Reconciliation Education Research Articles

Effectiveness of Standardized Medication Reconciliation Education on Provider's Compliance and Medication Discrepancies in an Ambulatory Clinic Caring for Post-Allo HSCT Patients. a Quality Improvement Project.

Effectiveness of Standardized Medication Reconciliation Education on Provider's Compliance and Medication Discrepancies in an Ambulatory Clinic Caring for Post-Allo HSCT Patients. a Quality Improvement Project.

Just Because We’re Small Doesn’t Mean We Can’t Stand Tall: A Child and Youth Rights Movement

In this article, the authors share their research on a curriculum for social justice, truth, and then reconciliation as put forth by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society (Caring Society). The Caring Society is a non-profit organization that advocates for equity and social justice for First Nations children and creates social justice educational materials for Canadian learners. The authors provide an overview of the Caring Society campaigns and educational research. More specifically, they discuss how the Caring Society is creating educational resources that center a child and youth-driven civil rights movement across the school curriculum. Such curricular and pedagogical approaches focus on truth and then reconciliation, Indigenous sovereignty, and position a social justice pedagogy. They then discuss some of the ways we might advocate relational forms of citizenship that seek to honour the truth, and then reconciliation education.

Closing the gap between 'us' and 'them': The role of perspective taking and empathy in Reconciliation Education

Closing the gap between 'us' and 'them': The role of perspective taking and empathy in Reconciliation Education

Lessons from Our Sweetgrass Baskets: A Wholistic Vision of Academic Success for Indigenous Women in Higher Education

This qualitative inquiry documents the lessons gleaned from my journey toward the praxis of Indigenous Maternal Pedagogies, an Indigenous women-centred teaching and learning engagement, to offer insights for supporting Indigenous women in higher education. Specifically, this article offers an express vision for Indigenous women’s educational access and success in higher education by sharing a collective research story offered by Indigenous women participants who completed one or more of three courses related to Indigenous women’s literatures and Indigenous maternal theory. Each course was delivered through a decolonial feminist lens, comprised of Indigenous curricular content and engaged students in culturally relevant assessment. This work connects Maternal Pedagogies with Indigenous epistemologies that embrace the “whole student” within educational contexts to establish a teaching and learning environment that can speak to the hearts and minds of students. In the spirit of reconciliation, I position this environment as a safe space where students can be their whole authentic selves and where their realities and lived experiences are positioned as strengths and key assets to establishing an ethical space for cross-cultural and anti-racist dialogue. Collectively, the participant narratives offer four key lessons that are integral to reconciliation education more broadly, and I map these lessons as final recommendations that align with Kirkness and Barnhardt’s timeless work on the “Four Rs” of respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility.

Considerations in education for forgiveness and reconciliation: lessons from Arab and Muslim majority contexts

ABSTRACT This article presents lessons learned on the education for forgiveness and reconciliation in Muslim and Arab majority contexts, especially as part of civic engagement or across content areas. It first presents a brief review of the literature on forgiveness and reconciliation and ways they are interrelated in the larger Arab and Muslim contexts. Secondly, it points out religious and cultural sources that ground the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation. Thirdly, it presents the analysis of forgiveness stories collected from various Arab communities and discusses the main obstacles that hinder adopting a forgiveness and reconciliation agenda. Finally, it proposes forgiveness education and pedagogy based on stories to provide the framework and mechanisms to advance forgiveness and reconciliation education in schools and education spaces. We recommend utilizing local stories and storytelling as a method to delve into interpersonal and social conflicts.

Disruptive Knowledge in Education for Reconciliation: The Effects of Indigenous Course Requirements on Non-Indigenous Students’ Attitudes

Following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, various institutions have embarked on diverse educational initiatives in the name of creating equitable and respectful relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples. One such initiative is the University of Winnipeg’s mandate that all undergraduate students fulfill an Indigenous Course Requirement (ICR). Using the framework of disruptive knowledge, this mixed-methods study investigated the impact of select ICR courses on non-Indigenous students’ attitudes. Results revealed increased recognition of discriminations facing Indigenous Peoples, increased support for systemic change, and self-described behavioural changes. At the same time, these results highlight the limitations of such courses within a settler-colonial context.

