Category: ECS 203

In this video I summarize my learning journey over the course of the semester. I look at what stuck out to me from readings and class material and discuss some things I wrote in my blog posts about them. I also look at the assignments from the semester and what I have learned about curriculum and pedagogy. Thanks for a great semester and I wish everyone the best in their learning to come! – Julie 🙂

My schooling revolved around a small-town farming lifestyle. It was a predominately white community and our education exemplified that perspective. We never were taught any other viewpoint but this except in the optional class of Native Studies 10. University has opened my eyes to so many more worldviews and multicultural education and how to implement all views in the classroom. To work against the biases my education taught me, I will continue to learn with my classes through the experiences of others and always inviting others to share the way they see/interpret things. Whether I’m teaching in a predominately white school or a school of predominately students of colour, I intend to make all truths heard, explored and matter. Even though my own education was biased by only showing one story, I will work against this by never ceasing educating myself and my students on all the diverse stories in the community, province, country, and world.

Before I came to university, I had never heard the term treaty people. As a white settler I never would have thought that I was a treaty person. We, as Canadians, are all treaty people. Being a treaty person means a commitment to each other, both the indigenous and settler/immigrant sides of the treaty relationship. As a teacher, we can use treaty education to ensure our students understand their responsibilities as a treaty person. As Claire said in her introduction, it is our duty to teach our students the “benefits and responsibilities of sharing this land and honouring its long history”. When you look at teachers who believe there is no point in teaching treaty ed to a student body with not many Indigenous students in it, you can see that they aren’t understanding that as Canadians we are all treaty people, and treaty education and FNMI content is essential to this relationship. Treaty and FNMI education/content is something that many Indigenous students may already be aware of or know some of the perspectives without it being taught in school, non-indigenous students would most-likely not. Which is why treaty ed is even more important to be taught to a group of mostly non-indigenous students. We all need to learn to value the vast history and perspectives that make up this country. We need to learn from it, not only to learn from the past, but to make the future of Canada an equal and fulfilling place for both sides of the treaty relationship. This we can not do, without the right education for our upcoming generations of treaty people.

In my future classroom, I intend to look at multiple perspectives through open discussion. As a social studies teacher I hope to look at the world around us and our country through the perspectives of many different view points and identities. Looking at historical viewpoints and discussing how they may be normative narratives or one-sided viewpoints. One example of this that has always stuck with me from a previous ECS class was how we’re taught that in Canada women got the right to vote in 1918, but that is a normative narrative or one-sided viewpoint because Indigenous women didn’t get the right to vote till the 60s. The truth behind our history must be examined fully from different perspectives. As mentioned in the reading, I would really like to promote discussions about our material through class and small group discussions where students can share their own thoughts and conclusions. I think this promotes student guided learning rather then the teacher giving notes and controlling what they should learn from a source. I really liked how on page nine the teacher used this thought process for students to think about the material: “Meriah asked the students to respond to the following questions: How did you feel while you were reading the poems? Were you able to relate to the experiences described? If so how? If not why not? The purpose of the questions was to get the students to think about their own identities and what they might have in common with others.” I think this would be a great way for students to start understanding how others experience the world around them differently. Race in material was never discussed in connection to the present or our own lives and experiences in my school. It’s an important thing to discuss to break through the normative narratives upheld in schools that don’t have a focus on multiculturalism, so they aren’t continually being upheld as adults outside of school as well. Change in education is the key to the change we need in our society.

When looking at this topic the thing that first comes to my mind is politics. There is a lot of debate around teachers expressing political views to students. While learning about politics in grade 10, I remember our teacher asking us which party we think we would vote for if we were old enough but refused to tell us which party he would vote for. I understand his decision not to tell us this as politics can be a very touchy subject, maybe not for us as students, but for our parents. People are very sensitive about their political views (especially in our conservative dominated province) so it could’ve caused a bunch of issues if parents believed our teacher was influencing our political opinions. I think teachers must be careful to teach students what is wrong and what’s right without bringing politics into it. Many issues like the oil pipelines, sex ed, etc may be touchy subjects for students parents and have to be approached carefully.

