Attending to Indigenous Ways of Knowing

• In Event: Considering the Embodied Knowledge of Teacher Educators

Abstract

As we reflect on our coming alongside students in a course based on Indigenous and relational assessment that we offer either in a graduate or undergraduate or combined teacher education program, we are drawn to think with an assignment that draws forward their own experiences with assessment as teachers. Because of the similarity in our assignment [we are at different Canadian institutions] we were able to inquire into an online and in person version that are attentive to each of our differing contexts. Important for us in designing the assignment was attention to experience, relationality, and co-creating knowledge in an inquiry community. We were attentive to tension in the responses that highlighted our work as teachers with children and youth. As students engaged with the course materials, i.e., readings, videos, other materials, guest teachers/community individuals, they were encouraged to focus on aspects such as:
1. Beginning with their own experience in relation with the readings, i.e., what does this reading bring forward from your experience?
2. Recovery of meaning, i.e., what is the author/presenter saying?
3. Reconstruction of meaning, i.e., what do I make of the author's text? Do I agree with what the author/presenter is saying? What difference would this text make to my research/teaching?
4. Reading at the edges, i.e., what are the rubbing points with other works, values, and methodologies/pedagogies in the field?
As we began to inquire into this process, we saw threads of our knowledge of teacher education as necessarily attending to the lives of children, youth, families, and communities and the particular contexts of particular classrooms and schools. We are cognizant of the fact that the work we do in our teacher education classrooms might be taken up by the teachers in their own classrooms. Our work in this course and as teacher educators is strongly influenced by academic and non-academic ancestors who have come before us or who have come alongside us in our journeys, i.e., Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers, and community, many children, youth, and families, and the many adults we have taught.

Authors

• M. Shaun Murphy, University of Saskatchewan

• Norine Tourangeau, University of Saskatchewan

• Trudy M. Cardinal, University of Alberta

• Megan Marie Tipler, University of Alberta

• Charis Auger, University of Alberta

• Patsy Steinhauer, University of Alberta

• Janice Huber, University of Alberta