Teaching for Indigenous Education

Overview

The Teaching for Indigenous Education website responds to the changing educational landscape that recognizes the importance of educational frameworks based on Indigenous perspectives. The Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam people, is taking a leadership role in meeting this goal. With support from the Teaching Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) at UBC, the website represents one component of a project entitled Enhancing Curriculum and Building Capacity in Aboriginal Education for Faculty and Teacher Candidates. It also supports the newly developed required teacher education course, EDUC 440: Aboriginal Education in Canada.

The online learning resource focuses on eight topics: relationships, knowledge, history, pedagogy, curriculum, community, languages and transformation. Each topic contains five sections that work towards the goals of enhancing understandings of Indigenous education and supporting changing practices in classrooms and schools:

Key Learning Ideas – Key learning ideas represent guiding concepts that shape each topic and include questions for dialogue and teacher reflection.

Indigenous Perspectives – Indigenous perspectives presents short videos of Indigenous Elders, community members, teachers, youth, and scholars sharing their perspectives on a variety of issues related to the Indigenous education topic. Video vignettes have been selected to represent a variety of Indigenous perspectives across Canada and internationally.

Enhancing Understanding – Enhancing Understanding presents select resources including websites, scholarly literature, texts, and videos that best support the learning ideas relevant to each topic.

Classroom Connections – Classroom connections link educators’ emerging understandings of the topics with educational settings and resources for classroom practice. British Columbia Ministry of Education (BCMoE) curriculum examples are presented to illustrate how an educator might link Indigenous education topics to provincial learning standards known as Prescribed Learning Outcomes (PLOs). Lesson plan resources, information texts, children’s and young adults’ (YA) literature, and multimedia resources appropriate for classroom use are listed by resource type.

Additional Resources – Additional resources presents a broader range of resources intended to build and extend each of the Indigenous education topics. This section is largely supported by scholarly literature and works towards the goal of supporting educators in connecting theory and practice. When available, resources that support teaching and learning within teacher training programs are made accessible.

Goals

The website was a digital learning resource aimed at supporting the teaching and professional development of educators in Aboriginal/Indigenous education. The online learning tool was intended to promote the place of Indigenous knowledges, knowledge holders, and pedagogies in schools and communities that would enrich classroom experiences for all learners. Educators were encouraged to utilize the broad range of resources that were organized according to eight topics relevant to current issues in Indigenous education. Unique to this online website was the focus on Indigenous perspectives, curricular resources (e.g. links, texts, children’s literature), multimedia, and literature that linked theory to practice.

Teaching for Indigenous Education is available at http://www.indigenouseducation.educ.ubc.ca/

Project Team

Project Management
Jan Hare. Associate Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, UBC

Project Management (PDCE support)
Natasha Boskic, Educational Technology Manager, PDCE

Instructional Design and Media
Sharon Hu, Instructional Designer, PDCE

Web Design and Programming
Kirsten Starcher, Freelancer

Graduate Research Support
Brooke Madden, Graduate Student
Marc Higgins, Graduate Student
Amanda Wager, Graduate Student