an eight-month period, teachers participated in a series of three or four individual, semi-structured interviews on topics related to professional identity and engagement in Aboriginal education across institutions. Data fragments elicited from the research reveal ongoing, relational processes of momentarily occupying, exceeding, resisting, and/or reforming subject positions of teacher made available through discourse. The fragments are used to identify and trace significant forces that direct how participants become, and become undone as, teachers of school-based Aboriginal education.
Analysis concentrates on four key relationships between teachers and sources of knowledge about Aboriginal education that formed, reinforced, and challenged teachers’ emerging professional identities and associated practices as they navigated Faculties of Education, schools, and areas between (e.g., teaching practicum). They include: (un)becoming teacher and a) school-based sources of Aboriginality, b) pedagogical pathways for Aboriginal education with/in teacher education, c) significant place, and d) supports used for engaging
Aboriginal education.
Contributions are made to the fields of teacher education, Aboriginal education, and decolonizing education and research. The research reveals the benefits and difficulties that coursework and professional development afford in preparing, and providing ongoing assistance to, teachers who foreground Aboriginal content and approaches.
Learning from teachers’ processes, preparedness, and priorities enhances understanding about identity negotiation and movement of knowledge-practice across institutions. Further, theory building presents a decolonizing methodology for analyzing the construction of teacher identity that accounts for teachers’ complex and shifting positions beyond the binary opposition Aboriginal/non- Aboriginal.
A decolonizing theory of (un)becoming teacher of Aboriginal education, alongside early career teachers’ recommendations to improve university and school-based Aboriginal education, hold potential to shift Aboriginal education research beyond a discourse of transformation/resistance. This opens space to reconfigure Aboriginal education and teacher education, as well as subject positions therein, to support the needs and prerogatives of Aboriginal students and communities.
As a collective of Indigenous and ally scholars who lead and teach within the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) at the University of Alberta, we came together over a seven-month period to explore the intentions: How do the norms of knowledge and measurement that circulate in our faculty of education act as a barrier to decolonizing, Indigenizing, and reconciliation efforts? and how are Indigenous theories of education informing how we conceptualize evaluation and design assessments for Indigenous education coursework? Our process centred a series of four listening circles and was guided by ceremony and the wisdom of Elder Bob Cardinal.
We demonstrate how Indigenous theories of kihkipiw, teacher/teaching, intelligences, and analysis have inspired us to reconfigure research methodology, challenge knowledge and measurement norms that circulate in our faculty of education, and design creative assessment for Indigenous education coursework. We provide glances at our engagement in related circlework in four rounds: (a) the weight of evaluation and assessment, (b) the limitations of normative notions and enactments of evaluation and assessment, (c) reconceptualization of evaluation and assessment, and (d) examples of assessments that mobilize evolving understandings.
As Truth and Reconciliation educators, we recognize that one of our key tasks is to root the abundance of quality classroom resources in the places where we teach and learn. Papaschase Cree scholar Dwayne Donald characterizes North American societies and systems of education as “forgetful.” He traces how they are founded on the dual practice of forgetting that Western curriculum is “placed” – telling of a particular time, place, and ideal human transplanted from elsewhere – as well as omitting the ancient wisdoms and placed teachings that exist to instruct humans how to live well in our respective here-nows.
In response, we have developed a critical questioning framework that guides a place-based reconciliatory journey through children’s literature. It invites students to pivot between “leaning in” questions that consider the conditions of a text and related “leaning out” questions that focus on readers’ particular geographical location and the priorities articulated by local Indigenous Nations and collectives. We italicize the terms leaning in and leaning out throughout to emphasize the process of activating this framework within a teaching context. In this article, we model our leaning in/leaning out framework using the book Spirit Bear: Fishing for knowledge, catching dreams (see “Recommended Resources”). This text follows Spirit Bear as he learns about the history of First Nations children’s education and the activism that challenges ongoing underfunding of First Nations education by the Canadian government. We address five interconnected components of truth and reconciliation education (TRE): positionality, Indigenous land-based traditions, Canada’s Indian Residential School system, injustice that acts as a barrier to reconciliation, and counterstories.