(2012). A Musical Intervention. Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. In this article, the author describes a multimillion-dollar project that aims to save traditional expressions of music from around the world and reflects a shift in ethnomusicology. The $5-million project led by Huib Schippers on "sustainable cultures for music futures" is using nine case studies, including Western opera, Balinese gamelan music, aboriginal songs in Australia's Northern Territory, Ewe music of West Africa, and Mexican mariachi to find strategies that can keep musical traditions alive. The "musical futures" project, supported by the Australian Research Council and involving at least seven universities on three continents, reflects a slow but powerful shift in ethnomusicology itself. In the past, scholars went out, recorded elderly virtuosos, and wrote academic papers about the structure of musical traditions, but they did not always bother to send recordings or academic findings back to the musicians and their audiences. Sometimes individual… [Direct]
(2012). Postcolonial Entanglements: Unruling Stories. Child & Youth Services, v33 n3-4 p303-316. In this article, I use Donna Haraway's philosophy to think about postcolonial encounters between different species. I follow entangled stories of the deer/settler-child figure to trouble colonialisms and untangle the histories and trajectories that we inhabit with other species through colonial histories. I shy away from generalizations and instead grapple with complexities that ordinary stories bring as I attempt to engage in nonhegemonic versions of childhood studies. (Contains 4 notes.)… [Direct]
(2010). "Greco-Roman Knowledge Only" in Arizona Schools: Indigenous Wisdom Outlawed Once Again. Rethinking Schools, v24 n4 p49-51 Sum. Students at Tucson High School in Arizona, part of Tucson Unified School District's highly successful Mexican American Studies (MAS) K-12 program, the largest in the nation, are taught Indigenous concepts, including Panche Be (seek the root of the truth), and the Aztec and Maya calendars. The author speaks to the students about the relationship among In Lak Ech, Panche Be, and Hunab Ku. Hunab Ku is a beautiful Maya philosophy and human rights ethos based on maize. It affirms, contrary to what is taught in most schools, that the ancient peoples of this continent were not savage, that they clearly understood how the universe functions and what it means to be a human being. Not coincidentally, MAS students, many of whom were doing poorly in school prior to entering this program, consistently outperform their peers academically. The program claims a high rate of college-bound graduates. However, Arizona's State Superintendent of Schools Tom Horne has declared, via the passage of HB 2281,… [Direct]
(2013). Settlers Unsettled: Using Field Schools and Digital Stories to Transform Geographies of Ignorance about Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, v37 n4 p487-499. Geography is a product of colonial processes, and in Canada, the exclusion from educational curricula of Indigenous worldviews and their lived realities has produced "geographies of ignorance". Transformative learning is an approach geographers can use to initiate changes in non-Indigenous student attitudes about Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies. This study explores non-Indigenous student perspectives concerning a field school and digital storytelling as transformative experiences within the context of an "Indigenous Perspectives on Environmental Management" course; they were asked to reflect on their course experience. Findings indicate that students found both to be effective and important steps in the transformation of their own worldviews…. [Direct]
(2011). Adrift in Our National Consciousness: Meditations on Canadian Ecological Identity. Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education, v23 n4 p25-29 Sum. Misao Dean (2006) discusses the canoe as a celebrated icon of Canadian culture in her critique of the Centennial celebrations of 1967; as part of the Centennial, the Canadian government organized the longest canoe race ever held. This author believes that the canoe has become a universal symbol of Canada and that all Canadians have the right to claim it as their own. However, as Dean (2006) suggests, it is vitally important that outdoor and environmental educators acknowledge and teach their students about the Aboriginal roots of the canoe; to ignore this crucial socio-historical truth amounts to cultural misappropriation. Contemporary outdoor and environmental educators are faced with the challenge and opportunity to facilitate the societal shift towards a deeper collective eco-cultural consciousness. The author suggests educators should reconsider the legacies of the voyageurs, habitants, and Indigenous peoples–inspiring and creating authentic connections for their students and… [PDF]
