Moving From "Fear" to Action: How Settler Educators Can Make Anxieties Productive

• In Event: 67.068 - MTCC Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: 67.068-8 - Preparing Critical-Oriented Teachers

Abstract

In this paper, we draw on data from a research study that examined the ways educators in Ontario incorporate Indigenous content and epistemologies into their classrooms, and their successes and barriers in doing so. While examining these multiple truths, we explain the ways non-Indigenous/settler teachers understand their roles in teaching Indigenous content and epistemologies through the lenses of ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety.’ We analyze the ways in which the educators’ anxieties based on their lived experiences stop their education of Indigenous content and epistemologies. We explain how this becomes disruptive/obstructive to teaching in ways that do not conform to the settler colonial curriculum. We then examine how some of the teachers pause this education in productive ways for self-reflection.

Authors

• Shawna Carroll, Okayama University

• Jean-Paul Restoule, University of Victoria

• Mark Sinke, University of Toronto

• Daniela Bascuñán, Toronto District School Board