EDST 403 Knowledge, Curriculum, and Education

Department:

Educational Studies

Project lead(s):

Dr. Claudia Diaz

Project members:

Roxanne Burnett, NITEP Bella Coola Field Centre Student

Stella Stump, NITEP Cariboo Field Centre Student

Reflection:

What led you to your project/inspired your work? What values and principles guided the development of your project?

For my Curriculum Enhancement Project (CEP) I redeveloped EDST 403 Knowledge, Curriculum, and Education for Indigenous Teacher Candidates in the Cariboo Cohort. I was inspired by two of the First Nations Principles of Learning that state that 1) learning recognizes the role of Indigenous knowledge and 2) support the well-being of the learners and all their relationships. EDST 403 supports TCs to recognize, and reflect on, how curriculum choices reflect social ideas about knowledge and its value. Indigenous students, and TCs, have long experienced the tension between Euro-Canadian and Indigenous ideas about knowledge and learning. Moreover, they have witnessed the absence of Indigenous perspectives in the K-12 school curriculum. For these reason, my CEP aimed to:

Amplify Indigenous voices in education: To recognize the role of Indigenous knowledge in education, I assembled a course syllabus that gathers mostly articles and book chapters by Indigenous authors. For example, TCs read “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants” by Robyn Wall Kimmerer, member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. They also read “Land as Pedagogy” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist. Through these course readings, TCs had the opportunity to center Indigenous voices by engaging with Indigenous educational scholarship. Through small group seminars, TCs began acquiring a language within the field of teacher education that allowed them to communicate with confidence the value of their cultural worldviews as key teaching practices to Indigenous and non-Indigenous colleagues, families, and students.

Advance story-focused learning: TCs took my course in September 2020. Back then, the pandemic had radically changed the ways teacher education courses were delivered. TCs were experiencing the impact that the increasing hours of exposure to screens had in their personal and family lives. To mitigate screen and zoom exhaustion, I created a series of podcasts that touches on the courses weekly topics. Students were able to engage in my lectures through the podcasts as they went for a walk or sat on a couch with a cup of tea. Most importantly, the podcast format allowed us – TCs and me as an instructor – to engage with stories and reflections at a slower pace fostering a sense of a more holistic learning.

What have you learned from the process? What reflections from the process would you like to share?

If educators seek to advance Indigenous ways of knowing, we need to make changes in our curriculum and course delivery. If we – instructors in Teacher Education Programs – state we are committed towards truth-telling and reconciliation through education, we need to rethink what we teach and how we teach. This shift begins by centering Indigenous perspectives in our curriculum and opening space for multiple ways of learning. For Indigenous TCs is important to have first-hand experience on how they can center Indigenous voices and perspectives in their classrooms. My course syllabus and series of podcasts aimed to support TCs’ learning by modelling ways of learning through conversations that lead them to reflection and action. I am humble about how much I learned by teaching this course. I was reminded about the value of relationships as central for teaching and learning. As TCs engage in small group seminars, they brought crucial lessons from their communities, Elders, and friends creating a vibrant community of support and hope.

What impact/influence have you or do you see your project making?

I hope these two curriculum changes contribute to honouring Indigenous ways of knowing and learning in ways that advances the knowledge of all educators – Indigenous and non-Indigenous. This knowledge includes the history of Indigenous people, the impact of colonial practices in education, and their relationships with their lands and ancestors. This knowledge also includes their contemporary contexts and perspectives on where education should move towards. I hope this course helped TCs in the Cariboo cohort to rethink their relationships with education in ways they are hopeful and confident about their contributions as teachers. Ultimately, by supporting TCs, I hope CEP will benefit Indigenous students’ learning and school experiences as whole.

Additional Material:

NOTE: If you would like to use or adapt this educational material, please reach out to Claudia Diaz at claudia.diaz@ubc.ca

Hi, I’m Claudia Diaz and this is Education, Knowledge, and Curriculum in which I talk about how our ideas of knowledge shape what students learn at school.

In this episode, I will discuss what is generally referred to as Curriculum Politics or in short -what knowledge has been considered the most worth and what we need to know to participate in the production of knowledge in schools.

Before I delve into our topic, let me make a disclaimer. As you can imagine, I’m not a podcaster, but I’m happy to give it a try! I’m taking this podcast series very seriously and since the name for this podcast –Education, Knowledge and Curriculum is not quite appealing, I’d love to hear your podcast name ideas. Please, don’t be shy and send your ideas along.

Now, without further ado, let’s dive into today’s topic –what knowledge has been considered the most worth in schools.

Have you ever thought about who decided what you learned at school? Did your parents have a say regarding the kinds of things you had to learn at school? or Did they have a say regarding your academic assessment? In my case, I don’t even know whether my mother knew she had the right to be heard about my education and although I’m aware I’m talking about a few decades ago and a place far from here, the question is still relevant today. Who gets to decide what students learn at school and what teachers have to teach? How is the public consulted and considered about their children’s education?

