Festival of Learning 2018

Following the Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) Calls to Action, educators across the country have actively engaged in the development of reconciliation education. In the context higher education this has taken the form of curricular development and programming that specifically address social conscience and responsibility of the Canadian public. By creative engagement of non-indigenous and Indigenous students in learning about histories of Indigenous peoples’ experiences of resurgence and decolonial resistance, university students are increasingly engaged in issues of equity and inclusion within systems of education, as well as primed for more robust engagement in the public sphere. Convergent with work of the TRC, digital ecologies have proliferated and mainstreamed, mobilizing substantial shifts and developments in hybrid pedagogy. While hybrid pedagogy as a movement resists classification, proponents primarily converge in the intersections of critical methodologies for education and exploring the political implications of new media and technology. In the context of this presentation, the presenter will provide an overview of how this work has been taken up in the field of child and youth care at the University of Victoria, with particular attention to curricular development which exposes students to the settler-colonial structures which have impacted (and continue to impact) Indigenous children, youth and families (i.e., IRS, the 60s Scoop, foster care, and mass incarceration), as well as the forms of decolonial resistance which are mobilized through digital ecologies (i.e., legal, political structures, activism online). Special attention will be given to how these initiatives have helped reconfigure reconciliation education as a hybrid pedagogy in the following ways: (1) by addressing issues of access through a blended learning format, (2) by diversifying the issue of accessibility in terms of clarifying unique needs of Indigenous and non-Indigenous learners, (3) by illuminating the affective processes that result from reconciliation education, including mental health paradigms such as trauma-informed praxis and life promotion paradigms, as well as fragility and ally-ship, and (4) the ways in which digital ecologies materialize decolonial actions through innovative media and methods that are networked and participant-driven. Examples from piloted project will be presented and implications for pedagogy and research will be explored.