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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/1664 |
| Date | 28 August 2009 |
| Creators | Tanaka, Michele Therese Duke |
| Contributors | Williams, Lorna, Riecken, Theodore John |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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