Course:Classroom Climate/8. Exploring Complexities in Using Student Voice in Pedagogy for Decolonizing

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Learning Objectives

Have you ever facilitated or participated in a learning activity that could be thought of or designed as a decolonizing pedagogy, in which student stories/voices/sharing are centered in the activity? How did it make you feel, and how did it make you think? Brooke and Heather have recently explored the complexities of pedagogy for decolonizing through their own experiences as graduate students in the Faculty of Education, with attention to the expectation that a call for student voice results in the production of decolonizing outcomes. This workshop will begin by outlining some prevailing ideas about pedagogy for decolonizing, followed by a reading by Brooke and Heather in which they share a story about facilitating an activity that addressed Indigenous-non-Indigenous relationships. They will then engage workshop participants in exploring experiences that arise from pedagogy for decolonizing. They will ask for feedback about what kinds of issues students/instructors at UBC would benefit from working through in relation to such pedagogies, even when they are challenging.

Session Records

• April 29, 2014 by Brooke Madden and Heather E. McGregor

• File:Problems with pedagogy handout.pdf (Session handout)

Facilitator Bio

• Brooke Madden is a PhD candidate in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. Her primary research interests include Indigenous education, teacher identity, and the shared spaces between Indigenous and poststructural theories. She continues to support UBC’s required teacher education course Aboriginal Education in Canada through development and implementation of an online learning resource for teacher educators and candidates.

• Heather E. McGregor is a PhD candidate affiliated with the Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness in the Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia. Heather is from Nunavut, where she continues to work and research. In 2010 she published Inuit Education and Schools in the Eastern Arctic (UBC Press). She has also published in The Northern Review, McGill Journal of Education, Canadian Journal of Education and Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies. Her research interests include: Nunavut’s curriculum and educational policy history, residential schools history, Indigenous historical consciousness, history and social studies education, and decolonization.

Resources Recommended by the Facilitator

• Dion, S. (2007). Disrupting molded images: Identities, responsibilities and relationships—Teachers and Indigenous subject material. Teaching Education, 18, 329–342.

• Iseke-Barnes, J. (2008). Pedagogies for decolonizing. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 31, 123–148.

• Madden, B. (2014). Coming full circle: White, Euro-Canadian teachers’ positioning, understanding, doing, honouring, and knowing in school-based Indigenous education. in education, 20(1), 57-81. Permalink

• Madden, B., & McGregor, H. E. (2013). Ex(er)cising student voice in pedagogy for decolonizing: Exploring complexities through duoethnography. Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, 35(5), 371-391.

• McGregor, H.E. (2013). Situating Nunavut education with Indigenous education in Canada. Canadian Journal of Education, 36(2), 87-118.

• Orner, M. (1992). Interrupting calls for student voice in ‘‘liberatory’’ education: A feminist poststructuralist perspective. In C. Luke & J. Gore (Eds.), Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy (pp. 74–89). New York, NY: Routledge.

• Tuck, E. and Yang, W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40.