Long way to go to meet student needs

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The idea of incorporating Aboriginal perspectives, content and knowledge into the school curriculum isn't a new one, but it's one that has taken time to catch on. And the extent to which it is being done varies from province to province, and from school district to school district and from school to school within each province.

Incorporating Aboriginal content and perspectives doesn't mean making a tipi or igloo in art class. It doesn't mean learning to do an Aboriginal dance in phys. ed. or reading one book written by an Aboriginal writer in Language Arts. It needs to be done in a way that Aboriginal students see their culture, their experiences and their world views reflected in what they are learning within all core subjects and on an ongoing basis.

Seeing themselves reflected in what they're learning in school is important for Aboriginal students, said Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald, associate professor in the University of British Columbia faculty of education, who specializes in First Nations education.

"Various research has shown that ... having more of the curriculum reflecting the child's culture has a positive impact on self-esteem, identity. Just the awareness that there's something that that child is familiar with that he or she can connect to in school. And so I think it certainly is pretty important."

Currently in Alberta's public schools, Aboriginal content and perspectives within the curriculum are limited to the Aboriginal 10, 20 and 30 courses offered to high school students. Resources for those courses are being developed in conjunction with the province's Aboriginal community.

In 2005, Alberta Learning will be introducing a newly revised social studies curriculum that will reflect Aboriginal perspectives and, according to Josepha Vanderstoop with the department's communications branch, similar curriculum revisions are in the offing for other areas of the curriculum as well.

Edmonton Public Schools has just completed a report for the department called Infusion of Aboriginal Perspectives into Alberta Core Curriculum, which Alberta Learning will use to guide it toward creating curriculum that Aboriginal students can better identify with.

"Certainly it's a high priority," Vanderstoop said. "So this report is going to help sort of build a foundation of moving ahead on that."

In Saskatchewan the department of Learning has had a policy in place since 1989 that calls for Aboriginal content and perspectives to be integrated across the curriculum.

Aboriginal input into creating or revising curriculum is provided through Aboriginal membership on the reference committees involved in the process, and involvement of the department's Aboriginal education unit, which works with the curriculum writers to ensure curriculum appropriately reflects information about Aboriginal people and Aboriginal world views, explained Edith Nagy. She is acting executive director of the Strategic Partnerships and Aboriginal Education branch of Saskatchewan Learning.

The department also works to ensure that teachers are comfortable with teaching the Aboriginal content of the curriculum, Nagy said. Through the Indian and Metis Education Development program and an Elders outreach program, schools access resources and resource people to help teachers provide culturally relevant information to their students. Teachers are also provided with supports through professional development activities.

The teachers, Nagy said, are on the whole, very receptive.

"There just seems to be a real thirst for knowledge and information and how to do this, how to do things better. And I think teachers are becoming more comfortable in wanting to learn more, asking the questions that they need to ask and bringing the folks into their classrooms that they need to bring in," she said.

"What I note is just a thirst for more and not so much people saying, 'Well, I can't do this.' It's more 'How do I do this and what can you d to help us.'"

That growing acceptance and willingness on the part of teachers, coupled by continued improvements in the curriculum development process are translating into education experiences that better meet the needs of Aboriginal students, Nagy said.

But all of these efforts aren't taking place in isolation. The department works to promote partnerships between its school division and First Nations and Metis organizations, Nagy said, "because we feel it's important for First Nations and Metis people to have an opportunity to participate in the decision making around education at the school division level. And often out of those partnerships there are new ways of looking at the program in school, the curriculum, the environment, the instructional approaches, even the assessment that's used."

Those types of partnerships have been making a difference, something that's been noticed by the community people involved in the process, she said.

"They're seeing their schools change and they're seeing that they have a voice in what the priorities of the school are. And they're also seeing more Aboriginal people as resource people in the school, and those sorts of things."

Work is also being done in Saskatchewan to help the next generation of teachers so they can better meet the needs of Aboriginal students by working with teacher training institutes, which Nagy said are very interested in incorporating Aboriginal content and perspectives into the training they are offering.

In British Columbia, efforts to provide Aboriginal students with culturally relevant school curriculum are in the early stages. But, according to B. C. Minister of Education Tom Christensen, improving Aboriginal education in the province is a priority for the government.

"We recognize that there's a problem," Christensen said. What the government is doing to try to address that problem is developing Aboriginal education enhancement agreements between the ministry, the individualschool districts and the First Nation and Metis communities served by the district.

"And the intent of that is to better involve First Nations communities in determining what we should be doing, or what we should be doing better, for Aboriginal students."

The department doesn't have a policy in place regarding having Aboriginal content within school curriculum. What it does have is dollars for schools and school districts to work on making those types of improvements on their own. For each Aboriginal student it has enrolled, Christensen said, a school district gets $950 in additional funding from the province, earmarked for providing programs specifically for its Aboriginal students.

"And many of those programs then involve significant cultural elements to try and better tailor the programs to Aboriginal students and to provide them additional support so they do stay in school and they do as well as non-Aboriginal students," he said.

This approach allows districts to meet the specific needs of the Aboriginal communities they serve, something that is important in a province where so many different nations are represented. And the goal, Christensen said, is to ensure that those communities play a role in deciding how to use that money to best serve those students.

Currently, 14 of the province's 60 school districts have Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreements in place, with another 30 close to being finalized.

The First Nations that have agreements in place are pleased that they will have input into what goes on in the schools their students attend but, Christensen said, no one believes these agreements will make all the problems within the school systems go away.

"I think everybody's cautiously optimistic that it'll make a difference in terms of outcomes for those students, but I don't think anybody's ready to sit back and say the job is anywhere close to being done yet. It's a very good start and we're certainly seeing, say versus five or 0 years ago, we're seeing better outcomes for Aboriginal students, but we have a long, long way to go. And the fact that it's taken us, as a society, that it's taken us this long to recognize the problem and get to work on it is shameful. It's long, long overdue."

Archibald agrees that much more needs to be done. While efforts are being made to create curricula with Aboriginal content, particularly by Aboriginal organizations, not enough of that curriculum is making its way into the core curriculum. Part of the problem, she said, is resistance from some teachers who see Aboriginal curriculum content as being cultural curriculum rather than academic, and from others who think that, because the number of Aboriginal children within their classes is so small, they don't need this type of content to be taught. Yet others don't understand that Aboriginal knowledge is as valid as Western curriculum or knowledge.

"There isn't an awareness that you could have Aboriginal knowledge as part of math and science, social studies, reading, art, all of the subject areas. Because our knowledge covers all those areas," she said.

One way to help support efforts to include more Aboriginal perspectives and content into what is being taught in the classroom is to get more Aboriginal teachers into those classrooms, Archibald said, something that many of the provinces are actively working to do. In B.C., for example, the provincial government has just put $80,000 into a plan by the Kamloops/Thompson school district to add two new Aboriginal teachers to its teaching complement in each of the next five years.

What will help drive improvements to curriculum in B.C., Christensen said, is support at the ministry level, at the school board level and from the Aboriginal community to make it happen.

"I think it's an issue that in the past has sometimes been swept under the rug and nobody really wanted to address it. And there's a widespread recognition now that it is completely inapp