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Effect of Teaching Strategies on Native American Students.

These additions will be on the Indigenous Education Wikipedia page.

Add under SPIRITUALITY section.

Gilliard and Moore (2007) presented the experiences of eight Native American educators, focusing on the impact of having family and community culture included in the curriculum. Typically, tribal K-12 schools on the reservation have majority European American teachers. This study differs in that sense by studying educators who are all of Native American background and their interactions with students and families. These educators reported that their interactions with families stem from respect and understanding. There were three categories that surfaced when understanding and defining culture; (1) respect of children, families, and community, (2) building a sense of belongingness and community through ritual, and (3) the importance of family values and beliefs.

1. Respect of children, families, and community; educators approached interactions in a reflective and respectful way when talking with children, families, and the community. Educators accepted practices concerning death in individual families. Educators made it a point to be aware of curricular activities that may offend certain tribes. Lastly, educators spoke in a soft, quiet, and gentle way to the children.
2. Building a sense of belongingness and community through ritual; specific to the tribe on Flathead Reservation, powwows are a community ritual that bring together families and community. Educators worked with families and their children to make moccasins, ribbon shirts and dresses, and shawls prior to the powwow, and included elements of a powwow into their classroom. For example, they keep a drum in the classroom to use for drumming, singing, and dancing.
3. Importance of family values and beliefs; educators give the opportunity to parent’s to be involved in the day to day activities in and around the classroom. Such as, meal times, play time, holidays, and celebrations. Educators collaborate with parents regarding curriculum around holidays and cultural celebrations, reinforced importance of speaking their tribal languages, and clarified with parents what their home language is, and had respectful discussions around traditional values and beliefs that led to compromise, not isolation or separation.

The educators in this study worked on a daily basis to respect, plan, and learn about parent beliefs and values so they can create a community culture linked to school curriculum, this is what the authors of the study hope to portray to early educators who are attempting to connect culture of their school and classroom with home and community for the children they teach.

Similar to the previous study mentioned, Vaughn (2016) conducted a multiple case study of four Native American teachers and two European American teachers at Lakeland Elementary. The participants were asked to draw from influences, relationships, and resources of the local tribe, local and state practices, and knowledge of effective pedagogies to co-construct knowledge.

At the time this study was conducted, Lakeland Elementary was failing to meet No Child Left Behind's yearly progress in reading. State officials would come to observe teachers, unannounced, to make sure they were teaching the mandated literacy curriculum. This required the teachers to follow the literacy program, even though the curriculum seldom met the individual and specific linguistic and cultural needs of the majority of Native American students at the school.

So the researcher focused on two questions. The first one being, “In what ways did these teachers approach developing a curriculum to support their students’ social, cultural, and linguistic needs?” One theme that came up was “pedagogical re-envisioning”, which are pedagogies and understandings of culturally responsive teaching to address writing and understand that each student has individual needs. With understanding this, teachers are able to give students the opportunity to include oral storytelling so students have their own personal twist on their learning. The second question was “What shifts in teachers’ pedagogical practices resulted from this collaboration?" Four themes came up; cultural resources, working with community, multimodal approaches, and integrating students’ experiences and interests from their lives outside of school into the curriculum. By addressing these four themes, teachers were able to re-envision how curriculum can meet individual needs for many Native students without leaving out their interests, culture, or resources.

Add under HOLISTIC APPROACH TO LEARNING section.

According to a study by Stevenson et al. (2014), challenges that arise with using technology consistently can stem from a weak relationship between spending time outdoors and environmental knowledge and behavior in middle school aged students in North Carolina. This weak relationship may be due to a change in relationship between children and nature. Instead of children having a natural interaction with nature, outdoor activities are based on organized sport or technology.

Middle school aged Native American students reported higher levels of environmental behavior than Caucasian students, urging environmental education professionals to continue to close achievement gaps in classrooms. Environmental education professionals continue to ensure that the same factors creating inequity don’t affect environmental knowledge. Along with creating a classroom that strives to include environmental knowledge, promoting outdoor activities, and direct interaction with nature gives a chance for Native American students to voice their knowledge to the teacher, and to their peers.

