Reimagining Teacher Education With Indigenous Wisdom Traditions
About the Project
AT A GLANCE
4
40+
COHORTS
EDUCATORS
3
PROVINCES
5
YEARS
Research SUmmary
Awareness of Canada’s systemic oppression of Indigenous Peoples has led teacher education programs across the country to include mandatory courses with Indigenous content. But educational practices continue to be dominated by a colonial worldview that blocks opportunities to learn “from” Indigenous peoples instead of “about” them. Reimagining teacher education requires learning to relate not only to knowledge differently but also to people and other living beings differently.
Dr. Dwayne Donald, Canada Research Chair in Reimagining Teacher Education With Indigenous Wisdom Traditions, is working to facilitate this transformational shift. He and his research team are attending to the experiences of educators and conceptualizing a teaching model for unlearning colonialism. They are also creating research hubs that will bring diverse groups of people together and identify innovative, research-informed teaching practices that reimagine teacher education with Indigenous wisdom traditions.
OBJECTIVES
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collaborate with educators to conceptualize unlearning colonialism as a recursive pedagogical process
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facilitate opportunities for educators to learn from Indigenous wisdom insights and deliberate together on how best to enact these insights in their teaching practices
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create research hubs that bring diverse groups of people together to reimagine teacher education in light of Indigenous wisdom teachings
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animate a curricular and pedagogical vision for teacher education programs that draws specific inspiration from Treaty teachings and kinship relationality.
PURPOSE & PLAN
This research proposal arises from the contention that the ongoing influence of colonial logics in Canadian teacher education contexts blocks meaningful attempts to learn from Indigenous peoples. To facilitate unique and place-specific pedagogical processes of unlearning colonialism, educators will be guided through collaborative action research processes that include in-depth engagement with Indigenous wisdom insights shared by local Elders and knowledge holders. The research process will attend to the experiences of the educators, articulate a framework for the reparation and renewal of Indigenous-Canadian relations on terms that acknowledge kinship relationality, and identify innovative and transformative research-informed teaching practices that reimagine teacher education with Indigenous wisdom traditions.