Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (JCACS)
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Inter-connecting Aboriginal and Western Paradigms in Post-secondary Science Education: An Action Research Approach
Get PDFVery few Aboriginal[1] students are successful in science courses in the Western education system, particularly at the post-secondary level. Without a science background they are excluded from entering into science-related professions such as medicine, scientific research, science education, fields of engineering environmental and biological sciences to name a few. The result has been the severe under-representation of Aboriginal people and their voice in such professions. The vast array of literature that addresses the issue of Aboriginal success in post-secondary education is quantitative in nature and done “on” Aboriginal people by non-Aboriginal people. Very little qualitative data exists, that addresses this issue from the experiential voice and perspective of the Aboriginal people themselves. This paper addresses the results of focus group discussions with Aboriginal students, faculty, teachers and community members around the issue, from their perspective and voice, of what is needed for Aboriginal success in post-secondary education with a specific focus on science. [1] The research for this project was done in collaboration with members of the surrounding Blackfoot community, the Aboriginal community indigenous to Southern Alberta. The words Aboriginal, Indigenous, Native will be used interchangeably within this paper and are meant to be inclusionary of Aboriginal peoples. Blackfoot specifically refers to members of the surrounding Aboriginal community involved in this project
Book Review: A Deleuzian Approach to Curriculum
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Illness and the Concept of Aesthetic Responsiveness In Early Childhood Education
Get PDFWhat does a concept of “aesthetic responsiveness” offer to our understanding of the dynamics of teaching and learning about or from conflict? And what can it mean to live creatively as a teacher in the midst of suffering? To what extent is it possible to offer a disposition of aesthetic responsiveness in the midst of suffering? What might young children understand and contribute in the midst of such difficulty? We offer these questions within a context of emergent curriculum as an enactment of curriculum inquiry. Emergent curriculum can be thought of as providing opportunities for curriculum inquiries to emerge from the lived experiences of those who embody it. Enacted in the shared relationships among educators’ children, and their families, emergent curriculum can acquire (accrue?) a disposition that we are calling aesthetic responsiveness. In this paper we wonder about the conditions and limits offered up by aesthetic responsiveness in times of trauma. We share what this disposition might offer for the field of curriculum inquiry. First, we wish to show you what we mean, provisionally, by a concept of aesthetic responsiveness as an attitude or disposition to coping with trauma. Secondly, we offer moments in a story of suffering in an early childhood setting that might illuminate our questions. Third, we engage with ecologist Gregory Bateson’s notion of “patterns which connect” (1979), as a disposition of aesthetic responsiveness
The Pedagogy of Translation: Learning from Innu activist Elizabeth Penashue’s Diaries
Get PDFA collaborative project to translate and edit Innu cultural and environmental activist Elizabeth Penashue’s diaries in Innu-aimun for publication raises aesthetic questions about choice of images, wording, interpretation, and contextualization. This article considers the possibilities of translation as solidarity and as pedagogy, and the potential contribution of the translated diaries to world literature and to an education in the humanities
Curriculum Studies Gone Wild: Bioregional education and the scholarship of sustainability
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Living Language: What Is a Poem Good For?
Get PDFI read and write and teach poetry because I hold a long commitment to the efficacy of poetry for transforming our hearts, imaginations, intellects, conversations, and communities. I promote a curriculum of poetry as a curriculum of possibility for learning to live poetically in the world, for learning to live in the ecotone, the fecund place of tensions where conflicts are integral to vitality, education, and transformation. I often hear the question, Is it a good poem? I think we should ask, What is a poem good for? I am eager to bear witness to poetry, to invite a conversation with poets I have lingered with, to spark a little enthusiasm among others, to remind all of us that poets are pursuing their art and living with keen desire. So, in this paper I ruminate on possibilities for responding to the question, “What is a poem good for?” In my ruminations I do not attempt to be definitive; I am only eager to continue a conversation that is ongoing. I present a performative text that is both poetic and full of poetry. I invite colleagues to receive this essay like a long poem, to see with the eyes of the heart, and to hear with ears that are attuned to resonances and silences, and to linger with language and memory and hope
The Ethico-Aesthetics of Affect and a Sensational Pedagogy
Get PDFThis essay’s main purpose is to sketch the relations between affect, politics, and everyday life in order to think sensationally about pedagogy. Thinking affectively about politics differs from approaches that are a direct analysis of signs and discourses, morals and rationales. As opposed to an understanding of affect as something to be captured, controlled, rationalized, and suppressed, I attempt to reclaim the affective in order to consider the body’s intensities and compositions in knowledge production. Using a performance/interventionist artwork “The Lactation Station Breastmilk Bar” as a site from which to think about an affective, and thus an aesthetic approach to politics, I emphasize the importance of sensation in knowledge production
The Bohemian Curriculum: Expanding Consciousness, Evolving Culture
Get PDFThrough an exploration of bohemian character and ideology, I examine the relationship between the construction of individual identity and an individual’s membership in multiple cultural groups. In particular, I examine a theory of cultural association that positions the individual within nested and overlapping cultures, where identity and self-narrative are defined in relation to cultural normativities. I assert that it is this position amongst various cultures that enables individuals to critically examine and broker juxtaposing normativities, a process with the potential to push individuals to rewrite their self-narratives and expand consciousness. But bohemians go further––they outwardly express their opposition of mainstream culture and publicize their self-narratives. By engaging in a community of creative minds, these ‘outsiders’ contribute in unique ways to the evolution of culture by challenging social affordances and pushing social limitations. Drawing upon the lessons learned from bohemianism, the paper concludes with an explicit link to education. Specifically, the bohemian curriculum calls for a pedagogy that allows for the brokering of normativities within a safe and compassionate learning space that embraces unique learning at both individual and collective levels.
Burning at the Edges: Judith P. Robertson and the Provocations of Reading
Get PDFIn the writings of curriculum and literary theorist Judith P. Robertson, we encounter the stirrings of a language that often refers to something outside of the material heart of reading, yet essential to its very operations. There is something that "burns" at reading's edges, a desire that the encounter of reading awakes, provokes, and inspires. This paper examines these implications of Robertson's writings, paying particular attention to her considerations of reading as a social experience, as an erotic and embodied activity, as a gathering of the psychic and physical worlds of the reader, and as a function of travelling and landscape.