Another form of holistic approach to learning includes parental and community advocacy. As reported by Pedro (2015), parents of student’s expressed concern that the high school their children attended neglected their children’s voices, knowledge, and perspectives in the school. The school districts diversity specialist sought advice to construct a curriculum that would validate, teach and support the perspective of Native American peoples of the Southwest United States. This team constructed a curriculum based off of three ideas; (1) Native American students are harmed when their curriculum is void of knowledge that reflect their identity, culture, and heritage, (2) students who are not Native American are harmed as they learn about narrowed and historicized depictions of Indigenous peoples of the United States, and (3) teaching knowledge from a variety of perspectives should be fundamental to any learning environment.

Pedro suggested, with the foundation of parents’ values, that students are able to engage in conversation, in their mind, through critical dialogic listening in silence. Just because they weren’t engaging verbally in the discussion, didn’t mean they weren’t receptive to the points being made by student’s who were verbally engaged. Students can share their beliefs and identities through meta-conversations in connection with the voiced realities between other students. After hearing different sides of other students’ stories, they were able to construct their own identities and understandings into the debate, silently.

To validate the silence, the teacher in this instance, writes down quotes and questions students had asked in small and whole group conversations. At the end of each unit, the teacher would use these quotes and questions to ask students to reflect upon their writings, using notes they took and readings/handouts given to them. Through this option, students were able to contribute their identities, knowledge, and understandings into the classroom space. This process was called Literacy Events, in which students are given the opportunity to absorb and make sense of different perspectives and ideas from verbal discussions in class and readings. Silence helped the students relate internally, and through writing, their perspectives became known. Essentially, in the end, their stories were in their minds and contributing to the conversation as they chose whose ideas to accept and reject or a combination of both. Parent’s advocated for their children, so next time a student chooses silence, it might not mean that they are disengaged or uninterested. Instead, give them another avenue to express their thoughts.

New section under "Pedagogical Approaches to Indigenous Education":

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogy

McCarty and Lee (2014) express that tribal sovereignty (indigenous people’s as peoples, not populations or national minorities), must include education sovereignty. The authors report that Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogy (CSRP) is necessary in education, based off of three items; (1) asymmetrical power relations and the goal of transforming legacies of colonization, (2) reclaim and revitalize what has been disrupted and displaced by colonization, and (3) the need for community-based accountability.

CSRP is meant to off balance dominant policy dialogue. This research follows two case studies at two different schools, one in Arizona and one in New Mexico. Tiffany Lee reports for Native American Community Academy (NACA) in Albuquerque, NM. The core values for the school include; respect, responsibility, community service, culture, perseverance, and reflection. These core values reflect tribal communities as well. NACA offers three languages; Navajo, Lakota, and Tiwa, and the school also seeks outside resources to teach local languages. This study emphasizes that teaching language is culturally sustaining and revitalizing; which creates a sense of belonging and strengthens cultural identities, pride, and knowledge. At NACA, teachers know they possess inherent power as Indigenous education practitioners. They make a difference in revitalizing Native languages through culturally sustaining practices.

The second case study was reported by Teresa McCarty at Puente de Hozho (PdH), that language has a different role for members of various cultural communities. At PdH, the educators reflect parents’ influence (Dine and Latino/a) for culturally sustaining and revitalizing education. The goal is to heal forced linguistic wounds and convey important cultural and linguistic knowledge that connects to the school’s curriculum and pedagogy.

Balancing academic, linguistic, and cultural interests is based on accountability to Indigenous communities. The authors describe the need for linguistic teachings as a “fight for plurilinguial and pluricultural education.” As long as we continue to work towards community-based practices and culturally relevant teachings, we get a step further to Indigenous education sovereignty. Educators can strive to balance state and federal requirements with local communities and Indigenous nations. This is not something that can be only done within predominately Native American schools, but can be branched out to different schools through an advocate, that is already placed in the school, for Native American students.