UBC MOOC: Reconciliation Through Education

Overview

Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education course is about the need to disrupt and rethink personal and professional assumptions that we hold about Indigenous histories, cultures, and realities that very well may play out in classrooms and schools. Further, we need to reconcile the fundamental educational promise of equality of opportunity that has not yet been met for many of our Indigenous students.

Choosing reconciliation as a lens for rethinking policy and the practices of schooling acknowledges that there are contradictions in the current curriculum of schooling that impact the success of Indigenous leaners. Reconciliation in this course emphasizes changing structures and ideologies that create unequal educational outcomes for Indigenous learners in comparison to their non-Indigenous counterparts.

As educators, we need to be able to respond to educational reforms that prioritize improved educational outcomes for Indigenous children and youth. Further, all students should have opportunities to learn from Indigenous histories, traditions, and knowledges as part of a social justice education.

This course will enable educators to envision how Indigenous ways of knowing, content, perspectives, and pedagogies can be made part of classrooms, schools, and communities in ways that are thoughtful and respectful. This is an approach that more and more educators see as far more likely to ensure the success of Indigenous learners, which is important to their families and communities, but also to the future of Canada.

Course begins on October 17, 2017.

Register through edX.