The theme of my weblog 4 entries is the notion of building “culturally responsive” classrooms and schools which is a term that arose in each of the articles on the websites/reports below.

Barnhardt, Ray
1998 Teaching/Learning Across Cultures: Strategies for Success. Fairbanks, AK: Alaska Native Knowledge Network (ankn.uaf.edu), University of Alaska Fairbanks.
http://ankn.uaf.edu/Curriculum/Articles/RayBarnhardt/TLAC.html

This article was found on the Alaska Native Knowledge network and outlines ways to teach across cultures. While the Western world view and the indigenous world view are at the more extreme opposite ends of the spectrum the article does offer an interesting comparison.  One of the different world views is one that came up in the in Dr. Brown’s video is the concept of linear vs. circular.

https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/uploads/004/913/PCRE.pdf

This article is on CRE (Culturally responsive education) and has the three following objectives:

• Define and understand what CRE is and what it looks like
• Understand how privilege and social power play a systemic role in how culture is
• practiced
• Be able to reflect on personal assumptions about students, parents, & communities in order to recognize the importance of how culturally responsive education impacts student outcomes

While it doesn’t discuss indigenous cultures specifically it has a lot of interesting tools and discussion questions to help in understanding cultural differences, which was an interesting theme of our week 9 discussions.

http://www.alliance.brown.edu/tdl/tl-strategies/crt-principles.shtml

This website outlines culturally responsive teaching and has seven different discussions in regards to this.  Some of the characteristics of culturally responsive teaching are:

1. Positive perspectives on parents and families
2. Communication of high expectations
3. Learning within the context of culture
4. Student-centered instruction
5. Culturally mediated instruction
6. Reshaping the curriculum
7. Teacher as facilitator

#5 – Culturally mediated instruction is particularly interesting as it outlines strategies for teaching those from different cultures and recognizing all of the different cultures within the classroom.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept05/vol63/num01/Creating-Culturally-Responsive-Schools.aspx

This is a link to an article which discusses culturally competent schools.  Although the article discusses the US aspects of it are equally applicable to Canada.  The article discusses the term subtractive schooling (taken from Valenzuela (1999)) in reference to Mexican American high school students where the schools ignored students’ knowledge of Spanish or even treated it as a deficit.  This term can probably be applied to the Canadian school system which ignores students’ prior knowledge or even treats the knowledge as less important than what needs to be taught.

http://www.education.gov.sk.ca/culturally-responsive-school-division

This is a report that came out of a research project done by Saskatchewan public schools.  The report focuses on what is culturally responsive schools and how to achieve culturally responsive schools. The action research project involved site visits (1 elementary- Pleasant Hill Community School; 1 secondary- Mount Royal Collegiate) as well as international visit to Alaska.  A quote from page 6 of the report states “The traditional Alaskan worldview and philosophy for learning is the foundation for student learning. Students learn through traditional stories, songs, Language, culture camps, and direct interaction with Elders. The curriculum becomes the medium for traditional knowledge to be integrated into the daily learning of teachers and students.”

Earlier this summer, I attended a conference at the University of Warwick in the England on the topic of giftedness in education, and the role technology could, or should, play in modern education for bright students. One of the first things I realized was how controversial the term ‘giftedness’ is, particularly in the UK. If a student is described as ‘gifted’, it can be argued that students who are not considered ‘gifted’ are constrained in some way as they do not have the same potential – that sums up the argument I heard against the term. Of course, as I was sitting there in session after session, I couldn’t help but thinking our many interesting discussions in ETEC 521, and I wondered about how giftedness is addressed in indigenous education. I located this site: http://www.fnesc.ca/publications/pdf/gifted_students.pdf

This is a publication by the First Nations Schools Association (2002) – quite a dated document. Interestingly, it is based on British websites, and does not really mention any attributes of First Nations learners, specifically. I hope to show development in this in other weblogs in this Module.

Module 4, Post 2

I was getting a little fed up of reading the same theorists over and over again in their varying works. It’s a good thing I can also read Spanish. I found a fascinating work about indigenous people in photographs from Chile.

The official title is “Dentro y fuera de cuadro. Representacion y alteridad en la fotografia de indigenas de Chile.” The rough translation is “Inside and outside the frame. Representation and the other in photography of the indigenous of Chile.”

In many ways it’s a refreshing look at this topic. I was getting tired of so many of the North American theorists hammering away at the same topic, so that at the end I’ve felt like I’ve been staring at a rather mashed up antecedent that’s more difficult to recognize for what it used to be.

The approach Alvarez and Zunino have in their work is less vitriolic and tries to dignify indigeneity in a way that seems lacking by so many of the theorists of North America. One quick comparison: they never talk about the faustian contract or the deconstruction of the “noble savage”. Their approach is more or less along the lines of “re-presenting” that is to give the remaining indigenous people the opportunity to represent themselves in their space in a way they best see fit, not in a way that the dominant society has represented them.