Shortcomings

1
Shortcomings Successes

• A summary of the literature review Shortcomings
  and Successes Understanding and addressing the
  complex challenge of Aboriginal education

2
Preview

• The Broad Reality of Aboriginal Education
• A Flawed System
• Racism and Discrimination
• Dropouts, Resistance and Survival
• Cultural Teaching and Identity
• Tokenization
• Language

• Community Involvement and Control
• Honesty and Hard Truths
• Educators and Teacher Training
• Empowerment, Experience and Identity New
  Educational Goals
• Conclusions

3
The Broad Reality of Aboriginal Education

• In a comprehensive review in 2003, Cassidy
  demonstrated that Aboriginal peoples in Canada,
  America, Australia and New Zealand, demonstrate
  nearly identical education statistics and face
  nearly identical educational challenges.
• -from review
• The legacy of colonialism remains fundamental to
  attempts to improve educational outcomes of
  Aboriginal students.

4
The Broad Reality of Aboriginal Education (cont.)

• The fact that education, even in the
  post-assimilation era, remains rooted in
  political and social issues reinforces deep
  suspicion of the aims and process of the
  educational system among Aboriginal students and
  communities Deyhle and Swisher locate trust
  or a lack thereof resulting from social power
  relationships as a necessary point of analysis,
  stating that we believe that the issue of
  trust, specifically the power relationships
  between students and teachers and American Indian
  communities and the Anglo community, is pivotal
  in understanding why some students learn and
  others do not.
• -from review

5
A Flawed System

• Power relations between majority and minority
  groups are integral to any convincing account of
  the failure of minority groups at school.
  interaction between teachers and minority group
  students have the potential to either disable or
  empower. Educators who are not concerned with
  incorporating the culture of the minority group
  tend to use a transmission model of pedagogy
  where the teacher defines what the school
  knowledge is.
• -Ralph Folds, 1989

6
A Flawed System (cont.)

• No school system is culturally neutral.
• -Stephen Harris, 1994
• Whilst (schools) may not achieve their primary
  objective mastery of a core, basic curriculum
  they do effectively impose on the communities
  they serve a hidden curriculum...
• -Folds, 1987

7
A Flawed System (cont.)

• Deficit thinking continues to inform the
  majority of educational pedagogy. Deficit
  thinking ultimately led to the conclusion that,
  if Aboriginal students could be made to function
  as non-Aboriginal students, they would succeed in
  education this is inherently the assimilatory
  educational paradigm...
• -from review

8
Racism and Discrimination

• One of the several realities of aboriginal life
  is the presence of racism The white
  Euro-centric views, about success and failure,
  morality and values, education and schooling, set
  the standards for what is acceptable.
• -Deo Poonwassie, 1997
• It must be recognized that the educational system
  itself is at a deficit with respect to Aboriginal
  students, even if the system is serving
  non-Aboriginal students well.
• -from review

9
Racism and Discrimination (cont.)

• Any kind of imposed model of schooling is
  likely to fuel Aboriginal resistance, the end
  result of which is mainly reproductive of
  existing race relations. schools have tended to
  react to resistance with the use of industrial
  dosages of consensus, by expressing the majority
  culture even more strongly and by attempting to
  force Aboriginal culture and language into the
  gambit of school.
• -Folds, 1987

10
Dropouts, Resistance and Survival

• Aboriginal students and communities do not simply
  fail or stop engaging with education for no
  reason. Even student drop-outs occurs for a
  reason, and these reasons, largely based in
  conflicting systems of values or power, must be
  understood and respected.
• -from review

11
Dropouts, Resistance and Survival (cont.)

• Throughout the literature there are examples of
  students referring to themselves as pushouts
  rather than dropouts, citing disinterested or
  hostile faculty as reasons for failure or school
  leaving, and flatly stating that the educational
  system either adds nothing to or actively
  undermines their identity as Aboriginal people.
• -from review

12
Dropouts, Resistance and Survival (cont.)

• The critical issue was not of a classroom origin
  but what he called antagonistic acculturation.
  He referred to students as prisoners of war and
  urged teachers to understand their students
  resistance because of their role as enemy,
  whose purpose of instruction was to recruit new
  members into their society.
• -Susan Deyhle Karen Swisher, 1997

13
Cultural Teaching and Identity

• Aboriginal students who have the most success in
  mainstream education are those who are strongest
  in their Aboriginal identities. Conversely,
  those students who indicate a discomfort with or
  lack of rootedness in their Aboriginal identity
  leave school and struggle academically with
  respect to both rooted Aboriginal students and
  non-Aboriginal students.
• -from review

14
Cultural Teaching and Identity (cont.)

• Power relations and social and economic racism
  are vital considerations in the schooling of
  Aboriginal children however, a strong Aboriginal
  identity provides a student with a greater number
  of tools with which to endure these challenges
  with dignity, rather than feeling forced out of
  the schooling system.
• -from review

15
Cultural Teaching and Identity (cont.)

• Working from the recognition that the
  maintenance of culture is at the core of
  Indigenous education, Brady argues that,
  Curriculum development which ensures cultural
  maintenance is a focus and concern of Indigenous
  educators.
• -Patrick Brady, 1997

16
Tokenization

• There is consensus that simply inserting
  Aboriginal content into curriculum and the school
  environment has the potential to do more harm
  than good in a number of ways.
• -from review