Evaluation of an educational strategy to improve medication reconciliation in ambulatory care

BackgroundImproper medication reconciliation can result in inaccurate medication lists. When medication lists are inaccurate, it can result in drug-drug interactions, dosing errors, and medication duplication. Interventions targeting medication reconciliation have had varying levels of success. ObjectiveThis study aimed to describe the medication reconciliation educational program, its implementation in a health care system, pharmacist and clinic personnel perception of the program, and its impact on clinic personnel knowledge and practice. MethodsGuided by the Conceptual Model of Implementation Research, a partially mixed sequential dominant status evaluation of a pharmacist-led educational program on evidence-based practices for medication reconciliation implemented into all primary care clinic sites by examining implementation outcomes was conducted. The implementation outcomes measured include penetration, fidelity, acceptability, appropriateness, feasibility, and adoption. Data were collected through program data and direct observations, pre- and postsurveys, and semistructured interviews of pharmacists and clinic personnel. ResultsOf 46 primary care sites, 37 primary care sites (80%) implemented the pharmacist-delivered medication reconciliation education from April to June 2021 with representation from each of Geisinger’s regions. Ten clinic sites (27%) completed the medication reconciliation educational program as originally designed, with the remainder adapting the program. A total of 296 clinic personnel completed the presurvey, and 178 completed the postsurvey. There were no differences in baseline characteristics between clinic personnel who completed the pre- versus postsurvey. All clinic personnel interviewed felt satisfied with the educational program and felt it was appropriate because it directly affected their job. Clinic personnel felt the educational program was acceptable and appropriate; two major concerns were discussed: a lack of patient knowledge about their medications and a lack of time to complete the medication reconciliation. The adherence rate to the elements of the medication reconciliation that were covered in the education program ranged from 0% to 95% in the 55 observations conducted. ConclusionAn educational program for medication reconciliation was found to be acceptable and appropriate but was often adapted to fit site-specific needs. Additional barriers affected adoption of best practices and should be addressed in future studies.

Unsettling the urban–rural dichotomy for Indigenous education and education for reconciliation

ABSTRACT The urban/rural dichotomy used in framing Indigenous educational issues is becoming increasingly untenable and deserving of scrutiny. Indigenous urban education follows initiatives derived from rural areas with the assumption that rural Indigenous education programs are pure or authentic. Without a critical examination of power relations, the flow of people and knowledge in the Indigenous curriculum development process may lead to continued disrespect, appropriation, and tokenization of Indigenous knowledges. This article challenges the conventional conceptualizations surrounding the rural/urban Indigenous educational divide. In so doing, the authors explore two cases: The Saskatchewan (Canada) Ministry of Education’s official K-12 science curriculum attempts to integrate Indigenous perspectives, as do Taiwan’s Indigenous experimental schools. The finding suggests moving beyond pan-urban/rural paradigms that are stemming from settler colonialism. Acknowledging the important role partnerships play for Indigenous education policy and program development, the authors put forth Crit-Trans Partnership Framework to analyze these two cases.

Teaching for truth: engaging with difficult knowledge to advance reconciliation

ABSTRACT As a settler colonial state, Canada has used education to advance colonialism in an effort to erase the experiences of Indigenous peoples. Today, education has a critical role to play in advancing the truth of our shared history just as it has played a role in enacting colonial practices and violence on Indigenous peoples. This action research project considers the practices of truth and reconciliation education in Canadian high school classrooms and reveals the need for white settler teachers to engage unrelentingly with difficult knowledge as they encounter and respond to settler colonialism. The research revealed that truth and reconciliation efforts must reaffirm the presence and value of Indigenous peoples, experiences, and epistemologies through the creation of intentional learning opportunities to disrupt colonialism. Notably, this research demonstrates the need for holistic pedagogical approaches as described through the teachings of the medicine wheel and its spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental domains.