UBC Professor, Catherine Broom, has said that in a democratic society, the curriculum should be the result of a participatory process in which all members in society should be taken into account–experts, administrators but also the public. You may already know that the BC curriculum was the result of a participatory process, but again Professor Broom suggests that when a group of people get together and get consulted does not guarantee that the curriculum will reflect their ideas. In other words, consultation does not mean participation. This is really important and has important implications for Indigenous Education.

This gets more complicated if we consider that the official curriculum –that learning plan that tells you the standards, learning objectives, and assessment to follow in school is only one part of the curriculum. This is the official curriculum, but how about the hidden curriculum? The hidden curriculum as Professor Cassie Brownell wrote in the letter to a first-year teacher, is equally important for students. The hidden curriculum is that learning that is off the record that sets the expectations how students have to behave in the classroom and in society. I’m sure you must have plenty of stories about the hidden curriculum from your own school experience as well as from your school observations and practicum –at least in the first few weeks before social distancing. Unlike the official curriculum that is written and published, the hidden curriculum is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, which makes it so much difficult to grasp it. As an Indigenous student, you may have plenty of memories about what was expected of you as a student but never said explicitly to you. Many of those experiences may count as part of the hidden curriculum.

Why should teachers care about the hidden curriculum? and What can teachers do about it?

Professor Cassie Brownell –as well as many others -encourages us to unpack –or deconstruct the hidden curriculum. But before we heard what she means by deconstructing the curriculum, you may be wondering why? This is a key question and goes right into how understandings of knowledge shape what students learn at school.

The hidden curriculum plays an important role in educational equalities. Research has consistently showed that the expectations regarding students’ abilities shape what teachers teach, how they teach, and how they assess their students’ learning. Professor Cassie tells us the huge differences she observed between her experience as a professor in an inner-city school and an elite school. She noted that the knowledge that students get at school is stratified by class and race. Simply put, racialized students were taught to be obedient, while students from privileged backgrounds were taught to become leaders and thinkers. I know that the reality is much complex than that, but this picture helps us to understand the different opportunities that students are exposed to at schools depending on their race, class, ability, and gender.

So, how can we unpack the hidden curriculum –well, she says we can do this by looking at the classroom as well as the society. For example, as a teacher, you can look at the classroom rituals and what are the messages that these rituals convey to your students. Do they create differences among students, if so which ones, are those messages aligned to your teaching philosophy or they contradict your principles? These are important questions to keep in mind when you plan your unit lessons and I encourage it to keep them in mind for your lesson plan analysis.

The video for this week –“What I wasn’t taught at school? –makes us to think not only about the question about what knowledge is the most worth? but most importantly, what knowledge should be of most worth? For Sam, the student who challenges his teacher, the knowledge of most worth is not taught at school. For him, learning about Black history should never be a repetition of facts that everybody knows, but about digging into all that knowledge that has been systematically excluded from his classroom. Think about, for example, about Indigenous people and the history of Residential Schools. When was the closure of the last Residential School in Canada? and When did students start learning about the history of residential schools? What do you know about Residential Schools and from what perspectives? How much do you know about the lives of RS survivors? How much have you learned about those stories from your own school experience?

How can teachers to participate in the production of knowledge?

Well, there are some good news for you -you are already participating in curriculum implementation, so you don’t have to do anything special to join the curriculum club, but perhaps the question is not much about whether you are participating but more about how you would like to participate –do you want to make conscious curriculum choices or you want to follow what you are expected to teach?

Last week I talked about absolute and contextual knowledge. I did that to problematize right away our understanding of knowledge. If we assume that knowledge is out there, completely independent from us and from our curriculum choices then we are creating the conditions for passive learners and passive teachers. If you want to support your students to learn at the best of their abilities and avoid having a student like Sam who are dissatisfied for the content you are teaching, then you need to do your homework. You need to understand how your teaching practices (official and hidden curriculum) are helping–or preventing –your students to learn and engage with broader societal issues that are affecting us all right now.

Let’s think about the controversy about the BC Kinder Morgan Pipeline. As we know the official and hidden curriculum aim to provide the skills to participate in a democratic society. We want our students to become literate, knowledgeable, and creative to take responsibility for the public good, right? Since all teachers have a responsibility how do they do that?

Let’s think about our Province and a controversial topic that affect us all of us for different reasons –the Kinder Morgan Pipeline. You may approve it or be against it but the question here is –should students learn about the Pipeline? and if so, which perspective should students learn about? or how much? Can students learn about science or social studies through the pipeline as a case study? Does the current BC curriculum offer flexibility to teachers to make this kind of decisions? Does the curriculum or your school encourage you to make this type of decisions?

I leave you with these questions for you to think about. I hope these ideas make sense to you and help you to continue thinking about what you can do as a teacher regarding curriculum politics. Thank you for listening!