To be a “good” student means to accept the information you are taught, even though it may be biased by that person’s perspective, as the truth without question. Well off, male, white students are privileged by this definition. This is due to the fact that these societal privileges ensure that these students are “comfortable” with the information they’re taught. Regardless of the fact that to the students without this privilege, this information may be incorrect. Kumashiro’s reading shows how this teaching of misinformation can hinder students learning and how being made uncomfortable by new information is a common reaction to new truth’s. Historically this view of a “good” person (student), was shaped by colonialism/colonization by the European’s. They believed that being white, male, and well off made you “better”. Education, as shown in the History of Education reading, was shaped into supporting this ideal. Their wording always referred to men and not women. As well as describing a students ability to learn and become a “good” student based off the European view of a hierarchy of ethnicities. For example, people of “oriental” descent were described as: “…hypocritical and dishonest”. Although this has changed in today’s educational system, commonsense viewpoints that reinforce colonialism are still being taught in Canadian classrooms.

For assignment 1 I began researching place-based education. I started by looking at a chapter on outdoor learning. The author is showing how outdoor learning can be represented through place, space and sustainability education. Firstly, place, are showing how a student can have connections and feelings to different places. This is essential for being connected to the environment around us, and respecting it because of this. Secondly, they introduced the space relationship. Space is a common geographical feature of seeing how two or more components are related to each other. For example, how a student properly throwing away their trash at a park can ensure the area is clean for the animals who call that place their home. Finally, teaching about sustainability can be enhanced through outdoor learning. Students gain a respect for the environments around them and can use this connection in the future to make sure these environments last. They become engaged with the world and want to make a difference in it, instead of just abusing it and ignoring as these environments waste away.

My next steps to look further into this curriculum study is to see specific examples of place-based/outdoor learning, for elementary and high school students. Compare how different curriculum writers see the benefits of this education. Then write up my paper to thoroughly cover this curricular topic.

I experienced an example of the Tyler rationale in school when curriculum would be planned out day to day, without the opportunity for an extra day or two if students have trouble with a certain topic. The teacher will not know which subject matter a group of students may need more time to learn, so coming up with a class-by-class plan and strictly sticking to it can result in students falling behind or not fully comprehending it. When looking at the Tyler rationale method, it is easy to see that students have no input on their learning. Which makes it impossible to have students fully engaged and interested in the material when they have no voice. This makes getting through the curriculum planned more important than the students and their education. One positive to this method however, would be the organization of the curriculum and the plan for the class. The method of “setting objectives, drawing up a plan, applying it and measuring the outcomes” would ensure that all the material for the year is ready and planned. This is beneficial because if the teacher was unorganized it would create a lot of confusion for the students.

Kumashiro defines commonsense as what everyone should know. It is very important to pay attention to the commonsense to discover how someone’s knowledge is shaped by their environment, education, and home/life experiences. One person’s commonsense knowledge may not be the same as another’s due to differences in what they were taught. You can pay attention to knowledge that is commonsense to yourself and analyze how this knowledge is biased to your own life and may be untrue to another individual (Ex. The Nepalian children’s knowledge of what school should be like vs. the teacher from the US where teaching methods are different). Beginning this course my commonsense knowledge of curriculum and pedagogy is based on my own K-12 schooling experience. That teachers are given curriculum they must teach to their students and that there is little room for activities that could take extra time to enhance this knowledge if they want to get through all the material by the end of the year. That a behaviourist teaching/learning pedagogy usually gets through all the material that needs to be taught, but is often less helpful in making sure students retain what they were taught. On the other hand, a constructivist teaching/learning pedagogy may be more beneficial in helping student’s remember the things they’re learning, but that it takes more time and they might not get through all they need to learn, which can be harmful for government examinations and future grades when the knowledge they were supposed to have received in the previous grade needs to be built upon further. Curriculum and pedagogy need to be considerate of what commonsense knowledge each student may have or may not have from previous learning experiences/environments.