Jennifer Tupper

(Re)creating citizenship: Saskatchewan high school students’ understandings of the ‘good’ citizen

Citizenship education is of central importance in curriculum and schooling, as evidenced by the proliferation of research and writing in the area over the last 20 years. Building on existing citizenship literature, this paper discusses one aspect of a larger project exploring the ways in which citizenship is discursively produced in officially mandated school curriculum and the ways in which students themselves understand and take up narratives of ‘good’ citizenship in light of their diverse experiences and social locations. Using an image-based approach to research, students visually represented and then discussed with researchers their perceptions of good citizenship. What became apparent through the analysis of images and focus group transcripts was the ease with which students, regardless of their social locations, reproduced commonsense narratives of ‘good’ citizenship, including socially sanctioned concern for the environment, a sense of nationalism and national pride, respect for relationships and a communal ethos, and the official discourse of multiculturalism. Missing from students’ understandings of ‘good’ citizenship was any kind of social analysis, suggesting that they largely accepted citizenship as universally realized and experienced by individuals.

The Possibilities for Reconciliation Through Difficult Dialogues: Treaty Education as Peacebuilding

Abstract This article discusses the ongoing effects of colonialism on Aboriginal peoples in Canada and how these might be revealed and disrupted through particular curricular initiatives, informed by understandings of critical peacebuilding education. One such initiative, treaty education, has the potential to disturb dominant national narratives in classrooms, and to invite students to think differently about the history of Canada as it seeks to acknowledge and challenge epistemologies of ignorance that often shape relationships with Aboriginal peoples. Throughout the discussion, it is argued that ignorance is produced and maintained through dominant narratives of the nation which reinforce colonial dispositions that are inherently anti-democratic and that (re)produce structural and symbolic forms of violence, undermining the possibilities for (just) peacebuilding education. Treaty education may bring to the surface conflict for students in terms of their prior knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal–Canadian relations: such conflict creates productive sites of possibility for disrupting ignorance. Specifically, the article describes a high school–university student inquiry into residential schools undertaken in fall 2012 as one example of how treaty education might be used to foster the difficult dialogues necessary for critical peacebuilding education.

Storying Treaties and the Treaty Relationship: Enhancing Treaty Education through Digital Storytelling

This paper represents preliminary findings of a collaborative educational research endeavour to take seriously calls for reconciliation with Aboriginal people within a Canadian context of ongoing colonialism. More specifically, the research takes place in the province of Saskatchewan, where treaty education is mandatory in K–12 classrooms. In this context, critical race theory is used as our theoretical foundation. Working with elementary students, their teachers, and members of the community to support the implementation of treaty education, we draw upon qualitative research methodology and the methods used in participatory action research and digital storytelling. These particular methods are congruent with an inquiry learning approach often used with elementary students. The paper describes the work of young people and their teachers in creating digital stories in which they explore the significance of treaty education and what it means to be a treaty person. It also explores the challenges of this work with respect to teacher, student, and researcher engagement and the ongoing systems of oppression that influence and inform the relationships between First Nations and non-First Nations people in Canada.