Education
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Browsing Education by Author "Alsop, Steve"
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access BIINDGOOSHNAME SHKODE TEMGOOG (We Are Coming to Where the Fire is) Orienting a Secular School to Humanity's Original Instructions(2025-04-10) Anderson, Douglas Mark; Alsop, SteveThis dissertation is an account of my journey as an Indigenous educator, woven with teachers into a web of Gikendassowin (Indigenous Knowledge). Together we move through the veils cast over such Knowledge arising from a pervasive civilizational mentality, finding hope for transcending these veils in the children we work with, who inspire a potential pedagogy in which non-indigenous educators might work ethically with Indigenous people and Knowledge in a Covenant with all Creation. My story emerges from a traumatic subjection of Gikendaassowin to modern learning systems, which generally only ‘include’ it superficially. Introducing Gikendassowin in schools holds great potential, but also risks re-colonizing Indigenous cultures. I see this risk arising from a reduction of Gikendassowin -which has a spiritual origin- to humanist terms. My research looks at how a non-indigenous school is affected by Indigenous spiritual influences. The conceptual framework rests on Gikendaasowin, alongside what has been called “perennial philosophy”, which explains shared principles of diverse spiritual traditions, and might support the introduction of Gikendaassowin on its own terms into non-indigenous, multicultural schools. My method involves three ‘dimensions’: my story (inner world), spun with teachers and all beings in our place (external world), both woven into a third, spiritual ‘dimension’, which includes principles in my conceptual framework along with manifestations of Anishinaabe spirituality -a Bundle of objects used in ceremony and other influences that have appeared in the school through Indigenous guests. The spiritual ‘dimension’ is the hub of this research. We follow my story with teachers into the Gikendaasowin flowing around us, aiming at the central, spiritual ‘dimension.’ We explore how we might orient learning to spiritual principles and meet Gikendaasowin in a secular school while supporting Indigenous resurgence (rather than only benefitting from superficial access to Indigenous cultures). The emergent web of Knowledge indicates how educators might ethically help lead diverse children to the original, spiritual instructions for all humans, represented in universal sacred symbols of Fire and the Heart, while deepening reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities and Gikendaasowin. Recommendations for teacher education, practice and further research are made on this basis.Item Open Access Decoding STEM: The Impact of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Outreach Programming on English Language Learners(2018-08-27) Florence, Stephanie Leanne; Alsop, SteveScience, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are often considered to be gatekeeping school subjects. The language used in STEM education and traditional pedagogies which place emphasis on textbook learning can be challenging for students, especially those who are learning English at the same time. This case study examines a cohort of English Language Learners (ELLs) selected from a larger longitudinal STEM study that aimed to investigate how school partnerships with STEM outreach programs model alternative pedagogical strategies through hands-on inquiry models to effectively engage ELLs, as well as support STEM learning and second language acquisition (SLA) concurrently. Findings indicate that STEM outreach programs can support attitude, interest, and self-efficacy in both STEM and SLA due to specific distinguishing features. In the context of this study, these features include: (a) access to hands-on learning; (b) agency by design; and (c) access to peer learning networks. Jointly, self-efficacy, attitude, and interest come together to support ELLs in STEM over time.Item Open Access From Safe Havens to Monstrous Worlds: The 'Child' in Narratives of Environmental Collapse(2018-11-21) Maclear, Kyo Iona; Paolantonio, Mario Di; Alsop, SteveChildren are widely used as emotive symbols of our shared ecological future, evoking concerns for the next generation as well as the philosophical stakes and challenges of politically addressing climate change. The 'child' as redeemer anchors the dream of transforming and healing the troubled world and functions as a beacon against the foreclosure of human history. My doctoral study examines the cultural ubiquity of the child redeemer figure in contemporary Western narratives of environmental collapse. Literature and film serve as objects for a theoretical investigation that is informed by post-colonial, critical post-humanist and ecocritical conceptions of childhood, nature and narrative. Following the work of other scholars of childhood and futurity (Kathryn Bond Stockton, Jack Halberstam, Mari Ruti, Jos Esteban Muoz, Claudia Castaeda), I ask how we, as adults, might respond to children in a manner that does not reproduce the old idea of childhood innocence nor allow the adults flight of fantasy into redemption or leave the 'child' to his/her own devices. Can the 'child' exceed his/her metonymic function? What