Indigenizing School Learning

Indigenizing School Learning

Some of the questions that came out of our discussion last week included

-How to integrate traditional knowledge into our education system?

-How can we create indoor and outdoor spaces for Indigenous traditional learning?

The recent institute was an attempt to explore the similarities and differences in transformative pedagogies and Indigenous ways of learning since in the past we have had a number of comments that these overlap.

Before we get into what indigenizing learning might be it might be helpful to explore some of the paradigms that we face within mainstream education.

For us the big contrasting perspectives are conventional teaching and transformative learning.  The latter being the minority practice in most schools. 

Here is a slide from the slide deck outlining the two with a third column for Anishinaabeg perspectives.

 

Element or Feature	Conventional Teaching	Transformative Learning	Anishinaabeg Perspectives
Purpose	Good employee	Complete person –good citizen
Perspective	The world is fine –keep it going	We need to learn our way out of our problems
View of Learner	Incomplete adult	Citizen learner –ready to learn and do now
Power Relationship	Authoritative -We know what is best for you	Facilitative -We are here to help you be who you wish to be
Role of teacher	command and control	Facilitator, co-learner, coach
how knowledge gained	information transfer	Knowledge building
Curriculum Policy	The rule	A tool

 If we are to indigenize school learning  it woudl be helpful to have some understanding of how  traditional Anishinaabeg perspectives might be expressed here.  Thoughts?

Transformative learning has a different value set upon which it is based.  Here are a few suggestions.

• All ideas and practices can be improved. 
• Each individual has the right to determine what they want to be and pursue who they can be. Our task is to aid them on that life journey.
• We learn better together.
• Feelings matter -engaging our emotions improves the quality of the learning
• Every learner is a whole person ready and needing to be a contributing part of their community –the Learner Citizen.  

 So before we can indigenize the curriculum it would be good to have a sense of Indigenous values or principles upon which we can draw our inspiration for forming learning experiences in schools.  

For me the principels or values of transformative laring are atouch stones that I go to when I am not sure about a practice I am thinking of applying.

What are those touchstones from traditional indigenous perspectives? Thoughts?