Abstracts
Abstract
Literacy is an essential component of any elementary-school classroom. To address shifting understandings of literacy and how to teach it, Alberta has developed a new language-arts curriculum. This curriculum, however, was developed in a context where schools have a long history of not serving Indigenous children well, including not meeting their needs through literacy programs (Hare, 2011). Alberta Education, through the English Language Arts and Literature (ELAL) curriculum, claims to better address those needs. The purpose of this research is to examine how the ELAL curriculum and its implementation aligns with the field of language and literacy, and in particular, Indigenous literacy scholarship, namely Peltier’s (2016/2017) Wholistic Anishinaabe Pedagogy and Reese’s (2018) Critical Indigenous Literacy. Data included both an analysis of the curriculum and semi-structured interviews with literacy instructors/scholars and in-service teachers. There were several key findings: English only processes, sparce attention to feelings throughout the curriculum, an absence of critical literacy, and inappropriate text selection. This paper is significant, as it shows the complexities and promise of being a non-Indigenous literacy scholar, thinking deeply about places of resonance and tension in literacy in ways that Indigenous scholars are already writing about.
Keywords:
- Indigenous Literacy,
- Language Curriculum Analysis
Download the article in PDF to read it.
Download
Appendices
Biographical notes
Katie Brubacher is an assistant professor in elementary education, specializing in language and literacy, who joined the Faculty of Education after almost twenty years of teaching children in Kto-12 schools. Her research interests include translanguaging, the sociality of emotion, students of refugee backgrounds, raciolinguistics, working with children as researchers, school and community-based humanizing research, multimodal literacy practices, identity, belonging, multiliteracies, emerging print literacy, curriculum and policy analysis, and teacher education for multilingual children. As a member of the Language and Literacy Researchers of Canada (LLRC) executive, she works closely with researchers and educators across the country, organizing annual conferences and facilitating the dissemination of research-based practices on language and literacy. She is currently looking at the connection between laughter, belonging, and translanguaging with racialized children of refugee backgrounds, who teachers perceive as traumatized. Katie has also worked as both an instructor and researcher in teacher education to coauthor a book entitled, Centering Multilingual Learners and Countering Raciolingustic Ideologies in Teacher Education.
Jacqueline Filipek is an associate professor at The King’s University in Edmonton, Alberta, where she has worked since 2018 in the Faculty of Education. Her doctorate from the University of Alberta focused on understanding meaning making across and within digital and analog learning experiences in elementary school. Jacqueline is an editor for the national journal, Language and Literacy, and enjoys working with authors and researchers from all around the world who study literacy in many diverse contexts. As a member of the Northern Alberta Reading Specialists’ Council, she engages in literacy advocacy work and professional development alongside educators, administrators, and scholars. In addition to her teaching at The King’s University, she also teaches language arts curriculum courses for the Aboriginal TeacherEducation Program (ATEP) at the University of Alberta. Her general teaching and areas of research involve curriculum and instruction in language arts, reading, children’s literature, and educational technology. In addition to her current work on the Alberta Language Arts and Literature curriculum with Katie, Jacqueline is also exploring place stories to understand children’s need for places and ways to make classrooms and schools better environments for students.
Bibliography
- Alberta Education. (2022). English language arts and literature. Alberta Education. https://curriculum.learnalberta.ca/curriculum/en/s/laneng
- Alberta Education (2024). The guiding framework for the design and development of kindergarten to grade 12 curriculum (The Guiding Framework). Alberta Education. https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/76eb4fac-62e3-408e-bcd8-f367a8a698fd/resource/5ad5e64c-d4a6-4ac4-a821-84704237c893/download/educ-guiding-framework-design-development-k-12-curriculum-2024.pdf
- Anderson, A., Anderson, J., Hare, J., & McTavish, M. (Eds.). (2015). Language, learning, and culture in early childhood: Home, school, and community contexts. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315686790
- Aukerman, M, & Schuldt, L. C. (2021). What matters most? Toward a robust and socially just science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(1), 85-103. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.406
- Bale, J., Rajendram, S., Brubacher, K., Owoo, M. A. N., Burton, J., Zhang, Y., Larson, E. J., Gagné, A. & Kerekes, J. (2023). Centering multilingual learners and countering raciolinguistic ideologies in teacher education: Principles, policies and practices (Vol. 3). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/BALE4143
- Bingham, A. J. (2023). From data management to actionable findings: A five-phase process of qualitative data analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 22. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069231183620
- Cardinal, T. (2015). Mosoms and moccasins…Literacy in an Indigenous context. Canadian Social Studies, 48(1), 1-7.
