Category — Connection to Research Topic

As an Australian I would like to focus my research on Australian Aborigines and Torres Straits Islanders. As a medical educator I have been thinking across both education and medical topics. My final decision was to focus on technologies, indigenous communities and health. This might still be too broad, but I plan to try and focus on three aspects that I have started to research:

• technology and health service delivery in indigenous communities (ehealth)
• technology for indigenous health promotion and patient education
• technology and traditional medicine

Mignone 2008 used the concept of social capital to explore ICT in Aboriginal Communities in Canada. Health is one of the areas he focused on. He describes three impacts of ICT on social capital in indigenous communities –transforming, diminishing and/or supplementing. His study and these concepts have provided a useful place to start, along with the WSIS position paper I posted as a module 1 weblog and other articles I have started to collect (as identified below).

Indigenous Position Paper for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

Lori A. Colomeda & Eberhard R. Wenzel (2000): Medicine keepers: Issues in indigenous health, Critical Public Health, 10:2, 243-256.  Downloaded 23/09/12 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713658247

Mignone J, Henley H, Brown J, O’Neil J, Ross W. (2008) Information and Communication Technology in Aboriginal Communities in Canada: Increasing Aboriginal Social Capital. A Discussion Paper.

Molyneaux, H, O’Donnell, S. (2009) ICT and Health and Wellness in Remote and Rural First Nations Communities: A Social Determinants of Health. Perspective Paper presented at the Canadian Society of Telehealth Conference (CST 2009),Vancouver, October 3-6 2009

This early in the course, I find it difficult to state concretely where I would like to focus my research interests.  I believe that my uncertainty in stating a set path right now also lies in two contrasting areas of interest.  I am a Language Arts teacher and I would like to find an area of research that directly impacts my teaching practice.  I am excited to delve deeper into the responsibility and challenge associated with effectively representing indigenous people, stories, and materials in my classroom.  Specifically, I would like to focus on how indigenous people and traditions are represented in the Alberta Language Arts curriculum, the supporting resources such as the Guide to Implementation, and suggested novels.  I would like to research how Alberta’s Language Arts curriculum, resources, and supporting technologies impact indigenous people of Alberta, and how educators can make an impact within their own classrooms and schools. 

However, having completed the readings for Module 1, I am finding myself personally drawn towards to the challenges presented in trying to find a balance between environmentalism and indigeneity.  This was an area of study that I had not really considered prior to starting the course readings, and now I am struggling to find an understanding.  The ideas presented are logical and I can understand them from a theoretical perspective, but from a personal perspective I am still struggling.  I understand the need for cultural traditions to remain intact despite rapid advancements in technology and an ever-shrinking world (where it seems that cultures blend, often getting lost as we race on).  But, as a defender of animal rights, I struggle with the idea of whale hunting being encouraged and supported.  I question how I would respond if I was mandated to teach the value of a practice that I am personally opposed to.  This conflict between my brain and my heart leads me to think this is an area that I should dive into.  Through further research, I would hope to find a theoretical and practical place of balance.  Furthermore, I would research these issues in a landlocked Albertan educational system.  What environmental issues are the indigenous people of Alberta facing?    

As a math teacher, I am continually aware of the under-representation of aboriginal students in more academic math courses and the over-representation of aboriginal students in lower level math courses.  This is an issue because mathematics is a key entry requirement into many programs at the post-secondary level. Low success rates in mathematics, particularly in the academic math courses, restricts choices for aboriginal students and has a direct impact on the number of aboriginal students in health related careers, business and science.

My weblogs will be focussed around finding ways to support aboriginal students in mathematics, as well as how technology might fit into this support.  Finding ways to authentically use and promote aboriginal mathematics in the classroom will be one area of research.  Researching ways that First Nations peoples have traditionally taught and learned and how our classrooms might be adapted to support these styles of learning will be a second area of research.  At this point for my final project, I am looking at creating a compilation of resources, research and links that can act as a resource for classroom teachers, with the ultimate goal of supporting our aboriginal and First Nations students in mathematics.

Janet Barker

Statement Connecting Research Interests and Weblog

A cursory search of the internet reveals low numbers of indigenous people involved in medicine. In an effort to invite more to the study of medicine, colleges have offered scholarships and entry programs with some success but the question remains, what else can be done to increase interest in a vital discipline? How best to retain the students actually enrolled? And how best to reflect native traditions within a curriculum that must teach what it must teach?

