Conference Agenda

This symposium presents two situated examples of partnership for equity-oriented transformation in teacher education in British Columbia, Canada. Each partnership is striving to deconstruct colonizing practices through processes of co-creation, relationality, reciprocity, and co-emergence. We will offer illustrative examples of change and invite ICSEI participants into generative dialogue.

Teacher education research calls for programs to address how classrooms and schools privilege some cultural, historical, and contextual practices over others (authors, in press; Kozleski & Waitoller, 2010). This symposium explores the question: In what ways do co-creation, indigenization, and community engagement transform and decolonize teacher education?

The inquiry attends to unlearning cultural and relational processes that transmit and reinforce colonial practices and unintentionally perpetuate power imbalances (Yosso, 2005). Across these two projects is commitment to undoing coloniality (Oyedemi, 2020) and unlearning practices (Donald, 2022) that perpetuate inequity and colonialism. Co-leading and co-creating alongside community, teacher candidates, and faculty recentres and decolonizes research to be answerable to learning (Patel, 2016). Such decolonized teaching, learning, and leadership offer healing, restoration, and hope (Lopez, 2020).

Examples of partnerships for decolonizing and equity-seeking transformation in teacher education will demonstrate processes of situated collaboration and will invite attendees to respond and engage in educational change-making conversation.

This critical, collaborative self-study links knowledge on teacher education and educational change, and how to create more equitable, anti-racist, decolonized educational spaces. Bridging knowledge bases is essential to making systemic, sustainable, and contextual change in education (Ladson-Billings, 2018). A failure to connect these knowledge bases would constitute a missed opportunity to bring transformation that confronts traditional power relations around race, class, and gender to a larger number of individuals and organizations engaged in the educational process. Equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization are foremost in UBC’s new Rural and Remote Teacher Education Program (RRED). Faculty and students collaborate, embody diverse perspectives and lived experiences, and co-create the program, leveraging rural teacher candidates’ funds of knowledge and collaborating deeply with community.

The paper articulates how we bring together and actualize RRED themes of indigeneity; equity, diversity, and inclusion; inquiry; place; and school and society through co-creation processes between teacher candidates, the instructional team, and affinity groups that include members of equity-deserving groups in the areas of disability justice, racial justice, sexual orientation and gender identity, and Indigenous education.

Aspects of the equity-oriented theoretical framework include culturally relevant pedagogy (Ball, 2009; Ladson-Billings, 1992; 2021), culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017; Paris 2021), decolonization and indigenization (Battiste, 2013; Donald; 2021; Tuhawi-Smith, 2021), critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970; Sleeter 2017), and Gonzalez, Moll and Amanti’s work related to funds of knowledge and funds of identity (2005; 2019).

Critical collaborative self-study (authors, 2019) is the inquiry method taken up in this research. Evidence has been and will be collected through student forums, written reflections, and sharing circles with researchers, teachers, and teacher candidates from equity-deserving groups. RRED structures embed the 4Rs of Indigenous research—respect, relevance, reciprocity and responsibility (Kirkness & Barnhardt, 1991). Students shape the program through ongoing reflection and evaluation with the instructional team and the four affinity groups—a decolonizing approach (Donald, 2022). Based on themes identified as part of this self-study, program leaders, instructors, and teacher candidates co-design learning goals to assist the instructional team in responsively deepening inclusive pedagogies within the program—and for teacher candidates’ K-12 students. Micro, meso, and macro system transformation is integral to the self-study and RRED program design.

Trends in evidence collected so far demonstrate that RRED liberating structures and pedagogies have contributed to fostering teacher candidates’ pedagogical stance. Teacher candidates from rural and remote communities have integrated decolonial and equity-oriented principles and practices into their philosophy and practice as educators. This looks quite different across the cohort as teacher candidates have diverse social worldviews and lived experiences. Strengths of the RRED program identified by teacher candidates include: attention to indigeneity; development of a community of learners; self and collegial compassion; inclusiveness and attention to equity and diversity; and the power of story in teaching and learning. Challenges students identified include: teacher candidates struggling to navigate one anothers’ epistemological commitments; balancing work and school; confidence, self-criticalness and negative self-talk; and anxiety and stress.

Most significant is that teacher candidates built capacity to engage in equity, diversity, and inclusion-oriented pedagogy.

Despite the outward appearance of Canada as an equitable and just nation, there is an urgent need to redress historical wrongs caused by colonialism upon Indigenous peoples. These wrongs are especially evident when we look to issues of equity within Canadian education systems (Battiste, 2013).

In rural and remote areas in British Columbia, many of which are adjacent to concentrations of Indigenous communities, these challenges are magnified by the difficulty of recruiting and retaining classroom teachers.

This teacher education program’s response to these challenges was to work with a school district and an Indigenous Tribal Council in remote communities in BC to co-create a community-based approach to teacher education. One of the key objectives of this collaboration is to certify more Indigenous educators who are connected to the communities the schools serve, and who understand the complexities faced by children and families who continue to experience the intergenerational impacts of colonialism.

By designing a teacher education program focused on relational land based learning (Hobenshield & Burke, 2021) and culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017, Ragoonaden, 2023) , recruiting participants who live within their remote communities, and delivering the program in community, we intend to shift the narrative of inequity and disempowerment to one of strength and affirmation.

The questions we are exploring are related to what we are learning as we seek to infuse the Nuu Chah Nulth concept of haa huu paa (teaching with kindness) into the work of teaching and learning in community and examining the possibilities and complexities that arise from decolonizing teacher education in this way.

Education transformation efforts in BC present alternative, transformational, Indigenous-informed perspectives related to learning, teaching, and knowing (Sanford, et al., 2012; Wilson, 2008). With Jo Chrona’s reminder that “Knowledge and understanding are entrenched in relationship and connected to people and place” (2022, p.1) the program is grounded in culturally sustaining pedagogy (Ragoonaden, 2023) and relational Land-based learning (Hobenshield & Burke, 2021)

Co-creation requires all stakeholders to, “contend with their subjectivity and privilege” (Tidey et al., 2022, p. 342) to move beyond ‘what is’ to an examination of what could be. The co-creation principles; “centre Indigenous voice as an act of institutional decolonization and reconciliation and develop authentic relationships” within a “fluid organic process” (Hobenshield & Burke, 2021, p. 3 ).

Program implementation is in its pilot stages. The co-creation team includes teacher candidates, faculty members, school district educators and community members, including Elders and Knowledge keepers. Progress is monitored through weekly meetings of the instructional team, monthly meetings with key stakeholders, and regular check-ins and circle meetings. Additionally, a videographer has been engaged by stakeholders to document the journey,

We are beginning to grasp the complexity of this work, and the overwhelming influence of colonization. Teacher candidates’ sense of agency and confidence is emerging and community support is building. Faculty, teacher candidates and communities are challenged by the unlearning, relearning, and rethinking required to move forward together.

We hope to develop insights around decolonizing teacher education in the service of all communities.