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Stop Talking: Indigenous Ways of Teaching and Learning and Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education
Merculieff, Larry Roderick, Libby
Merculieff, Larry
Roderick, Libby
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Abstract
It was the end of spring semester here in Anchorage, Alaska. The snow was gone in all but the shadiest of places, but the trees were not yet in leaf, and a brown dust blew lightly over the still winter-flattened earth. It was a season of endings and beginnings. Finals were over, grades turned in, robes donned, commencement hats flung. Summer was on its way.
Just before the faculty went off contract and scattered to the mid-May winds, we held the last meeting of our Ford Foundation-sponsored Difficult Dialogues project. We’d been working together for the past two years on strategies for engaging controversial topics in the classroom, including those especially difficult ones involving race, culture, and ethnicity.
Everyone was exhausted: the sixteen faculty members around the table, the organizers and facilitators, the Ford Foundation representatives who had flown through the night to get here. Even the coffee pot was only half awake. We had this one last thing to do, and then we could all go home.
We went around the room, each faculty member making a final report on what he or she had tried in the classroom and how it had gone. Some of the stories were exciting; others less so. But still the voices continued. Around two in the afternoon, we took a break, and the Ford Foundation evaluators asked to see our leadership team alone for a few final comments and questions. They told us they had seen enough. It was clear we had done what we said we’d done, had the effects on faculty that we had claimed. They were satisfied. Our project was one of the successful ones. We passed.
It would have made a nice ending. But then, as everyone was just starting to relax, the Ford Foundation’s assessment expert leaned forward and said, “OK, off the record, what do you think you really accomplished here?”
There was a moment of silence. The Vice Provost looked at the Psychology professor, the faculty development leader exchanged glances with both of them. Who would say what they all were thinking?
It was Libby who broke the silence. Taking a deep breath, she said “I think, for the first time ever, we’re ready to begin.”
Description
Dedicated to the memory of
Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley
whose wisdom, dedication, and courage
inspired him to forge some of the first and most important connections between indigenous ways of teaching and learning and western higher education
Date
2013-01-01
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Publisher
University of Alaska Anchorage
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Keywords
teaching, learning, indigenous ways of being, difficult dialogues