Educational Change Through Land-Based Learning: Local Indigenous Knowledge and Teacher Professional Development

• In Event: Foundations for Lasting Equity and Transformation: Policy, Organization, and Professional Practice

Abstract

Nxumalo (2015) calls educators to take up an anti-colonial stance through re-figuring presences and restorying place. In this study, our Educational Change Network (ECN), comprised of local Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators and syilx Knowledge Holders, recast professional development as land-based collaboration where syilx stories and language are centered and taught on the land at sites of significance. ECN members sought to take up UNDRIP (2007), and Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action (2015) in the British Columbia context, which now requires Indigenous perspectives and content in the curriculum.

Authors

• Bonny Lynn Donovan, University of British Columbia - Okanagan

• Leyton Schnellert, University of British Columbia

• Sarah Buffett, Cornell University, University of British Columbia

• Sara Florence Davidson, Simon Fraser University