Gathering Together: How Educators Are Working Towards Decolonizing and Indigenizing Their Teaching Practice Within a Colonial System
Date
2023-07-24
Authors
Mason, Chelsea
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Abstract
It is the professional responsibility of educators in British Columbia to decolonize and Indigenize their teaching practice. Furthermore, researchers have demonstrated that when educators decolonize and Indigenize their teaching practices it benefits Indigenous students, non-Indigenous students, society, the planet, and educators themselves. However, despite the fact that many current teacher education programs include instruction of Indigenous pedagogy, many educators still do not know how to decolonize or Indigenize their teaching practice. Additionally, working within a colonial system creates many challenges and obstacles for educators working to decolonize and Indigenize their teaching practice. Using the Transformative Inquiry methodology this inquiry identifies how educators are working to decolonize and Indigenize their teaching practices within a colonial system. I met with nine educators from the Greater Victoria School District four times over a four-month period and used Chrona’s (2022) book Wayi Wah! to guide our discussions on how we were working towards decolonizing and Indigenizing our teaching practice. I also recorded observations from my teaching experiences and my participation in a 10-course program with the Indigenous Education Department at the University of Victoria called Teaching and Learning Indigenous Perspectives and engaged in the practice of reflexivity throughout the inquiry by keeping a digital journal in which I documented my thoughts and interpretations to check my own biases and assumptions. Through this inquiry I have discovered that there are no clear and simple instructions to decolonize and Indigenize one’s teaching practice, however our group did determine some strategies that educators can use to work towards decolonizing and Indigenizing their teaching practices which are described in detail in Chapter 4. We also discovered what prevents some educators from doing this work: fear, anxiety and discomfort, “educator overwhelm” and working against the dominant ideology. While working within a colonial system may create significant obstacles, I believe that if we, as educators, work towards decolonizing and Indigenizing our teaching practice we can dismantle the colonialist ideologies that dominate our society, which can in turn help to dismantle the colonialist structures such as our education system.
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Keywords
Decolonization, Indigenization, Education, Teaching Practice