Integrating Aboriginal Perspectives into the School Curriculum

• Session 2 Scrafe 1007: Sarah will discuss the UBC library & cultural appropriate curriculum materials.

• Head Start - "The Children First"• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaNtbX

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Culturally Responsive Schooling (CRS)

• …culturally responsive education recognizes, respects, and uses students’ identities and backgrounds as meaningful sources for creating optimal learning environments. Being culturally responsive is more than being respectful, empathetic, or sensitive. Accompanying actions, such as having high expectations for students and ensuring that these expectations are realized, are what make a difference (Gay, 2000).

Pedagogies:• approaches to teaching and learning;• the process through which knowledge is produced; and,• the transformation of consciousness that takes place through

interaction of teacher, learner and knowledge they produce together: See Susan Dion (2009).

Decolonizing Pedagogies: • help learners come to recognize and know the structures of

colonization and their implications; • while engaging in activities that disrupt those structures on an

individual and collective level; • result in the re-centring of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and

doing; • facilitate engagement with possibilities for making change in the world; • particularly in the interests of supporting Indigenous self-

determination (McGregor 2012, 4).

An Aboriginal perspective on learning includes the following key attributes

• Holistic:• Lifelong:• Experiential:• Rooted in Aboriginal languages and

cultures:• Spiritually oriented • (Redefining how Success is Measured in First

Nations, Inuit and Métis Learning),

Yatta Kanu. Integrating Aboriginal Perspectives into the School Curriculum

• Two-year study in which she collaborated with classroom teachers to integrate Aboriginal perspectives into their Social Studies curricula and document the impact of this integration on school success for the Aboriginal students in their classroom(98)

Starts by defining Aboriginal perspectives

• Aboriginal perspectives: the use of indigenous approaches to teaching and learning, such as storytelling and learning by observation.

• Visually-based instruction, computer images, videos; Combination of individual and collaborative learning;

• Curriculum materials and classroom learning/teaching processes that include Aboriginal perspectives, histories, cultures, and

• Supportive and non-threating classroom, communities/environments appear to be important for increasing verbal participation.

• the term Aboriginal perspective was understood as curriculum content/materials, instructional and assessment methods, and interactive patterns that Manitoba’s Aboriginal peoples see as reflecting their experiences, histories, cultures, traditional knowledges, and values (96).

• Research question: What are the most effective ways of integrating Aboriginal perspectives into the curriculum of urban public high schools? (99)

Aboriginal perspectives were integrated at five levels of classroom practice:

• (a) at the level of lesson planning when learning outcomes are set (p. 102)

• (b) at the level of curriculum content and learning resources; cultural appropriate curriculum materials (p. 109)

• (c) at the level of instructional methods/strategies; pedagogical approaches? (p. 111)

• (d) at the level of assessment of student learning (p. 112); and

• (e) as a philosophical underpinning of the curriculum (p.114).

• Select one of the five levels: • Find a component within one or more of the resources

below. • Describe your selected element(s). • How do you perceive integrating aboriginal

perspectives and the elements into the curricula? • How would you enact these perspectives in your

pedagogies and interactions with students?

Resources

• Teaching for Indigenous Education website: • http://www.indigenouseducation.educ.ubc.ca/

• Sharing the learning: integrating Aboriginal content K-10• Overview of resources: (p 7)

• http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/abed/shared.pdf

• The State of Aboriginal Learning in Canada: A Holistic Approach To Measuring Success.

• http://www.ccl-cca.ca/pdfs/StateAboriginalLearning/SAL-FINALReport_EN.PDF

• Integrating Aboriginal perspectives into the curricula: • http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/docs/policy/abpersp/ab_persp.pdf