Aboriginal Worldviews and Perspectives in the Classroom

We cannot rely just on
FSAs, Provincial Exams,
letter grades, Fraser
Institute rankings, etc.
to define success.
participant, Tsaxis
When asked about evidence of success with respect to
Aboriginal Education, participants in the regional
gatherings readily recognized the value of existing
measures for success, including
••
the graduation rate for Aboriginal learners
••
the retention rate for Aboriginal learners (i.e., reductions in
the drop-out rate)
••
the school grades achieved by Aboriginal learners.
It was widely acknowledged that improvements in all these
would certainly reflect an improvement in the state of
Aboriginal education.
At the same time, however, there were repeated calls for
assessment to focus not just on the scholastic achievement
for Aboriginal learners, but also on the extent to which the
educational system at every level (provincial, postsecondary,
teacher pre-service, teacher inservice, district, school, and
classroom) succeeded in taking steps in the directions previously
advocated by participants — to incorporate characteristics
of Aboriginal education into schooling and to become more
responsive to the needs and concerns of Aboriginal communities
and learners.
Some participants emphasized the need to broaden the scope of
assessments and think long-term. Others were more inclined to
identify indicators of success that are immediately applicable in
the near term. Some prioritized qualitative measures of success,
while for others, measures of success that rely on compilations of
quantitative data remain the most practical and useful. Finally,
some participants reaffirmed the value of various existing
criteria for evaluating progress and noted that important
indicators have already been incorporated into a number of the
Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreements that school
districts have created with input from key district education
partners, local First Nations, and the Ministry.
What follows here is a compendium of participant suggestions,
loosely grouped according to scope and focus.
62 Aboriginal Worldviews and Perspectives in the Classroom: Moving Forward