“Growth” by AdamSelwood is licensed under CC BY 2.0
My final paper explores how to embed the First Peoples Principles of Learning in my classroom community, which involves incorporating Indigenous perspectives within my teaching practices. When looking into ways this has been implemented, I found an article based in Australia, which shares some of the same ideas we have been talking about in our discussions within this course when it comes to our problematic educational system. Neil Harrison’s chapter, “Teaching Indigenous Perspectives in the 21st Century Classroom: An Exploration of Quality Pedagogy in Australian Schools” (2009) reveals that within education, Indigenous people are often referred to in the past tense and there is not enough of an understanding of Indigenous knowledge or ways of doing to be appropriately shared or represented within teaching and learning. Harrison reveals the importance of the role teachers play in developing relationships and understandings between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. He also asks teachers to “reassess their own place in history” and invest in learning, both during pre-service teacher training and after. I think this is very valid as I know reconciliation really does start with us educators and the education system.
Harrison, N. (2009). Teaching Indigenous perspectives in the 21st century classroom: An exploration of quality pedagogy in Australian schools in V. Green & S. Cherrington (Eds.), Delving into diversity: An international exploration of issues of diversity in education (pp. 99-108). Nova Science Publishers. http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/28470/1/1.pdf.pdf#page=130