17
Tokenization (cont.)

• First culture, taken seriously, goes well beyond
  the simple performative acts of what some have
  labelled beads and bannock education, or
  craft, cuisine, and custom.
• Second, various aspects of culture can be
  intertwined to the extent that they do not make
  sense separately.
• -from review

18
Tokenization (cont.)

• The direction suggested here is that Aboriginal
  culture and language should not be subject to
  protection and preservation. Instead
  Aborigines themselves must be the custodians of
  their own culture and the architects of its own
  revitalization.
• -Folds, 1989

19
Language

• Language programs have successfully
• increased student participation and achievement
• parent participation
• Native language development
• and graduation rates.
• The researchers working with Native language
  programs over the past 20 years are arguing that
  the use of Native languages has positive social,
  political, economic, and educational outcomes.
• -Deyhle Swisher, 1997

20
Language (cont.)

• Educators who see their role as encouraging their
  students to add a second language and culture to
  supplement rather than supplant their native
  language and culture are more likely to create
  conditions in which students can develop a sense
  of empowerment.
• -Deyhle Swisher, 1997

21
Community Involvement and Control

• The relationship between Indigenous knowledge and
  western European concepts of knowledge and
  knowing need to be placed in a framework of
  mutual interaction so that not only do Indigenous
  people benefit, but so do non-Indigenous
  educators and students.
• -Brady, 1997

22
Community Involvement and Control (cont.)

• Policy making in Aboriginal education requires a
  dialogue between Indigenous people, the State and
  the broader community.
• -Griff Foley, 2002
• A dialogue implies all parties both giving and
  receiving information and opinion in a dynamic
  context.
• -from review

23
Honesty and Hard Truths

• Content regarding Aboriginal peoples is informed
  by a peacemaker myth, which glosses over the
  harsh realities of Aboriginal-European or
  Aboriginal-Euro-American contact.
• -from review

24
Educators and Teacher Training

• Multiple studies have confirmed that Aboriginal
  students and community members respond
  differently to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
  instructors this is not a matter of race or skin
  colour as much as it is a question of teaching
  style, technique, and the manner in which culture
  and worldview affect how teachers and students
  relate.
• -from review

25
Educators and Teacher Training (cont.)

• Effective teachers created two-way learning
  paths that positioned teachers on a more equal
  level such that they had to learn from
  Aboriginal youth the most basic cultural
  prescriptions. The role of the teacher was a
  scholastic assistant rather than classroom
  tyrant.
• -Deyhle Swisher, 1997

26
Educators and Teacher Training (cont.)

• Non-indigenous people do have a role in all of
  this, not in the centre of the Aboriginal
  bicultural schooling enterprise, but at the
  supportive periphery, as informed specialists in
  some Western skills, available on request to
  Aboriginal people while they are constructing
  their own ways to go to school.
• -Stephen Harris, 1994

27
Empowerment, Experience and Identity New
Educational Goals

• The notion of a fixed curriculum is discarded
  entirely. Instead there is an Aboriginal-controll
  ed process of cooperative exchange of knowledge
  designed to maximize the possibility of
  interaction between the world view expressed by
  (Aboriginal) culture and that of Anglo-European
  culture.
• -Folds, 1989

28
Empowerment, Experience and Identity New
Educational Goals (cont.)

• As knowledge becomes a flexible, negotiated
  subject, and teachers assume the facilitator
  role the goal of the classroom experience must
  necessarily change as well. Rather than focusing
  on prescribed learning outcomes and lesson plans
  teachers must re-orient to focus on processes
  that maximize learning potential and worry less
  about what students are exposed to and more about
  how students are exposed to knowledge generally.
• -from review

29
Empowerment, Experience and Identity New
Educational Goals (cont.)

• Assumptions are made that deny the reality of
  Aboriginal powerlessness. Educational models
  need to be judged for their potential to empower
  Aboriginal communities in their present
  circumstances.
• -Folds, 1989

30
Conclusions

• Assimilation and deficit thought persist and
  support both the existence and appearance of
  racism in schools.
• Aboriginal students are more likely to succeed if
  they are strongly rooted in their identity as
  Aboriginal peoples, which places a large
  obligation on the educational system to assume
  some responsibility for regenerating and
  reinforcing identity.
• Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students often
  learn differently from each other, and Aboriginal
  and non-Aboriginal educators teach differently
  from each other in order to treat all students
  fairly, it may be necessary to treat them
  differently.

31
Conclusions (cont.)

• Aboriginal students and communities must be able
  to exert control over their educational
  experiences, which requires a reorienting of the
  educational system towards empowerment.
• Fifth, only by dealing honestly with difficult
  subjects such as historical violence or cultural
  difference can students learn to overcome
  subtly-transmitted discriminatory attitudes
• Students have much to teach both each other and
  educators, speaking to the need for an
  interactional, flexible, dialogical learning
  environment, with teachers acting as
  facilitators, and community members taking active
  roles in the classroom to support collective
  learning.

32
Conclusions (cont.)

• Improving educational outcomes will require more
  than anything else patience and the willingness
  to risk being wrong, learning from failure and
  trying again it will also require a great deal
  of observation and listening, and critical
  thought about the theoretical axioms and premises
  of education generally. In essence, reforming
  Aboriginal education for Aboriginal students
  requires those in charge of education to become
  students again themselves.
• -final conclusion of report

33
Thank you!

• Adam Barker
• Research Analyst
• Contact information
• E-mail Adam.Barker_at_gov.bc.ca
• Phone [phone]