Moving From Decolonizing to Indigenizing Educational Models in Early Childhood Higher Education and Professional Development

• In Event: Parallel Spaces of Belonging: Building Education Spaces Free of Racism and Sexism for Early Childhood Educators

Abstract

Purpose: The Indigenous First Steps: Students, Family, Culture, Community (IFS-SFCC) project seeks to “unsettle taken-for-granted ways of seeing and noticing connections to settler colonialisms and make visible the colonial resonances and flows of power that circulate through everyday life” (Nxumalo, 2016, p. 650). Historically, there is a lack of understanding/reverence for Indigenous ways of knowing in early childhood educational structures (Flewitt & Ang, 2020; Stein, 2017). The overarching aim of the IFS-SFCC project is to prepare and retain Native American/Alaska Native (NA/AN) early childhood educators.
Theoretical Framework: The three-year qualitative research is grounded in a decolonizing theoretical framework focused on a community-based participatory research model (CBPR) to Indigenize online early childhood educator preparation (OCEP) and professional development (PD). Working in collaboration with NA/AN college students, their early childhood programs, and Tribal Early Learning Hub and consulting with the existing Advisory Group of Tribal Elders, Knowledge Bearers, Early Childhood and Community Advocates, and Tribal, State, and Local Agency Representatives, the project supports the contextualizing and sustaining of Indigenous knowledges in OCEP and PD platforms.
Methods: Indigenous knowledge frameworks (epistemologies) are “always people and place-specific” (Smith, et al., 2018, p. xi) and “need to be tailored to that context to match community needs and understandings of knowledge and knowing” (p. ix). CBPR creates a flexible framework honoring Indigenous Research Methods when grounded in a decolonizing theoretical framework (Tobias, et al., 2013). The IFS-SFCC project evaluates the design of OCEP structures, types of engagement, and pedagogical approaches to design a replicable online education model constructed around Indigenous knowledges and values.
Data Sources: Indigenous methodologies include Photovoice as an extension of Storying to visually portraying experiences and personal knowledge about experiences, especially with stories that have complex emotional undertones (Nyjuforuk, et al., 2011, p. 104). Photovoice is recognized as particularly effective in CBPR where meaning is constructed by participants. Photovoice methodologies focus on making visible community strengths, promoting critical dialogues through photographic imagery to reach and change policy (Budig, et al., 2018).

Sustaining Conclusions/Findings: The research revealed two distinct pathways to fundamentally changing the OCEP and PD structures. First, decolonizing practices to create culturally responsive spaces need to occur in the systems and structures of higher education, addressing the formal structure of online learning that systematizes approaches to what and how information is disseminated. The second pathway moves from decolonizing to Indigenizing knowledges and pedagogical approaches through culturally sustaining practices. The building of culturally sustaining practices needs to happen in Native communities without the interference of higher education and professional development systems.
Significance: Research that is not conceptualized in Indigenous research frameworks, represents a “modified hegemonic Western traditions” (Kovach, 2021). This is in direct contrast to the Indigenous methodologies’ concepts of research as ceremony (Wilson, 2008). The unfolding of understanding is reciprocal and emergent, encompassing past-present-future conceptions of meaning (Windchief, & San Pedro, 2019) and the reciprocal process of centering ancestors, present and future holders of knowledges as active constructors of meaning (Wilson, 2008) in building truly Indigenized education.

Author

• Ingrid M. Anderson, Portland State University