
University of Alberta
1.
Wiseman, Dawn.
Acts of living with: Being, doing, and coming to understand
Indigenous perspectives alongside science curricula.
Degree: PhD, Department of Secondary Education, 2016, University of Alberta
URL: https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/ctt44pm87m
This inquiry engages with the complexity of bringing
Indigenous and Western ways of knowing, being, and doing together;
both in K-12 science curricula and research. It responds to
Canadian provincial/territorial policies and programs, adopted
since the turn of the century, that mandate integration of
Indigenous perspectives across K-12 curricula, with a particular
focus on science curricula as a complex location for integration.
The inquiry began as an exploration of the intersection between
policy, practitioners, and practice as a means of considering what
it means to integrate Indigenous perspectives in science curricula.
Given that it draws on people, traditions, and thinking that emerge
from both Indigenous and Western ways of knowing, being, and doing,
the inquiry also began by drawing on elements of Indigenous
research methodologies and ecological interpretations of
hermeneutics in order to create a space in which both traditions
might circulate together. As I engaged with doing the research, I
concurrently found myself struggling with what it means to take up
inquiry that simultaneously honours different traditions, and what
it means to decolonize research. This struggle manifested primarily
through discomfort with the place of theory and methodology within
research and the manner in which these concepts act and allow for
action. As I engaged in conversations with policy, practitioners,
and practice, I re/cognized that struggles I was having with
respect to methodology paralleled the struggles practitioners were
having in terms of engaging with Indigenous perspectives in science
curricula. This re/cognition occurred around specific instances
where both I, and the people with whom I was having conversations,
bumped up against a difficulty with language. That is, while we
could clearly point to the existence of something at play, we were
simultaneously without adequate language to describe and talk about
it. Given the difficulty posed by a lack of words, I let go of
assumptions to both reflect on and search for a means of
considering the phenomena I refer to as the inarticulable. Guidance
arose from both traditions that inform my doing and being. I was
visited, guided, and accompanied by the tricky teacher, Coyote, AND
images of the world at play and in flux via mappings of complex,
recursive equations, specifically the Lorenz attractor. These
visions returned me to the root of conversation as the act of
living with, and allowed me to re/cognize both my own process of
coming to understand, AND the coming to understand of the people
with whom I had conversations, as recursive acts of living with
where the discomfort of the inarticulable set in motion a cycle
where doing and being preceded knowing. The dissertation thus
represents the research AND it is the research, and–as a means of
supporting readers in coming to understand–it is written to reflect
the recursive acts of living with in which I, and the people with
whom I had conversations engaged.
Subjects/Keywords: Emergence; Indigenous research methodolodies; Indigenous ways of knowing; Curriculum studies; Hermeneutics; Science education; Integration
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APA (6th Edition):
Wiseman, D. (2016). Acts of living with: Being, doing, and coming to understand
Indigenous perspectives alongside science curricula. (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Alberta. Retrieved from https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/ctt44pm87m
Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):
Wiseman, Dawn. “Acts of living with: Being, doing, and coming to understand
Indigenous perspectives alongside science curricula.” 2016. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Alberta. Accessed December 14, 2019.
https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/ctt44pm87m.
MLA Handbook (7th Edition):
Wiseman, Dawn. “Acts of living with: Being, doing, and coming to understand
Indigenous perspectives alongside science curricula.” 2016. Web. 14 Dec 2019.
Vancouver:
Wiseman D. Acts of living with: Being, doing, and coming to understand
Indigenous perspectives alongside science curricula. [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Alberta; 2016. [cited 2019 Dec 14].
Available from: https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/ctt44pm87m.
Council of Science Editors:
Wiseman D. Acts of living with: Being, doing, and coming to understand
Indigenous perspectives alongside science curricula. [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Alberta; 2016. Available from: https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/ctt44pm87m