Education for reconciliation? Understanding and acknowledging the history of teaching First Nations content in Victoria, Australia

ABSTRACT Contemporary Australian curricula require teachers to promote reconciliation through the teaching of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and languages. Engaging with First Nations knowledges and histories in education comes with a very complex and historically layered legacy. This paper examines the role of education in the ongoing process of colonisation by critically analysing historical and contemporary documents prescribing what Victorian students should learn about First Nations peoples, histories and cultures. These documents are discussed in the context of relevant events and policies, from the Terra Nullius ideologies that dominated curricula until the 1960s, through the growing agenda of self-determination in the 1970–1980s, and into the current swinging pendulum of political agendas. It is argued that contemporary curricula and policies promote reconciliation without embracing the necessary social justice and decolonising ideologies.

Radical Acts of Re-imaging Ethical Relationality and Trans-systemic Transformation


 This Indigenous métissage explores my engagement in Indigenous Arts-based Inquiry as a practice of Anishinaabe Ozihtoon or Indigenous making and knowledge generation. Anishinaabe Ozhitoon is a site that unlocks the theoretical potentialities of the intelligences within Indigenous Knowledge practices in contemporary contexts and reanimates Indigenous land-based assurgence. Reviving Indigenous artistic practices, as sites of co-imagining through constellations of co-creation, is part of ecological and community-based reconciliation and healing. Key to this process is the act of reciprocal recognition, a core practice that fosters ethical relationality, helps cultivate our Indigeneity, and honours the circle of life. This Indigenous métissage tracks the Indigenous pedagogical processes and Indigenous art making used in my own praxis and inquiry as a scholar while I worked in a university to create three pathways for trans-systemic knowledge creation: a university-wide President’s Dream Colloquium with an accompanying graduate course; a graduate diploma in Indigenous Education: Education for Reconciliation and a master’s in Indigenous Education: Truth, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Resurgence; and the Indigenous Research Institute initiation of an Indigenous Ethics Dialogue process as a trans-systemic pedagogical engagement with Indigenous and Western Knowledges, values, and ethics.

Constructing Ethical Learning Spaces Through Interdisciplinary Dialogue

ABSTRACT First piloted in 2017, MacEwan University’s Interdisciplinary Dialogue is a collaborative teaching and learning project that addresses topics relating to social justice across disciplines. In 2019, in collaboration with kihêw waciston Indigenous Centre, the Dialogue expanded its intercultural learning through a partnership with University nuhelot’įne thaiyots’į nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills and explored truth and reconciliation through a focus on Indigenous research. Building on Willie Ermine’s concept of ‘ethical spaces’, this article highlights how ethical learning spaces were created through Indigenous-led educational forums followed by an online student Interdisciplinary Dialogue. The Dialogue positioned students to explore histories of colonial relationships and their attendant harmful research practices; and to centre Indigenous knowledges and methodologies as foundational to Indigenous research. Students questioned oppressions in western pedagogy, and they envisioned a pedagogy of mutual respect for Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing. This article focuses on the online discussions conducted by students in the 2019 Dialogue. It shows how students understood that they were participants in disrupting colonial discourse in academia, reframing education for reconciliation, and expanding the construction of ‘ethical spaces’ across the University and beyond.

Envisioning indigenized geography: a two-eyed seeing approach

ABSTRACT Addressing educational curricula and programs in post-secondary education for Reconciliation brings new opportunities and challenges for geography educators, including decolonizing and indigenizing their own teaching practices and perspectives. A team of geography educators, from vastly different geographies and contexts, explored their understandings and approaches to indigenization and found commonalities aligned with Two-Eyed Seeing, a framework that calls for a weaving of perspectives to hold views of both Indigenous and Western knowledge simultaneously. While originally applied in a teaching context, Two-Eyed Seeing is now recognized as a valuable approach in Indigenous research but remains promising as a means to connect indigenous knowledge and epistemology to geography teaching practice. A review of challenges in indigenization efforts in education indicates that Two-Eyed Seeing can address a number of pedagogical challenges, including reducing binary perspectives, providing a more holistic worldview, and creating a safe space for students. Realizing goals of reconciliation, decolonization, and indigenization requires contributions and efforts from across the geography education community, including from non-Indigenous actors who may not be active in the Indigenous Geographies space. Providing strategies and examples of approaches such as Two-Eyed Seeing is critical to support these educators and ensure the best learning opportunities for their students.

