Integrating Aboriginal Perspectives into the
School Curriculum
• Session 2 Scrafe 1007: Sarah will discuss the
UBC library & cultural appropriate curriculum
materials.
• Head Start - "The Children First"
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaNtbX
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Culturally Responsive Schooling (CRS)
• …culturally responsive education recognizes,
respects, and uses students’ identities and
backgrounds as meaningful sources for
creating optimal learning environments.
Being culturally responsive is more than
being respectful, empathetic, or sensitive.
Accompanying actions, such as having high
expectations for students and ensuring that
these expectations are realized, are what
make a difference (Gay, 2000).
Pedagogies:
• approaches to teaching and learning;
• the process through which knowledge is produced; and,
• the transformation of consciousness that takes place through
interaction of teacher, learner and knowledge they produce
together: See Susan Dion (2009).
Decolonizing Pedagogies:
• help learners come to recognize and know the structures of
colonization and their implications;
• while engaging in activities that disrupt those structures on an
individual and collective level;
• result in the re-centring of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and
doing;
• facilitate engagement with possibilities for making change in the
world;
• particularly in the interests of supporting Indigenous selfdetermination (McGregor 2012, 4).
An Aboriginal perspective on learning includes the
following key attributes
Holistic:
Lifelong:
Experiential:
Rooted in Aboriginal languages and
cultures:
• Spiritually oriented
• (Redefining how Success is Measured in First
Nations, Inuit and Métis Learning),
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•
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Yatta Kanu. Integrating Aboriginal Perspectives
into the School Curriculum
• Two-year study in which she collaborated
with classroom teachers to integrate
Aboriginal perspectives into their Social
Studies curricula and document the impact
of this integration on school success for the
Aboriginal students in their classroom(98)
Starts by defining Aboriginal perspectives
• Aboriginal perspectives: the use of indigenous
approaches to teaching and learning, such as
storytelling and learning by observation.
• Visually-based instruction, computer images, videos;
Combination of individual and collaborative
learning;
• Curriculum materials and classroom
learning/teaching processes that include Aboriginal
perspectives, histories, cultures, and
• Supportive and non-threating classroom,
communities/environments appear to be important
for increasing verbal participation.
• the term Aboriginal perspective was understood as
curriculum content/materials, instructional and
assessment methods, and interactive patterns that
Manitoba’s Aboriginal peoples see as reflecting their
experiences, histories, cultures, traditional
knowledges, and values (96).
• Research question: What are the most effective
ways of integrating Aboriginal perspectives into the
curriculum of urban public high schools? (99)
Aboriginal perspectives were integrated at five levels of
classroom practice:
• (a) at the level of lesson planning when
learning outcomes are set (p. 102)
• (b) at the level of curriculum content and
learning resources; cultural appropriate
curriculum materials (p. 109)
• (c) at the level of instructional
methods/strategies; pedagogical approaches?
(p. 111)
• (d) at the level of assessment of student
learning (p. 112); and
• (e) as a philosophical underpinning of the
curriculum (p.114).
• Select one of the five levels:
• Find a component within one or more of the resources
below.
• Describe your selected element(s).
• How do you perceive integrating aboriginal
perspectives and the elements into the curricula?
• How would you enact these perspectives in your
pedagogies and interactions with students?
Resources
• Teaching for Indigenous Education website:
• http://www.indigenouseducation.educ.ubc.ca/
• Sharing the learning: integrating Aboriginal content K-10
• Overview of resources: (p 7)
• http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/abed/shared.pdf
• The State of Aboriginal Learning in Canada: A Holistic Approach To
Measuring Success.
• http://www.ccl-cca.ca/pdfs/StateAboriginalLearning/SALFINALReport_EN.PDF
• Integrating Aboriginal perspectives into the curricula:
• http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/docs/policy/abpersp/ab_persp.pdf