- Donald, D. (2021). We need a new story: Walking and the wâhkôhtowin imagination. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 18(2), 53-63. https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-4467.40492
- Edmonton Public Schools. (2024, August 30). Awasis (Cree). Programming: First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. https://epsb.ca/programs/fnmieducation/awasiscree/factsheet/
- Freebody, P., & Luke, A. (1990). Literacies’ programs: Debates and demands in cultural contexts. Prospect: A Journal of Australian TESOL, 11, 7–16.
- Government of Canada. (2023). Delivering on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action. https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1524494530110/1557511412801
- Hackett, A. (2022). Beyond transparency: More-than-human insights into the emergence of young children’s language. Literacy, 56(3), pp. 244-252. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12297
- Haque, E., & Patrick, D. (2015). Indigenous languages and the racial hierarchisation of language policy in Canada. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 36(1), 27–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2014.892499
- Hare, J. (2011). ‘They tell a story and there's meaning behind that story’: Indigenous knowledge and young children’s indigenous children’s literacy learning. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 12(4) 389-414. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798411417
- Hare, J. (2005). ‘To know papers’: Aboriginal perspectives on literacy. In J. Anderson, M. Kendrick, T. Rogers, & S. Smythe (Eds.), Portraits of literacy across families, communities and schools: Tensions and intersections (pp. 243-263). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Kee, J. C. & Carr-Chellman, D. J. (2019). Paulo Freire, critical literacy, and Indigenous resistance. Educational Studies, 55 (1), 89-103. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2018.1562926
- Levinson, B.A.U., Sutton, M. & Winstead, T. (2009) Education policy as a practice of power: theoretical tools, ethnographic methods, democratic options. Educational Policy 23(6), 767–795. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904808320676
- Luke, A. (2005). Evidence-based state literacy policy: A critical alternative. In N. Basica, A. Cumming, A. Datnow, K. Leithwood, and D. Lingstone (Eds.), International handbook of educational policy (pp. 661-675). Springer.
- Luke, A. (2018). Critical literacy, schooling, and social justice: The selected works of Allan Luke. Taylor and Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315100951
- Luke, A. (2003). Making literacy policy and practice with a difference. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 26(3), 58-82.
- Marom, L. and Rattray, C. (2022). On the land gathering: Education for reconciliation. Critical Studies in Education, 63(1), 114-130. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2019.1611613
- McClain, J. B., & Schrodt, K. (2021). Making space for multilingualism: Using translanguaging pedagogies to disrupt monolingual language ideologies within a culturally responsive kindergarten curriculum. The Reading Teacher, 75(3), 385-388. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2050
- Ningwakwe / Rainbow Woman. (2005). The Rainbow/Holistic Approach to Aboriginal Literacy. J. Anderson, M. Kendrick, and T. Suzanne Smythe (Eds.), Portraits of Literacy Across Families, Communities, and Schools (pp. 265-276). Routledge.
- Peltier, S. (2016). Demonstrating Indigenous storywork circle pedagogy: Creating conceptual space for ecological relational knowledge in the classroom. [Unpublished PhD Dissertation], Laurentian University.
- Peltier, S. (2017). An Anishinaabe perspective on children’s language learning to inform “Seeing the Aboriginal Child.” Language & Literacy, 19(2), 4-19. https://doi.org/10.20360/G2N95C
- Reese, D. (2018). Language arts lessons: Critical Indigenous literacies: Selecting and Using Children’s books about Indigenous peoples. Language Arts, 95(6), 389-393. https://doi.org/10.58680/la201829686
- Reese, D. (2012). Critical Indigenous literacies. In The Sage Handbooks of Early Childhood Literacy: 2nd Edition. J. Larson & J. Marsh (Eds.), (pp. 251-262). Sage.
- Styres, S. (2018). Literacies of land: Decolonizing narratives, storying, and literature. In L. Smith, E. Tuck, and K.W. Yang (Eds.), Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education (1st edition). (pp. 24-37). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429505010
- Vasquez, V. M., Janks, H., & Comber, B. (2019). Critical literacy as a way of being and doing. Language arts, 96(5), 300-311. https://doi.org/10.58680/la201930093
- Wood, J. (2023). An Indigenous early childhood pedagogy. In S. Cote-Meek & T. Moeke-Pickering (Eds.), Perspectives on Indigenous pedagogy in education: Learning from one another (pp. 170-192). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-3425-3
- Wyse, D., & Bradbury, A. (2022). Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers' practices for teaching phonics and reading. Review of Education, 10, e3314. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3314