Learning and Teaching Together: Weaving Indigenous Ways of Knowing Into Education

Across Canada, new curriculum initiatives require teachers to introduce students to Aboriginal content. In response, many teachers unfamiliar with Aboriginal approaches to learning and teaching are seeking ways to respectfully weave this material into their lessons. Learning and Teaching Together introduces teachers of all levels to an indigenist approach to education. Tanaka recounts how pre-service teachers enrolled in a crosscultural course in British Columbia immersed themselves in indigenous ways of knowing as they worked alongside indigenous wisdom keepers. Transforming cedar bark, buckskin, and wool into a mural that tells stories about the land upon which the course took place, they discovered new ways of learning that support not only intellectual but also tactile, emotional, and spiritual forms of knowledge. By sharing how one group of non-indigenous teachers learned to privilege indigenous ways of knowing in the classroom, Tanaka opens a path for teachers to nurture indigenist crosscultural understanding in their own classrooms.

Table of Contents:
Foreword / Greg Cajete SENĆOŦEN Pronunciation and Glossary Introduction: A Welcoming The Moons of XAXE SIÁM SILA 1 Orienting to Place and Pedagogical Purpose 2 Opening Oneself to Indigenous Ways of Being-Knowing-Doing 3 Rethinking Learner-Teacher Relationships 4 Invoking Good Intention and Conscious Action 5 Focusing on How and Why We Teach 6 Trusting Learners and Remembering Wholeness 7 Coming Together in Safe Enough Spaces 8 Continuing Reflection towards Sustainability 9 Preparing Self and Community for Dispositional Change 10 Indigenizing Practice amid Classroom Challenges 11 Re-envisioning (Teacher) Education 12 Touchstones for Future Teaching References; Index

About the Author :
Michele T.D. Tanaka is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. She is grateful to live and work on the beautiful lands of the traditional Coast Salish territory of the Lkwungen, Esquimalt, and WASANEC peoples. Her research and teaching interests have been shaped by over ten years in the classroom, in a variety of educational settings.

Review :
This book is essential reading for teachers, teacher educators, and anyone interested in indigenous education, social justice, and transformative learning. It also provides important insights and guidance to educational policymakers… [Learning and Teaching Together] is highly recommended. - Jean-Paul Restoule, Ontatrio Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Volume 109, Number 2) … Indigenous educators and allies will find this text inspirational, hopeful, and useful. - Alma M. O. Trinidad, School of Social Work, Portland State University (Great Plains Research) Teachers in British Columbia and throughout Canada who struggle with how to enact curriculum changes that incorporate Indigenous knowledge, history, and identity will find this book illuminating … in spite of the seemingly overwhelming challenges in making a space for Indigenous thought and experience, it can and must be done. The transformation has been happening and is continuing. - Michael Marker (BC Studies, no. 196, Winter 2017/18)