The healing arts would seem to offer groundedness and a sense of community for the indigenous but maybe their tradition of healing takes a different path than the Western tradition. Can the paths exist side by side, learning from each other, or must the streams be separate in a yet unthought version.

So far, my search of health care providers reveals indigenous nurses and doctors but veterinarians and veterinary technicians are less represented. My research will focus on the former with an eye out for the latter. I have worked as a veterinary technician for 37 years and can see a place for indigenous workmates. It is worth a look.

The focus of my weblogs will be on Indigenous loss of access and connection to their histories, culture and language within the educational system and how technology and educational reform can play a role in decolonizing, democratizing and reforming their educational experiences. In today’s global educational culture of standardized curriculum and educational practices including transmissive and rote styles, learning is often irrelevant and disconnected from local cultures, knowledge, or everyday activities.  Because of this, students become disconnected, alienated and further colonized by the system.  This disconnection is not only seen in Indigenous students, but also presents a problem among all students.  When any knowledge is removed from context, it becomes fragmented and disconnected from the student’s knowledge of the world.  This leaves them with limited ability to integrate the curricular knowledge into their existing experiences, knowledge patterns and previous understandings thereby resulting in the failure to participate and create meaningful learning.  However, for the purposes of this course, I will be focussing on this disconnect among Indigenous youth and the ways that schools might minimize these problems using techniques and technology.

Realistically, we live in the 21^st century of globalization through immigration, internet, multiculturalism, and political power structures.  Because these aspects of our society have made isolation and sheltered communities almost impossible, as educators, we need to look for solutions that exist in a post-colonization world in which we can encourage individual’s open and critical thinking about their own identities, cultural knowledge and understanding of the world. One of the ways that provides promise is the new initiative called constructivist learning in which individuals guide their own learning process and find their own meaning.  With the use of the internet, resources offered by their local communities and a sensitive and integrated educational system, Indigenous students may have a chance to self-determine their own post-colonization cultural identities.

Cheers, Steve MacKenzie

As a secondary teacher I am constantly reminded of our school board’s first end statement: “Each student, in keeping with his or her individual abilities and gifts, will complete high school with a foundation of learning to function effectively in life, work and continued learning” (Calgary Board of Education, 2011).  My Weblog focus will be to investigate how I can best ensure my indigenous students complete high school with the knowledge and experience needed to achieve their dreams.

This study will examine impacts on Indigenous student success in Canada and what different regions are doing to support students.  In particular, I would like to identify the impact personalization of learning through technology has on Indigenous learners.

I will explore ways in which culturally appropriate applications of educational technologically can support student success in and out of the classroom.   My hope is to find examples of how “tribalism [can] be practiced” (Howe, 1998, p. 24) using educational technology.   I want to understand the elements needed for indigenous students to connect to topics and technological tools.

This research should provide the knowledge and resource foundation needed to support my indigenous students in achieving academic success.

Camille

References

Calgary Board of Education, (2011). Board of trustees’ policy-ends statements. Retrieved from http://www.cbe.ab.ca/aboutus/ends.asp

Howe, C, (1998).  Cyberspace is no place for tribalism. Wicazo Sa Review, 13(2), 19-28.

#1 Fisheries and Oceans for the Future

While searching for another link to the video “Return to Gitxaała” I came across the website Forests and Oceans for the Future. This website has a wealth of information about the Gitxaała Nation and their resource management strategies.

The website includes information on how the Gitxaała are combining their TEK with “western science” resource management strategies to meet the needs of their community. The process is undertaken by faculty and students at UBC and community members. They are focussed on resource management strategies in Northern BC with but they include research from parts of America, Western Europe and New Zealand. One of their underlying goals is fostering mutual respect and effective communication between stakeholders.

The focus of the website is on public education, policy research and ecological research with regards to resource management. To this end they include links to publications that are related to research with Indigenous groups, podcasts on the topic, and links to blogs where issues relating to TEK and resource management are being discussed.

In addition, the website provides links to public access lesson plans, which, although they are more suitable to secondary students could be altered for an elementary classroom. I found it to be a very interesting site with a lot of options for further research.

http://www.ecoknow.ca/