ECS 203 Blog Post #3

Topic: Reconciliation and the Curriculum

We’ve discussed throughout my educational journey a lot about Reconciliation and how we as human beings can help repair our relationships with Indigenous cultures and the environment we call “home” or “land.” Now, it is time to start discussing Reconciliation within the curriculum and how we as future educators may be able to incorporate Reconciliation into our daily lesson plans, unit planning, assessments, curriculum, and pedagogy. How can we as future educators confidently walk into our classrooms and teach our students about reconciliation? Most teachers who are uneducated on the topic and are nervous about teaching it normally tend to skip over it or do brief lessons (normally teacher-centered) so they can move away from reconciliation and focus on curriculum and pedagogy. Reconciliation is the efforts made to address the harms caused by various policies and programs of colonization. For example, residential schools. When you do a basic search for reconciliation within the teaching curriculum, the different ways TEACHERS can incorporate reconciliation THEMSELVES pop up. Nothing pops up really. We read about wars over reconciliation when even though colonization has had negative effects on people for years. In high school, my teachers got to choose our readings and openly told us the options. The teachers would pick books based on history and wars, not reconciliation and colonization.

Other information I’ve been looking at for this assignment:

Schools in Australia are taking steps and adding programs into their school to help students and teachers connect reconciliation with the curriculum.

U of R has a Reconciliation Studies Degree Program. This program isn’t flaunted or projected as much as education, law, science, or other subject areas that are more known and publicized.

Pamela Rose Toulouse (Ph.D.) – she is known well for her contributions to Indigenous education – published over 55 resources which include books, chapters in textbooks, curriculum pieces, articles, videos, and other key selections.

“Teachers in the survey who described themselves as self-reflective were far more likely to engage in reconciliatory pedagogy. This heightened sense of self-awareness forms a cornerstone of all good teaching and is crucial to the ethical integration of Indigenous perspectives across the curriculum.”

Resources I’m looking at:

• How Do We Move Reconciliation in Schools Forward? | Education Canada (edcan.ca)
• Curriculum review: reconciliation in education – Reconciliation Australia
• An Aboriginal way towards curriculum reconciliation (uregina.ca)
• Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers’ practices for teaching phonics and reading – Wyse – 2022 – Review of Education – Wiley Online Library (uregina.ca)

If I was to continue with this topic, I would be able to find different ways teachers can connect reconciliation to the curriculum and their pedagogies. Also, by doing more research I will be able to find the benefits and disadvantages of having a reconciliatory pedagogy and adding reconciliation into their curriculum teachings. There are many connections between reconciliation and the curriculum and it’s important for teachers to understand that they can incorporate reconciliation into the curriculum in the littlest of ways. I want to focus on reconciliation and the curriculum and use different articles to find the strengths and weaknesses so that as a future educator I’m able to incorporate reconciliation into my teachings confidentially.

Questions I’m pondering:

Why isn’t reconciliation and curriculum explored more? How in the last twenty years has it progressed?