The Role of Indigenous Knowledge Practices Within Transformative Reconciliation

This métissage explores scholarly relations among local Indigenous communities, school districts, teacher-learners and Simon Fraser University’s graduate diploma program titled Indigenous Education: Education for Reconciliation. Through our collective attending to the role of Indigenous knowledge practices and making within transformative reconciliation, a powerful resurgence of Indigenous ways of knowing and being emerged. This resurgence came about through participatory pedagogies of making and through the sharing of Indigenous knowledges, cultural practices, ceremony and language revitalization. The focus on Indigenous knowledge practices, circle processes and artmaking, as well as Indigenous worldviews, knowledges and perspectives, provided an enactment of rigorous resurgence and transformative reconciliation (Ash et al., 2018). Opportunities to be involved in Indigenous making and land practice with Indigenous Knowledge Holders provided occasions for teacher-learners to embody and embed Indigenous pedagogies and “two-eyed seeing” (Bartlett et al., 2012) within their educational practice. Throughout the program, teacher-learners were invited into Indigenous making, creative and critical conversations, exploring circle pedagogies, participatory processes, place-based explorations and intercultural dialogues with Indigenous Knowledge Holders and Elders. The teachers acknowledged and experienced Indigenous protocols and ceremonies, and they actively explored Indigenous teachings through Indigenous participatory pedagogies. An emphasis was placed on creating authentic Indigenous-learning pathways and to do so in relation to knowledge practices within a particular place, peoples and their unique cultural ecology. This Indigenous Métissage (Donald, 2012) weaves together narrative threads into a story of collaboration between teacher-learners and Knowledge Holders. They stand as a family stands, together to share and give witness to the profound learnings that have emerged from the journey.

The Heartbeat of Na’a: Documenting One School’s Blackfoot Cultural Learning Journey

In June 2019, students at an elementary school presented a Blackfoot/English opera and also wrote, illustrated and published Blackfoot/English books to showcase their 18-month-long Blackfoot learning journey. This collaborative story cannot be told in isolation by the researcher/designer alone. Together with the Elder who guided the work and the school principal, we will share the heart of this journey and the impact that this has had on pedagogy, school culture and relationships. Findings from this ethnographic study (Lassiter, 2005; Rappaport, 2008) within an Indigenous research paradigm (Chilisa, 2012; Donald, 2016; Wilson, 2008) highlight how wisdom and stories that are part of the land and how intentional and nurtured relationships with an Elder, with each other and with the animals led to a deeper appreciation of local place. It also created a stronger sense of engagement and belonging within the school for teachers and students. Within the conventional, privileged space of an opera, we created an open, ethical space that invited all students to thrive and participate (Ermine, 2007). Findings point to increased engagement by marginalized students in the land-based experiences, in the preparations for the opera and the book writing, and also in the opera performance itself. With video clips of the opera and samples of the books to lift our stories, this presentation aims to inspire action in the collective work of education for reconciliation. We see this journey as a gift to share with the world so that educators and leaders can create their own meaningful action across different contexts.

‘Forgiveness is something that can be seen from behind’. Visualizing a conversation with a perpetrator and a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in a reconciliation village

ABSTRACT In November 2018, the authors spent five days in Rwanda, visiting the Kigali Genocide Memorial (KGM) and undertaking a paid tourist day trip to regional memorials and a ‘reconciliation village’ near the border with Burundi, to conduct creative research by using the established, institutional network of post-genocide and reconciliation education and tourism in Rwanda. The authors collaborated to produce a visual essay that would focus purely on peripheral visual and aural impressions. They refrained from attempting to photograph exhibits or interview witnesses but rather took still images around external areas of the memorials as well as street views around Kigali. They were granted permission to audio record a conversation with a survivor and a perpetrator of the 1994 Rwandan genocide at the reconciliation village. This visual essay is presented as an assemblage of incidental photographs and fragments of the verbatim text of the taped conversation with the villagers. KGM workers explained that reconciliation villages exist throughout Rwanda as part of a state-sponsored reconciliation and peace building programme by virtue of which selected genocide perpetrators serving prison terms receive an official pardon, are trained in peace building, and are given resources to join genocide survivors in the construction of village infrastructure and community.

