Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An introduction to Aboriginal education in Canada and BC. There will be a critical examination of historical and contemporary issues in education and an exploration of culturally based Aboriginal education grounded in Aboriginal philosophies. Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

Students are expected to meet online through Zoom (a real-time conferencing platform) for lectures, group discussions, and cooperative learning activities. Online meetings will take place on Tuesday afternoons from 2:30 – 4:00 pm. The additional weekly class time will be conducted asynchronously (at your convenience) through text and video resources on Canvas.

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Because of the on-line nature of this course, it will take place simultaneously on numerous traditional, unceded and Treaty territories throughout Turtle Island.

The intention of this course is to serve as an introduction to critical issues in Aboriginal education. In many respects, this moment seems to be a watershed moment for education in what is know as British Columbia as it pertains to First Nations, Métis, Inuit peoples and the settlers. The 2020-21 school year marks the completion of a revised K-12 curriculum, throughout which the Ministry of Education, having taking up the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015), has purported to have explicitly and implicitly addressed Indigenous knowledge and perspectives. Some might claim that Murray Sinclair’s prediction that “Education got us into this mess and education will get us out of it” is poised to come to fruition. However, these kinds of institutional shifts are meaningless unless we who inhabit educational systems consider our ethical accountability to each other and the specific actions that we can take to continue to move reconciliation ahead in Canada. Therefore, the goals of this course will be three-fold: broadening our understanding of the context out of which this moment has emerged; reflecting on our individual and collective roles within this ecology; considering teaching and learning practices that can take place in a good way. By layering Indigenous pedagogies and scholarship we will examine how we, as either settlers or Indigenous peoples, can develop philosophies and practices around teaching in all its myriad forms.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

This inquiry will be conducted against the backdrop of the revised BC curriculum and four broad themes. Through each of these themes we will think self-reflexively, comparatively, and historically about dominant cultural assumptions and the relation to education:

1. Who are “Aboriginal” peoples of Canada and how is this related to understanding Indigeneity, ourselves and Canadian society?
2. How has Indigenous education been enacted historically and contemporarily in different contexts?
3. What are Indigenous knowledge systems and pedagogies? What are successful practices in K-12 Aboriginal education in B.C.?
4. How can we engage in an on-going inquiry process to deepen understandings of Indigenous content, perspectives, pedagogies, languages, and knowledge to influence our current/future professional practice?

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: