Moving Toward Decolonizing and Indigenizing Curricular and Teaching Practices in Canadian Higher Education

In this reflective paper, I interweave autoethnographic personal narrative and critical self-reflection with theoretical literature in order to engage and wrestle with decolonizing and Indigenizing my teaching and curricular practices in Canadian higher education. Acknowledging that walking this path is challenging, I seek multiple trailheads in an effort to access my hidden curriculum, my complicit knowledge, and unsettling moments that have the potential to transform me. My objective is to critically interrogate myself to prepare for respectfully and appropriately moving toward reconciliation in my relationships with Indigenous colleagues, students, and communities, and in my work as a curriculum maker.

Life of a Wildflower: Reimagining Meaningful Learning Through Play-Based Pedagogy

The author explores tensions between teacher-centered styles of teaching and play-based approaches that invite students to be creators of their own learning. Through narrative inquiry, the author uses a metaphor of wildflowers growing in natural environments to explore a child-led process of learning through play that fosters creativity and deep thinking. Teaching Kindergarten for the first time, the author reflects on challenges of living “secret stories” in the classroom that differ from “sacred stories” of the school’s pedagogical practices, feeling a need to create a “cover story” to present her pedagogy as conforming, yet capable and successful.

Unlocking Creativity: 6-Part Story Method as an Imaginative Pedagogical Tool

This article emerges from an approach to transformative learning where students are challenged to explore taken-for-granted assumptions about their experiences in the world. We outline the 6-Part Story Method (6PSM), which uses abstract images to provide a structured storytelling process that enables reflexive learning. This is documented through conversations between a university teacher and three Masters students about the method used in their course on practical ethics in process consulting. Using individual stories that emerged from a common set of cards, we illustrate how the method enabled us to critically explore our practices as teacher and student consultants.

Collage as a Pedagogical Practice to Support Teacher Candidate Reflection

This article reports on collage as a pedagogical practice to support teacher candidate reflection. We outline a multi-step collage-based reflection workshop that was part of a required course on “Inquiries Into Learning.” The summative collage project was designed to help teacher candidates reflect on their vision of learning (hope) and their fears and doubts as beginning teachers. The process and product of their final integrated collage led students to interrogate how their hopes and fears mingle together in practice. Six teacher candidates share their series of collages and GIFs, along with their reflective personal statements. We conclude by highlighting lessons learned through collaging from the perspective of students.

Reading Aloud as a Leading Activity With Preschool Students

We examine a teacher’s read-aloud activity with her preschool students in India. Three vignettes show how this leading activity helps young children take part in socio-dramatic play, fostering their cultural-historical development. Collaborating as teacher and researcher, we consider students’ use of words, instances of object substitution, and exploration of social roles in the story being read aloud, to demonstrate the development of their higher psychological activity. Moreover, we contend that read-aloud activities in preschool are crucial for developing student learning during middle childhood.

Recognizing the Wealth of Knowledge in Inuit, First Nations, and Métis Communities

In this interview, Carol Rowan recounts how she moved up North to Inukjuak, because she sought to live and learn with Inuit. Following her union with Jobie Weetaluktuk in 1984, and the subsequent births of their three Inuit children, she developed pedagogical approaches informed by and rooted in Inuit ontologies and epistemologies. She discusses how written and spoken Inuktitut language holds culturally specific content. Moreover, she shares how living with land, engaging with Elders, speaking in Inuktitut, and using local materials of the place can serve to displace prevailing Western hegemony with deeper, more intimate understandings of local environments and lifestyles.

Pedagogy in Theory and Practice

Pedagogy can be understood as methods and practices of teaching, and/or a way of being with children. In this paper, I use critical exposition and narrative to reflect on Max van Manen’s (2012) theory of pedagogy as a relationship between adults and children. My writing is organized into alternating sections of exposition (theory) and narrative (practice) to illustrate the interplay between thinking and doing that typifies pedagogical relationships, and to demonstrate how pedagogy unfolds in the unpredictable, unexpected, unprecedented, and unique actions each of us perform in the relational events of our being with children.

Strangers No More: Collaborative Inquiry Through Narrative as Teacher Reflective Practice

Two teachers and a professor engaged in collaborative inquiry through narrative as a form of reflective practice, pedagogical growth, and practitioner research. Using a Deweyan lens and elements of narrative inquiry, we consider our stories of teaching through a supportive, growth-based sharing process. Viewing pedagogical experiences through this lens enabled us to enter each other’s worlds and engage in reflection—together. Our work speaks to the situations that arise when expectations conflict with reality. The process of reflecting and re-reflecting led us to the conclusion that engagement in this fashion is a valuable reflexive method for teacher professional growth.

Students Engaged in Reflection and Practical Problem Solving: Exploring Colour Theory

This paper explores how students connect meaningfully with theory through the aesthetic experiences of problem solving together in the context of a workshop. It can be challenging for students studying design in university programs to understand how theory is relevant, when applied in practical design studio activities. In the colour workshop presented, students participate in brainstorming exercises to create proposals. Theory is made meaningful through learning activities, including a creative brainstorming session animated by both teachers and industry guests. The experience described was enthusiastically received, with the academia-industry collaboration providing a valuable platform for knowledge exchange both among students and teachers.

Coming Into Mindfulness: A Practice of Relational Presence to Cultivate Compassion in One Rural School

This narrative inquiry explores personal and professional stories of two educators, nurtured and supported by their school leadership, in a rural school setting, who have had diverse experiences with the contemplative practice of mindfulness. Our research primarily focused on the following wonders: How does the experience of mindfulness practice shift teacher identity and awareness, and the quality of time educators spend with children and youth? As educators, how can the practice of mindfulness expand our experience of listening, loving kindness, and compassion within educational spaces? We explore how their unique experiences of mindfulness are woven into the fabric of their school and a mindful pedagogy.