“Indspire is a national Indigenous registered charity that invests in the education of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people for the long term benefit of these individuals, their families and communities, and Canada.”
Within the Online Resource Centre contains documentation and evaluation of various projects that Indspire has completed. Some that interested me are:
Lessons from the Medicine Wheel
This resource builds off my first post for Module 2. This website offers lessons which connect the medicine wheel to British Columbia’s curriculum, specifically the core competencies. It provides examples of how to have students use their discussion and critical thinking skills to explore how the medicine wheel can be used as a model for teaching Personal and Social core competencies.
Learning about the Medicine Wheel
As I explore different resources for my project, I feel it is important to begin with learning about the medicine wheel which is a part of the foundation of Indigenous culture. It demonstrates a holistic approach to learning. This blog outlines the teachings of the medicine wheel. I also find it very useful that within the article there are links to other Indigenous teachings; like interconnectivity and the natural world. It seems that there is a plethora of information beyond the home page which makes this blog valuable for me as I begin my research.
After listening to Dr. Lee Brown’s thoughts about the Native medicine wheel and emotions, I searched for publications about the incorporation of the medicine wheel in education. I found an interesting article entitled “Switching from Bloom to the Medicine Wheel: creating learning outcomes that support Indigenous ways of knowing in post-secondary education,” through which the author, Marcella LaFever (2016), suggests a new framework that expands Bloom’s three domains of learning to a four-domain structure based on the Medicine Wheel’s four quadrants. The proposed model has the fourth quadrant, spiritual, deemed as essential for balance in curricular design that supports students’ learning goals (see figure 1).
Four-domain framework from (LaFever, 2016, p.417)
According to LaFever (2016), the four-domain model is a good place to start when responding to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call to action (i.e., call to action number 62 [ii] asks educational institutions to educate teachers on how to integrate Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms and to utilize Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods in classrooms (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, p.7)). Also using the Medicine Wheel for curriculum design in education is a step that every educator, across all disciplines, can take to indigenize their teaching practice (LaFever, 2016).
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