Constance Lavoie

Language Education and Canada’s Indigenous Peoples

This chapter presents an overview of the language situation of Canada’s Indigenous peoples and their educational struggles. The authors situate policies, programs and pedagogical strategies in the complex historical and socio-political Canadian context. After an outline of the historical and socio-political context for the language education of Indigenous peoples in Canada, contemporary Indigenous policies, programs and pedagogical strategies around language education are presented, in the aftermath of the Indigenous struggle for self-determination and increasing mainstream awareness of Indigenous language and education issues. A surge in Indigenous population growth resulting in an increasingly youthful population profile, a pull towards urbanization, and the rise of new technologies are all factors that are affecting the landscape of language and education in Indigenous (or Aboriginal) Canada. Drawing on data from a language maintenance project in a Quebec Innu community and a language revitalization project in a Mi’gmaq community in the Maritimes, the gamut of Indigenous responses to the challenge of not one but two colonizing languages is demonstrated. These initiatives are placed in the wider Canadian context.

Indigenizing Vocabulary Teaching: An Example of Multiliteracies Pedagogy from Unamen Shipu.

This article presents a community-based pedagogical initiative for teaching vocabulary. The research took place in the Innu community of Unamen Shipu in northern Quebec. The study introduced a teaching method grounded in Indigenous knowledge theory that exemplified the multiliteracies pedagogy principles. This exploratory study used participatory action research in which thirty students were exposed to the teaching method. The teaching method was designed and validated by the community-based researcher. The results give insight on how to adapt French language teaching for Indigenous communities. This article analyzes the benefits of including elders, parents, Indigenous knowledge, observation, and storytelling for vocabulary teaching.

Teaching Life Narratives in the Classroom: Strategies Based on Indigenous Traditions

ABSTRACT The life narrative is an oral genre grounded in Indigenous tradition and teaching practice. In Canadian Indigenous communities, the expertise and content transmitted by life narratives are a part of their oral heritage. Drawing from their personal and professional experiences in Indigenous school environments, as well as the results from exploratory studies, the authors have developed an educational model for teaching life narratives in the classroom. This paper begins with an overview on the pedagogical use of life narratives for historical reconciliation, knowledge and expertise preservation, and ethical education. This enables the authors to propose a definition supported by the existing scientific literature. An analysis of the data collected from Innu, Algonquin, and Mohawk communities revealed the main strategies commonly used by their teachers and Elders. A pedagogical model dividing these strategies into planning, integration, and implementation phases for using life narratives is finally presented.

L’observation des manifestations de la compétence discursive à l’oral dans le cadre de dialogues philosophiques au secondaire

La dimension discursive de la communication orale en contexte scolaire demeure, a l’heure actuelle, peu appuyee sur des bases empiriques. En reponse a ce manque, nous retracerons le processus d’elaboration d’un cadre d’analyse des manifestations de la competence discursive a l’oral dans le contexte de dialogues philosophiques. Pour ce faire, nous presenterons les resultats de la mise a l’epreuve empirique de certains indicateurs d’une grille synthese issue de notre recension d’ecrits. Enfin, nous discuterons du caractere situe de la competence discursive, en lien avec notre contexte d’investigation.