Classroom Climate: Language Matters

open-house-feature

Participants at the Aboriginal Initiatives Open House, September 25, 2015 Photo by Terri Kennedy, CTLT


Bridging the Knowledge Gap

What can we do to “bridge the knowledge gap” – whether that be remediating our own knowledge gaps to avoid the kinds of problems identified by my student, or providing our students with a firmer grounding of basic information on Indigenous topics to raise the level of conversation in our courses?

Aboriginal Initiatives at CTLT will be hosting a workshop on Bridging the Knowledge Gap: Indigenous Foundations on Friday, November 13. We are honoured to be holding the session on the unceded and ancestral territories of Musqueam people. The session will include facilitated discussion on your questions around incorporating Indigenous content in your classes, an overview of the Indigenous Foundations website, and opportunities to design course materials utilizing Indigenous Foundations. In this article, Aboriginal Initiatives staff member and First Nations and Indigenous Studies instructor Janey Lew, who will be facilitating the session, reflects on some of her experiences with “bridging the knowledge gap.”


What I Learned in Class…from my students

Janey Lew Educational Developer, Indigenous Initiatives Sessional Instructor, First Nations and Indigenous Studies

Janey Lew
Educational Developer, Indigenous Initiatives, CTLT
Sessional Instructor, First Nations and Indigenous Studies

I decided this year to set myself a goal to work on student engagement and experience in my teaching. Specifically, I wanted to do some things differently so that I could find out: How are things in the course landing? Not only the materials, but also the delivery. To answer this, one action I took at the beginning of the term was to circulate a basic student questionnaire. Not only did I want to get the know my students a bit, but I also wanted to get them thinking about their own identities and background knowledge in relation to the topics of the course.

I was glad that I’d asked. My extremely thoughtful senior undergraduates did not disappoint me in their responses. One comment, relating to how we use language, has been on my mind ever since:

“I was in a class last year where the prof did not explain to the class the important differences between terms such as Indigenous, Aboriginal, Native (and who can use such terms). I asked for clarification (even though I had previous knowledge from FNIS courses) and the prof got defensive. After that, one other student raised the concern about the prof’s use of the term ‘berdache.’ We both dropped the course . . . ”

– A third year Faculty of Arts undergraduate student

I should back up and mention that, as a Sessional Instructor in the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program, complex issues surrounding identity, language, and terminology often come up in the courses that I teach, and that students in my courses sometimes enter with tremendously varying levels of knowledge and experience relating to Indigenous issues. This is no surprise, given that Indigenous histories and issues have historically been, and continue to frequently be, marginalized in education. I include in this my own education; it wasn’t until I began graduate studies that I started thinking more critically about what it means to be a settler on unceded Indigenous lands and committed to walking the bumpy, humbling, and ongoing road of redressing my knowledge gaps around Indigenous peoples, histories, and issues in Canada.

My student’s comment highlights perhaps the most initially unsettling challenge for engaging in meaningful discussions on Indigenous topics in the classroom. One of the first places we can get stuck is language. This was true for me when I first started working in the field. I spoke up at a meeting using the term “First Nations,” and one of the people at the table corrected me by saying that “Aboriginal is more inclusive of non-status, Metis, and Inuit.” At the time, I didn’t know what “non-status” meant, and I thought “Aboriginal” was only used in Australia, but the incident made me acutely aware of my ignorance in relation to the subjects being discussed, so I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the meeting and just tried to listen and nod at correct times. Afterward, I embarrassedly asked my colleagues for clarification, but even so I recognized that the burden should not always be on Indigenous people to educate non-Indigenous people about what we don’t know due to colonialism.

As instructors, many of us want to respectfully incorporate Indigenous content in our courses, but there remain questions about how to do so responsibly. And there are consequences – for us, for our students, and institutionally – both when we continue to exclude Indigenous content and when we engage this content in ways that are not attentive to the nuances. My student’s comment keenly illustrates the types of missed opportunities and negative consequences that can happen when we approach Indigenous content in uncritical and problematic ways. What can we do to “bridge the knowledge gap” – whether that be remediating our own knowledge gaps to avoid the kinds of problems identified by my student, or providing our students with a firmer grounding of basic information on Indigenous topics to raise the level of conversation in our courses?

It is not always possible to predict or control the different levels of knowledge that students bring with them into our courses. Nevertheless, as postsecondary instructors we have pedagogical and ethical responsibilities to hold ourselves and our students up to rigorous standards for what we are learning. This is no different, and indeed the stakes are higher, when it comes to learning about Indigenous people, topics, and issues precisely because of the violences of ongoing colonialism on Turtle Island. The violences of language, for instance, are not abstract, but to the contrary, human and personal for members of our campus community. Language is a likely place where the conversation around “bridging the knowledge gap” begins, but it must not end there.


Indigenous Foundations

Indigenous Foundations Header

Image courtesy http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca

Indigenous Foundations is one resource that can help lay a groundwork for higher level discussions on Indigenous topics in the classroom, which in turn encourages students at all knowledge levels to take on responsibility for their own learning.

A unique academic resource initiated to identify and address some of the specific challenges around introducing Indigenous materials and content to audiences with varying levels of background knowledge is Indigenous Foundations. Indigenous Foundations is an online resource developed by the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program that contains accessibly written articles on key topics in Indigenous history, politics, and culture. The website is organized so that users can search for information on specific Aboriginal topics they are looking for, and, from there, follow their interests through related topics and areas. For instance, those curious about language and terminology can learn more about the histories, legal and political uses, and connotations of key identity terms by reading articles written by First Nations and Indigenous Studies faculty, staff, and alumni. Users can also select and follow hyperlinks or search under Related Topics to continue their learning. Indigenous Foundations is one resource that can help lay a groundwork for higher level discussions on Indigenous topics in the classroom, which in turn encourages students at all knowledge levels to take on responsibility for their own learning.


More on the Classroom Climate Series

Photo from Aboriginal Initiatives Open House

Drew Ann Wake, Amy Perreault, and open house participants. Photo by Terri Kennedy, CTLT Aboriginal Initiatives Open House, September 25, 2015.

Language is a likely place where the conversation around “bridging the knowledge gap” begins, but it must not end there.

As a way to negotiate these and other issues that instructors, TA’s, staff and others encounter, CTLT Aboriginal Initiatives has developed the Classroom Climate Series, a year-long set of workshops to provide space for conversations around pedagogical approaches to Indigenous topics. Development of the Classroom Climate Series has been critically informed by a Faculty Advisory on Classroom Climate and Indigenous Issues at CTLT. As a result, approaches to topics in the series often mirror the teaching processes and practices of faculty who teach Indigenous and other socially contentious curriculum. Classroom Climate sessions are designed to not only guide participants through the session content, but also to create an environment that includes varying perspectives, welcomes those who might be coming to these issues for the first time, and provokes critical reflection and self discovery amongst participants.

Previous Classroom Climate events this fall have included the Aboriginal Initiatives Open House, a session offered in partnership with the Musqueam First Nation and featuring a conversation on place with Musqueam elder Larry Grant, and a session offered in consultation with Musqueam and in partnership with the Museum of Anthropology on the award-winning c̓əsnaʔəm: the city before the city exhibit.

Upcoming events include:

  • as part of CTLT’s Winter Institute, a session on engaging student identities using online learning platforms and questions of “place” and Indigeneity in cyberspace;

Topics for sessions in the new year (2016) include:

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Stay up to date on our events by keeping your eyes on events.ctlt.ubc.ca, and join the Aboriginal Initiatives e-mail list for details on all our events.