(2016). ACER 2014-2015 Annual Report. Australian Council for Educational Research The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is one of the world's leading educational research centres. ACER's mission is to create and promote research-based knowledge, products and services that can be used to improve learning across the life span. This annual report describes ACER's milestones and accomplishments for the 2014-2015 academic year. Ongoing priorities include: building the breadth, depth and reach of the research; expanding professional resources and technologies in support of assessment for teaching and learning; providing leadership in school-community partnerships; enhancing the role as education adviser and commentator; addressing disadvantage; and consolidating the role as a higher education provider. [For the report from the previous year, "ACER 2013-2014 Annual Report," see ED557082.]… [Direct]
(2013). Regional Resilience: Pre-Service Teacher Preparation to Teach in the Bush. Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, v23 n2 p43-52. This paper reports on the outcomes of a two year ALTC Competitive Research and Development Project that aimed to "Develop Strategies at the Pre-Service Level to Address Critical Teacher Attraction and Retention Issues in Australian Rural, Regional and Remote Schools". As well as developing a "training framework" and teaching guides to increase the capacity and credibility of four universities to prepare educators who might venture out of the metropolitan area to teach, data were gathered from pre-service and graduate teachers to analyse regional resilience. It was found that there was a strong likelihood to participate in a regional practicum and stay in a non-metropolitan community once they graduated from university if they had a positive attitude to regional Western Australia either through a family connection or previous experience. Recommendations from this study emphasise the importance of having pre-service students participate in positive regional… [Direct]
(2013). How Can Technology Make This Work? Preservice Teachers, Off-Campus Australian Journal of Teacher Education, v38 n5 Article 8 May. Utilising appropriate Information Communication Technologies (ICT) as instructional tools in teacher education can be a challenging yet worthwhile endeavour. This paper reports the difficulties and benefits of a recent inter-university project requiring preservice primary teachers to construct professional digital portfolios using the support of ICT. Challenges with regard to communication and learning were numerous as 34 preservice [PDF]
(2013). 'Iceyeeye Comes to School: Niimiipuu Cultural Competence and Use of Traditional Niimiipuu 'Iceyeeye Stories to Construct Indigenous Knowledge with Classroom Teachers for Our Children. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, University of Idaho. From time immemorial, the Niimiipuu (Nez Perce) were very successful in passing on the traditions, languages, religions, and practices of the tribal people. Once created by 'Iceyeeye (Coyote), the Children of the Coyote (Nez Perce) began to build and create their own society. The Niimiipuu built a system based upon economics, medicine, science, and academics. This society knew that in order for the people to perpetuate; Knowledge would need to be passed down from one generation to the next. Century after century, this Knowledge has been molded, refined, and evolving as time changes and as every new season moves in and one departs. The Niimiipuu must work at reclaiming 'Iceyeeye stories. The colonization of the Niimiipuu has proven to be detrimental to our history, language, and stories. As fluent speakers within the Niimiipuu have moved on to the next world, the Niimiipuu have worked at remembering the important us: of language and the role it plays in tribal society and the… [Direct]
(2012). Exploring Native American Students' Perceptions of Scientists. International Journal of Science Education, v34 n11 p1769-1794. The purpose of this descriptive study was to explore Native American (NA) students' perceptions of scientists by using the Draw-A-Scientist Test and to determine if differences in these perceptions exist between grade level, gender, and level of cultural tradition. Data were collected for students in Grades 9-12 within a NA grant off-reservation boarding school. A total of 133 NA students were asked to draw a picture of a scientist at work and to provide a written explanation as to what the scientist was doing. A content analysis of the drawings indicated that the level of stereotype differed between all NA subgroups, but analysis of variance revealed that these differences were not significant between groups except for students who practised native cultural tradition at home compared to students who did not practise native cultural tradition at home (p less than 0.05). The results suggest that NA students who practise cultural traditions at home are more able to function fluidly… [Direct]
