The Pedagogy of Land in the Inuit Bachelor of Education Program

• In Event: 34.073 - Stewardship of the Land, Water, and Ice: Implications for Education in Nunangat

Abstract

Objectives: The Inuit Bachelor of Education (IBED) program is a partnership between the Nunatsiavut Government (NG) and Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) to educate Nunatsiavut beneficiaries as teachers. The program infuses Inuit culture through language, land, Elders, and teaching resources (Author et al., in press). A fundamental understanding of the teaching is that knowledge is inextricably connected to land and the network of relationships embodied by place (Cajete, 1994; Wildcat et al., 2014). Land-based learning experiences are immersing the IBED students in the environment where their thinking about the connections of land, culture, and curriculum is being nurtured (Author, in press). This research investigates ways to integrate pedagogy and knowledge from the land within the K-12 curriculum outcomes.
Theoretical framework: The underpinning of this research is that the interrelationship of people and land, as a tenet of Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being, provides the theoretical framework of Indigenous research methodology (Kovach, 2005; Wilson, 2001). Wilson explains Indigenous methodology as being about relational accountability and Kovach emphasizes both the relationship of the researcher to the Indigenous community and the community’s self-determined needs as the basis for the research. The research uses narrative inquiry that Clandinin and Connelly (2000) describe as having a sense of searching and continually reforming the inquiry throughout the research. Narrative inquiry is grounded and legitimated by Indigenous traditions of storying, which is a culturally significant way of knowing (Cajete, 1994; Kovach, 2009; Little Bear, 2000). The narratives of the research evolve from the instructor’s and students’ reflections on their experiences in centering land in teaching and learning.
Data sources: The research data are narratives collected through personal reflections, course notes, journaling, conversations (Kovach, 2009), and the students’ voices from conference presentations and a documentary film. The data also includes the recursive process of living, telling, retelling, and reliving of the IBED experiences (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). These narratives situate the self-in-relation (Graveline, 1998) to the land as a place of learning and to a Labrador Inuit identity.
Results: The IBED program nurtures a vision of Inuit-lead education (Tulloch & Sandiford, 2018) and the work of the IBED students in embedding curricular outcomes in land-based learning is highlighted by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (2017) in their most recent Inuit education report.
Scientific significance: This research responds to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015), the “expansion of teacher education programs to include a focus on research into Inuit ways of teaching and learning” (National Committee on Inuit Education, 2011, p. 14), and the vision of the Accord on Indigenous Education (Association of Canadian Deans of Education, 2010).

Author

• Sylvia Moore, Memorial University of Newfoundland