Tag Archives: diversity

MODULE 4 – ENTRY 4: What Matters in Indigenous Education: Implementing a Vision Committed to Holism, Diversity and Education

This site pertains to what the ongoing issues are for Indigenous students in ourschools. The overriding issues affecting Indigenous student achievement are a lack of awareness among teachers of the particular learning styles of Indigenous students, and a lack of understanding within schools and school boards of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit cultures, histories, and their perspective.  In essence, how can we try to bridge that gap?

Public Domain photo by Shutterstock

Reference:

People for Education. (2021). What Matters in Indigenous Education: Implementing a Vision Committed to Holism, Diversity and Education. Retrieved on July 7, 2021 from https://peopleforeducation.ca/report/what-matters-in-indigenous-education/

Module 3, Post 2: Taking example from a non-Indigenous educator

Here is an article that talks about the role of a non-Indigenous ally in Indigenizing the curriculum of psychology. As a non-Indigenous educator, I have had similar thoughts/questions as Schmidt (2019). For example, is it appropriate and respectful to teach about Indigenous cultures? The lessons in this article don’t only apply to psychology. Some of the take-aways I got were the following (Schmidt, 2019):

  • Indigenous people also struggle to teach about Indigenous people when there are many different Indigenous cultures and they are only a member of one.
  • Educators need to look inward and work on our own decolonizing.
  • Build mutually respectful, humble, and trusting relationships with your students.
  • Understand that there are many diverse Indigenous cultures. There is also immense diversity that can exist within one Indigenous culture.
  • Two-Eyed Seeing – seeing the world from an Indigenous perspective and also an Eurocentric (scientific) perspective. This involves cooperation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, humbling themselves, and learning from each other.
  • Patience – understanding other perspectives.
  • Honesty – disclose to the students that you are not an expert, invite Indigenous guest speakers into the classroom, and encourage students to co-teach.
  • Decolonizing is active, intentional, moment-to-moment process that involves critically undoing colonial ways of knowing, being and doing.

Reference

Schmidt, H. (2019). Indigenizing and decolonizing the teaching of psychology: Reflections on the role of the non-Indigenous ally. American Journal of Community Psychology, 64, 59-71. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajcp.12365