My Research Interests

I do not pretend to be knowledgeable about Indigenous cultures, and all that I know about these cultures I have learned from popular media.  This course is helping me think critically about issues that surround Indigenous education, especially when Westerners impose their ways and modes of knowing on these peoples.

My research interests will focus on place-based learning.  This topic interests me, not only because of its novelty to me had (I had no idea what it was prior to ETEC 521), but because it is related to two areas of cognition that interest me:  situated learning and embodied knowing.  Place-based learning is a form of situated learning, where learning takes place in social and environmental contexts in which the knowledge is used. Learning takes place when problems that are authentic to the context are tackled.  Embodied knowing is a bit more difficult to define simply because it has different meanings.  One definition which is useful in this context is placing the learner in the context in which he will need to use specific types of knowledge.  For instance, although a driver’s manual is helpful, the way to learn how to drive a car is to sit behind the wheel of one and drive.