are the possibilities of delaminating the climate change story from the imperatives of a redemptive and sentimental humanism? Specifically, my project addresses the fiction of universality, which continues to thrive in the hothouse of childrens culture and education. Moving from Clio Barnards feature film The Selfish Giant (2013) to Zacharias Kunuk/Ian Mauros documentary Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change (2010), each of the four chapters in this dissertation is concerned with dramatizing the limits of heroic environmental storytelling modes, which tend to emphasize the individual in isolation and thereby threaten the fragile, collective, slow labor of forging a common world and a post-carbon future. Heroic reifications and fairy-tale endings may offer consolation, I propose, but they are inadequate to address the social, structural, and ecological crises we currently, and unequally, face as nations and as a species. Shifting towards collective ways of storytelling climate change, I introduce visionary, intergenerational survival stories that give imaginative form to climate grief and resistance and address the lived and heterogeneous experiences of children in a climate-impacted world.Item Open Access In search of intellectual emancipation: reading as inquiry in an elementary science classroomOtoide, Lorraine Sherlita; Alsop, Steve; Schecter, Sandra R.; Crichlow, Warren"This dissertation reconceptualizes traditional science education pedagogy and proposes an emancipatory model for students learning science. The foundation for the model is an interpretation of intellectual emancipation as theorized and articulated by Jacque Ranciere (1991) in the Ignorant Schoolmaster. The study focuses on reading as inquiry in school science and the use of a student's first language as a learning resource. The investigation seeks to observe the teacher and students' journey towards intellectual emancipation as students learn science and discover or gain knowledge of their intellectual abilities. Specifically, my research study presupposes that school science can be a stultifying environment where the teacher heavily controls knowledge. Within this context, learning through inquiry is too often conducted with an emphasis on 'hands-on' activities. This overemphasis leaves little room for the development of inquiry through reading and therefore, implicitly de-emphasizes the importance of reading for the development of independent, autonomous thinkers for a scientifically literate populace. The experiment is set within the context of teaching science to English language learners. From a stance of ""teacher/researcher"" (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993), I conduct an action research study with multilingual and multiethnic grade six students within an urban elementary classroom setting. I changed my classroom practices to foster greater 'intellectual emancipation' through the use of reading as a form of science inquiry. Student behaviors or themes emerged from the data that I associated with expressions of intellectual emancipation. The results of the study and the interpretation of the results add to the discourse of emancipation, inquiry, and learning science. Inquiry is widely advocated in practice, research and policy. A study such as this supports classroom teachers to challenge the dominant approach to inquiry in school science as 'hands-on' and to seize the emancipatory opportunities that inquiry as 'minds-on' offers for the development of the whole learner."Item Open Access Rooted and Rising: A Pedagogical Narrative Inquiry into Re-Storying Education in the Era of Climate Change(2024-07-18) Cohen, Roxanne Wendy Silverstein; Alsop, SteveAs my relationship with global climate change grows deeper, I find myself increasingly intrigued by how this era compels a fundamental re-storying of education. In pursuit of this inquiry, I co-created Rooted and Rising – a pedagogical experiment in supportive education with and for youth climate leaders – and took up research within and alongside it. Through this dissertation, I sought to better understand the foundational narratives of this experiment, and what they might offer into the re-storying of education at this very pivotal time in global history. I collected data through a Pedagogical Narrative Inquiry, which explores the storied experiences of students and educators in Rooted and Rising (R+R), including my own, using interviews, document analysis, field notes, and personal reflections. My inquiry contributes to re-storying and re-structuring education as prefigurative, understood as the deliberate and experimental implementation of desired futures in the here and now. I offer three sets of significant narratives towards this re-storying: Interconnecting and the opening practices of valuing, attending, and sustaining interconnecting; Social Action narratives including processual narratives of improvisation and tinkering, social narratives of collaboration, and planetary healing narratives that both framed and emerged in the experiment; and Desired Futures, reflecting with R+R’s pedagogical invitations into play, desire, and agency with futures, and the aesthetics, temporalities, and well beings students’ expressed desire for across three activities. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.