In the increasingly diverse context of North American schools, cross-cultural understanding is of fundamental importance. Most teachers are mono-cultural – typically white, middle class women. To inform teaching practice, these educators draw primarily from personal cultural backgrounds often to the exclusion or detriment of other cultural ways of knowing brought to the classroom by students. Teacher education programs are challenged to interrupt the norms of their conventional practices in order to help dominant culture teachers become more sensitive and insightful towards issues of cross-cultural pedagogy. In particular, the needs of Canadian Aboriginal students require close attention. Indigenous ways of learning and teaching are rarely included in school curricula. This dissertation argues that not only is an indigenous pedagogy useful for Aboriginal students, it also serves to support learning for all students in a multicultural classroom. This phenomenological narrative study looked at the experience of non-Aboriginal preservice teachers enrolled in a university course taught by instructors from several First Nations of Canada. The course took place on Lkwungen Coast Salish territory and provided direct access to indigenous knowledge as the participants worked with earth fibre textiles. The wisdom keepers created a place for the preservice teachers to participate extensively in a cultural approach to learning that was quite different from their previous educational experiences. While engaging in the indigenous handwork, the preservice teachers carefully observed both their own processes as learners and the ways in which the wisdom keepers in the course acted as teachers. The insight gained through this reflexive work troubled the participants’ deep-seated Eurocentric perspectives. Reflecting on personal shifts in attitudes, values and beliefs about the twinned processes of learning and teaching, the participants reported changes in their teaching practice with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. Significant themes in the data revolve around issues of personal and social intent, reflective and reflexive practice, spirituality, the endogenous processes of the learner, learning in community, and teachers’ faith in the learner. The data suggest that implementing an eco/social/spiritual framework is useful in cross-cultural learning and teaching environments as well as in the context of educational research.

The overall purpose of this thesis was to explore the program “Bredsands Brobyggare,” which aims to increase immigrant parents’ involvement and participation in their children’s schooling. This was achieved by studying how the “bridge builders” experience relationship building with the parents and what strategies they use while working with the target group, as well as how these strategies are considered to affect the parents’ involvement in school. In the thesis, four semi-structured interviews were conducted with service providers working in the investigated program. The results were analyzed from a hermeneutic abductive approach through a thematic analysis. Dempsey and Sandler’s theoretical model of motivational sources for parents’ involvement in their children’s schooling is the theoretical framework underlying the analysis. The results showed that the bridge builders used their cultural-understanding ability to build a relationship with the parents and increased other professionals’ awareness and understanding of their difficulties and needs. Furthermore, after establishing a relationship with the parents, the bridge builders used other approaches, such as a strength-based approach and the implementation of individualized support according to the parents’ needs, aiming to create a stable line of communication between school and home, which in turn can potentially develop parents’ involvement in their children’s schooling. / Det övergripande syftet med denna uppsats är att utforska programmet "Bredsands Brobyggare" vars syfte är att öka utrikesfödda föräldrars engagemang och delaktighet i sina barns skolgång. Detta genom att studera hur yrkesutövarna, de så kallade "brobyggarna", upplever relationsbyggandet med föräldrarna och vilka strategier de använder i arbetet med målgruppen, samt hur dessa strategier anses påverka föräldrarnas delaktighet i skolan. I uppsatsen genomförs fyra semistrukturerade intervjuer med yrkesutövare som arbetar inom den undersökta verksamheten. Resultatet analyserades utifrån en hermeneutisk abduktiv ansats, genom en tematisk innehållsanalys. Den teoretiska ramen som ligger till grund för analysen är Dempsey and Sandlers teoretiska modell om motivationskällor för föräldrars delaktighet i barnets skolgång. Resultatet visar att yrkesutövarna använder sig av relationsskapande och andra förhållningssätt vid arbete med föräldrar som har en invandrarbakgrund. Specifikt indikerar resultatet att brobyggarna använder sig av sin kulturell-förståelse förmåga, både för att bygga en relation med föräldrarna samt för att öka övrig personals medvetenhet och förståelse av föräldrarnas svårigheter och behov. Efter etablering av relation med föräldrarna, använder brobyggarna andra förhållningssätt till exempel som ett styrkebaserat förhållningssätt samt implementering av individualiserat stöd enligt föräldrars behov, detta i syfte att skapa en stabil linje av kommunikation mellan skolan och hemmet som i sin tur kan tänkas utveckla föräldrars delaktighet i sina barns skolgång.