Stories of Empowered Alberta Teachers: Enacting Responsibilities in Indigenous Education
Date
2023-04-30
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Abstract
Teachers in Alberta are tasked with adhering to the Truth & Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action (2015b) and the Teaching Quality Standard (Alberta Education, 2018) related to Indigenous education, despite having little formal Indigenous education in their formal schooling. In this action-based qualitative study, I employed a decolonizing methodology, grounded in the principles of participatory action research and oriented by critical pedagogy to explore how teachers are enacting their responsibilities as champions of Indigenous education. Using Photovoice and sharing circles as methods, the findings that surfaced in the data revealed that, in enacting their responsibilities in Indigenous education, Alberta teachers in this study are: encountering resistance and racism, embracing a pedagogy of discomfort (Boler & Zembylas, 2003), engaging in critical reflection and navigating oppressive structures in the education system. The methodology employed in this study can be replicated in future studies and could be used to develop professional learning for teachers in Indigenous education.
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Keywords
Indigenous education, decolonizing education, Photovoice, sharing circles, teacher education, Truth and Reconciliation
Citation
Meade, S. M. (2023). Stories of empowered Alberta teachers: enacting responsibilities in Indigenous education (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.