(2012). Why I'm Not Preparing My Students to Compete in the Global Marketplace. Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. In this article, the author discusses why he is not preparing his students to compete in the global marketplace. For all the talk of "globalization" as the very engine of their generation's future prospects, his students seemed far more concerned about disappearing jobs at home, rising global temperatures, and a general anxiety about what it all meant. The world did not seem as inviting as it seemed fragmented, even fragile, especially when the conversation turned to the environment, and to the resilience of their own local communities. Environmental degradation wasn't a problem only in foreign countries, after all. Clearly, it wasn't just the "global marketplace" that was suffering. It was also the "local marketplace." And if many college students feel powerless to intervene in climate change or the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest or the displacement of indigenous people, it turns out they don't feel powerless when it comes to nurturing their… [Direct]
(2014). An Exploration of Hybrid Spaces for Place-Based Geomorphology with Latino Bilingual Children. Journal of Geoscience Education, v62 n1 p104-117 Feb. Latino bilingual children hold rich understandings, which are underexplored and underutilized in the geoscience classroom. Oftentimes, young Latinos possess unique cultural land experiences shaping their place identities. We consider science as language and culture, and propose place-based geoscience hybrid space explorations that are culturally and linguistically relevant. We explore the different elements that help bilingual children learn geoscience using pre- and postsurvey of their understanding of the processes of erosion, transportation, and deposition; children's marks, drawing, and writing on a photograph; and graphic organizers with children's notes. Several different instructional elements for working with Latino bilinguals, organized around five tenets of culture, arise from our analysis: (1) Utilizing multiple linguistic resources, (2) making explicit connections to alternative interpretations of words, (3) using culturally relevant examples, (4) using alternative and… [PDF]
(2012). Educating for "World-Mindedness": Cosmopolitanism, Localism and Schooling the Adolescent Citizen in Interwar Australia. Journal of Educational Administration and History, v44 n4 p339-359. This article examines citizenship education and pedagogies for learning to be a citizen in the interwar years in Australia. These discussions bore the influence of progressive education and its emancipatory promises. Against this, I explore the "dividing practices" of citizenship education and the ways normative descriptions of the desired cosmopolitan student-citizen simultaneously constructed a non-citizen, the problematic student excluded from recognition, in this case Aboriginal students. These arguments are developed by comparing discussions at two international educational conferences: "Education in Pacific Countries" (1936, Hawaii), also referred to as "Education of Native Races in Pacific Countries", and the New Education Fellowship-sponsored "Education for Complete Living: The Challenge of Today" (1937, Australia). These two conferences conveyed significant differences in understandings of adolescent capacity, the relative salience of… [Direct]
(2011). When We Become People with a History. International Journal of Inclusive Education, v15 n2 p249-261. Aboriginal children learn a two-way pedagogy and most Aboriginal learners have to engage in bicultural and bilingual education to succeed in the dominant educational setting. Aboriginal Australians pride themselves on being Aboriginal, however Aboriginal epistemology and ontology are never considered as true methodologies within a dominant learning environment. Aboriginal children have to engage in the dominant paradigms, discourses and descriptives (in other words, the dominant language and ways of doing things) when reconstructing an historical consciousness. Aboriginal people, since the invasion of Australia by a dominant cultural group, have been forced to accommodate other ways of knowing and take these as fact. Aboriginal pedagogy has and is still being seen as primitive with no place in a modern world. Aboriginal pedagogy and theoretical discussion of history, ideas of time and place, and the evolution of knowledge systems form the bases for this paper…. [Direct]
(2014). Incorporating Culture in the Curriculum: The Concept of Probability in Nunavik Inuit Culture. in education, v19 n3 p152-171 Spr. Traditionally, Canadian Inuit have lived in the circumpolar regions of Canada and those who still live in these regions, have their own cultures, which they tend to celebrate in their educational curricula. Inuit culture reflects their traditional lifestyle, when they were nomadic, and hunted and fished to survive in incredibly difficult conditions. These cultural differences present many challenges and issues to some mathematical concepts; for instance, for Nunavik Inuit, the concept of probability has no formal definition and it does not take the same meaning as in conventional mathematics. This misalignment could cause negative effects on students' learning. Looking to bridge the gap between those two different cultural meanings, the principal investigator, Annie Savard, with the assistance of Inuit educators designed learning situations based on the traditional Inuit culture. We used an ethnomathematical model (Savard, 2008b) to frame the learning situations created. In this… [PDF]