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Teach What You Know: Cultivating Culturally Sustaining Practices in Pre-Service Alaska Native Teachers

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies

ISBN: 978-1-78441-261-6, eISBN: 978-1-78441-260-9

Publication date: 5 June 2017

Abstract

This chapter documents the steps taken in one teacher preparation program to foster culturally sustaining practices (Paris, 2012) in pre-service Alaska Native teachers, as well as in their non-Native peers. For pre-service teachers to develop the skills, understanding, and dispositions necessary to respectfully gather, honor, and use local knowledge in their future classrooms they must first recognize the value and significance of locally relevant curriculum; second, understand how to respectfully gather and document current “living” local knowledge; and third, become empowered with the skills and knowledge to purposefully integrate local knowledge into the curriculum. This chapter uses one semester-long assignment, and data gathered from work samples from that assignment, as the foundation of an exploration into how these three steps can be enacted in the teacher preparation process. The accompanying data show that living Indigenous knowledge exists in abundance in young Alaska Native pre-service teachers, and when appropriately supported, pre-service teachers can develop powerful curriculum that is rooted in local knowledge and also aligned with the academic goals of the curriculum.

Keywords

Citation

Vinlove, A. (2017), "Teach What You Know: Cultivating Culturally Sustaining Practices in Pre-Service Alaska Native Teachers", Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 29), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 147-167. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720150000029013

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited