Dr. Susan Dion Indigenous CI The Collaborative Inquiry Presentation DR. SUSAN DION: Okay, so part 2, The Listening Stone Project. When the collaborative inquiry--the First Nations, Metis and Inuit focused collaborative inquiry started 4 years ago I was asked to do some research on the work that was happening in the boards. So the Listening Stone Project is the research project that I do with my team of research assistants, and you're the ones, right? Who are doing the collaborative inquiry work out in the boards. And the Listening Stone is the research based on the work that you're doing. So that's the relationship between the Listening Stone Project and the collaborative inquiry. The collaborative inquiry is really--it really started with this realisation that First Nations, Metis, and Inuit students are in Ontario schools, right? They're in the publicly funded school in Ontario. The students are in your classrooms and really the Ministry started to think about the ways in which they were not aware, not necessarily have the knowledge and understanding to respond to First Nations, Metis, and Inuit students in the schools. And the need for this education, I mean the understanding of the Indigenous student achievement gap, right? There was increasing attention being paid to that achievement gap and a lot of questions being asked about how do we respond to that gap? And really early in the collaborative inquiry story was this realisation that well, the knowledge gap that teachers have, right? Is connected to the Indigenous student achievement gap. So if we're going to respond to the students then we also have to create opportunities for teachers to learn, because there's a realisation that teachers haven't had the opportunity to do the learning that they need that will allow them to be responsive to teaching this content that the students need. And so that's how the collaborative inquiry kind of started in this way. This realisation that we really need to change what is happening in classrooms and schools. And one of the really exciting things that we've found with the collaborative inquiry is that it really is supporting this paradigm shift, right? The work that's been happening in classrooms, and schools, and boards across the province has been contributing to a paradigm shift. And every year we have these face to face meetings in the fall when I report on what I learned from talking to people in the spring. It's in the spring when educators gather and tell their stories of what they did and what they learned where there's so much excitement about the paradigm shift, and we listen to boards report and then team members, we find ourselves chatting to each other and did you hear this? And did you hear what that school's doing? Did you hear what these teachers are doing? And it's an incredible sense of this feeling of the shift starting to happen through the collaborative inquiry.
And Taya K. Alfred, one of my colleagues at the University of Victoria has talked about this need for a paradigm shift. That, that is what is needed. And that's what's happening. So I know Troy had the goals up previously: increasing Indigenous student wellbeing and achievement, increasing knowledge, understanding, and awareness for all teachers and students and increasing engagement with partners. What we've learned from 4 years of research is how these goals are really, really inter-dependent right? I mean, my kids they go to school with non-Indigenous kids, right? And a lot of times we say they're Indigenous kids and the non-Indigenous kids but we know that there's a lot of diversity within the Indigenous student population and a lot of diversity within the non-Indigenous student population. So it's this collaborative inquiry is about all students right? The learning that all students need. And these goals cannot be accomplished separate from each other. We also have learned the critical role that community partners play in the collaborative inquiry. And the really important thing that I learned from this data collection is that educators, they tell me every year 95% of the data sources say that the most important thing about the collaborative inquiry is how much I’m learning. It's like I can't believe how much I’m learning through this collaborative inquiry. And then when I say what are the challenges? And again 96%, 97% every year the biggest challenge is what I don't know. So there's these almost it feels like a conflict. I'm learning so much, but I don't know. And it's this the more I learn, the more I realise how much I don't know, the more I realise how important my lack of knowledge is, the more I’m learning from the work that I’m doing as a team, right? So the way that the collaborative inquiry works and the power of it is that it allows you as educators to be learners, and it's working together as a team to do that learning, to take the time to do the learning and working in relationship with community partners. That's what's really making a difference. So just a moment of details. The data collections that I’ve done, I've now written four reports. 1, 2, and 3 are available online. It's actually the Council of Ontario Directors of Education that I'm under contract with CODE, right? My contract is not with the Ministry, it's with CODE. So they're the ones who are funding the research. And if you just Google Susan Dion Listening Stone you will get the access to the reports and you can see from this chart that the data collection that we've done, myself and my team of research assistants. So we've interviewed educators, surveys with educators. This year I did a lot of talking circles with teams of educators as well as community member talking circles. This was the first year that I actually was able to talk with students. It's always been a little bit of a challenge just because of the short data collection period. And it's
complicated, right? With ethics to get access to students. And I just have to say that in terms of the student data we do have an--I did do these talking circles, but we also want to expand the student voice. So I'm going to be doing another round of data collection with students. So if you're doing some work with s in your classrooms through your CI work and you'd like me to come and visit your class, or you'd like to share some of your students' work we'll be getting in touch with people again in early January to increase the student voice in the year 4 report. But you see I have observation notes and review of those. Some of you have done learning stories. I reviewed the learning stories as well. They're a part of the report. So first I'm going to talk a little bit about community partners, and just say if you are new to the collaborative inquiry and you have questions about who are the community partners? How do I get in touch with community partners? The year--it is the year 2 report has at the back of that report an appendix about how to do outreach to, and with to find out how to establish those relationships. and the community partners over the years have talked about how much they appreciate being involved in the collaborative inquiry, and they say things to me like you know Susan, they called once and I kind of ignored them. And then they called again and I still ignored them. But when they called a third time then I knew that they were serious. They weren't calling to complain about our students. They were calling because they really do value the knowledge that I have of the students, the knowledge that I have of the community. This is a different kind of partnership. This is what the community members are telling us, and being involved right from the start in the planning of the collaborative inquiry, what's your question going to be, right? All these decisions are made at the local level, and that makes a big difference for the community partners. You decide collaboratively what your question and what your focus is going to be for your school, for your school team. So some of the things that I learned from the talking circles, they're in schools and they're listening to s talk, and they're seeing the positive impact. They're really seeing the increased interest in teaching and learning about history both by the educators and by the students and they're finding that incredibly encouraging. They're very concerned about language. The community members I would say, their number one concern is how are we teaching Indigenous languages in the schools? What are we doing to increase the valuing of Indigenous language and Indigenous knowledge? And yeah, how can we work together to bring the knowledge and the language into all the schools, and classrooms on a regular basis.
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