I am working with the topic of reconciliation and exploring its intersections in curriculum and pedagogy.

As a caucasian person, and a descendant of white European settlers in North America, as well as a born-and-raised Yukoner and person of the North, this is a topic I care deeply about. In our ECS 203 class, we begin a quest into the understandings of depths, richness, history and complexities of curriculum and pedagogy. Understanding the ways of the past as it has been laid out before us is necessary. As a social-justice-oriented education student, and as a friend of many Indigenous people in the North, I wish to orient myself to both the past and present understanding of reconciliation as it associates with curriculum and pedagogy, specifically with a Northern focus. From a baseline theoretical understanding of past and present, visions for the future may be sparked and shaped. For as future educators, education policymakers, school counsellors, administrators – whatever our eventual role could be – I believe we hold such an important gift and humble power in our capacity to make a difference for change. “Reconciliation” is a term we hear often – in the cries of Indigenous people asking for more listening, more acknowledgement, more recognition, and more support. The ties within our education system are boundless: reconciliation and the education system are two deeply interwoven facets requiring meaningful attention and care. With a special focus on curriculum and pedagogy, we can continue to harness traction for change, as these deeply intersect into this movement and hold the key for powerful implications.

One of my big questions in doing this research is: “How is reconciliation incorporated into the curriculum?”

One of my big discoveries (when I first started researching this week), is the curriculum theorist William Pinar. He has written many influential curriculum books, articles, and founded curriculum journals. What is notable about his work is how (and when) it diverges from the Tyler Rationale. His work forms a significant part of the 1970’s Reconceptualist movement, an era in theoretical and applied education that continues to ripple through the Education system today. The concept of a system that requires continual evaluation, growth, and change, is at the heart of what it means to be a social-justice-oriented educator. One does not wish to sit and watch problematic patterns reoccur – instead one desires reflection, evaluation and change. These were some of the ways of thinking and action, that Reconceptualism sought to establish as an accepted regular practice provided within education.

Some of the big movements related to reconciliation in Canada are the Truth and Reconciliation Commission work and Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women Call to Action. Changes to curriculum, especially additions to history and social studies that include Indigenous histories, are movements of reconciliation. Increasing “First Nations Ways of Knowing and Being” among educators and in the classrooms by providing culturally shaped experiences is reconciliation in action.

Jumping forward into more recent reconciliation academia, I discovered an article by Aparna Mishra Tarc, discussing a topic known as Reparative Curriculum (2011). Some of the big themes of this topic include guiding students to learn to sit with the suffering others have endured as a way of trying to make peace with it. This will be one of my chosen articles for discussion in my research paper.

This article led me to other articles that discuss the differing viewpoints in the concept of “resolution.” I discovered that resolution can have varied meanings. It also seems to be an emotionally charged topic – how can it not be? From the article Truth, Reconciliation and Amnesia: Porcupines and China Dolls and the Canadian Conscience (2009) “While healing and reconciliation are desirable occurrences…these concepts can also entail a fixation upon resolution that is not only premature but problematic in its correlation with forgetting” (Martin, p. 49). The tension between staying with discomfort and passing through it quickly is affected by the overarching need to find some kind of resolution, with a seen-at-times confusion about the pathway. Are we in such a rush for resolve that we neglect to spend enough time just sitting with the discomfort involved with accepting the difficulties of the past?

The other valuable resource that I discovered is a textbook called Framing Peace: Thinking about and Enacting Curriculum as Radical Hope (2014). From this book, I would like to study the chapter by Ashley Pullman and Chris Nichols: “How to ‘Teach’ Peace to a Subject that is Continually in Crisis.” This chapter is of interest because it theorizes ways that educators can “illuminate problems of violence while providing strategies to address these concerns” (p. 29). This book also explores the concept of peace as a practice, rather than an endpoint. This would seem to me another perspective within the reconciliation framework. We are still in a time of violence within communities – for example, as discoveries about residential schools, and buried children continue to be uncovered. How do we move towards peace in the processing – the present and resounding impacts of this? This could also tie in with other research around incorporating mindfulness into the curriculum, but at some point this may begin to diverge from the original topic, so this may be better to hold this aside for other research work. 

Finally, I wish to search for practices that use cultural approaches to teach about reconciliation. This would be my next area to search for in my assignment. This would tie together my other research and work. I also noted, that in my research, the work of Judith Butler, a feminist scholar, was often referenced. I spent some time reading about her work and reflecting on how it may apply to future coursework. 

I am enjoying the process of researching and learning, and I look forward to putting more of the pieces together in the form of a written assignment. Incredible strides are made to introduce more Indigenous programming into the curriculum. However, as we look to the practices in the present, truthfully, educators and schools are oftentimes struggling and may face challenges in the actual delivery of this. Studying curriculum and pedagogy through the lens of reconciliation may provide insights into the complexities of the current climate in Indigenous education.