Wandering With/In the University of Alberta: Teaching Subjects & Place-based Truth & Reconciliation Education

This manuscript unfolds in the context of a Faculty of Education course that was designed in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s call to post-secondary institutions to identify and meet teacher-training needs relating to the history and legacy of Canada’s Indian residential school system. The course instructor (Madden) begins by tracing how she is theorizing truth and reconciliation education through engagement with literature produced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and those who respond to their efforts. The pedagogical activity Wandering With/In the University of Alberta animates how she attempted to mobilize these emerging understandings through course design. We then introduce the collective processes we carried out as co-authors (i.e., course instructor and three graduate students who completed the course): creating, analyzing, and representing data, as well as generating the knowledge claims offered throughout. Next, data fragments that weave photographs of and narrative writing about campus sites anchor exploration of three central themes: wandering in relation to (a) evolving understandings of self, (b) a situated and significant historical moment (i.e., Canada 150), and (c) the (imagined) classroom as a site of reconciliation. We conclude with a discussion that explores the relationship between Faculty of Education coursework, identity, and place-based pedagogies for truth and reconciliation education. Keywords: truth and reconciliation education, higher education, decolonizing, place-based education, teacher identity Cette étude s’est déroulée dans le contexte d’un cours offert par la Faculty of Education et développé en réponse à l’appel de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada aux établissements postsecondaires pour qu’ils identifient les besoins en formation des enseignants quant à l’histoire et les séquelles du système des pensionnats indiens au Canada et qu’ils répondent à ces besoins. La chargée de cours (Madden) débute en expliquant ses démarches pour théoriser l’éducation de vérité et réconciliation en se penchant sur la littérature produite par la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada et sur la réaction des gens aux efforts de la commission. L’activité pédagogique Wandering With/In the University of Alberta est une animation de ses efforts pour mobiliser ces nouvelles connaissances par la conception de son cours. Ensuite, nous présentons les processus collectifs que nous avons entrepris comme co-auteurs (c’est-à-dire, la chargée de cours et les trois étudiants aux études supérieures ayant complété le cours): la création, l’analyse et la représentation des données, ainsi que l’élaboration des déclarations présentées dans l’ensemble du cours. Par la suite, des fragments de données tissent des photos et des récits narratifs portant sur des sites sur le campus et offrent des balises pour l’exploration de trois thèmes centraux: errer par rapport à: (a) une compréhension en évolution de soi-même, (b) un moment historique significatif (par ex., Canada 150) et (c) la salle de classe (imaginée) comme site de réconciliation. Une discussion portant sur le rapport entre les cours de la Faculty of Education, l’identité et les pédagogies reposant axées les lieux au service de l’éducation de vérité et réconciliation vient terminer l’article. Mots clés: éducation de vérité et réconciliation, études supérieures, décolonisation, identité des enseignants

Wandering With/In the University of Alberta: Teaching Subjects & Place-based Truth & Reconciliation Education

This manuscript unfolds in the context of a Faculty of Education course that was designed in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s call to post-secondary institutions to identify and meet teacher-training needs relating to the history and legacy of Canada’s Indian residential school system. The course instructor (Madden) begins by tracing how she is theorizing truth and reconciliation education through engagement with literature produced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and those who respond to their efforts. The pedagogical activity Wandering With/In the University of Alberta animates how she attempted to mobilize these emerging understandings through course design. We then introduce the collective processes we carried out as co-authors (i.e., course instructor and three graduate students who completed the course): creating, analyzing, and representing data, as well as generating the knowledge claims offered throughout. Next, data fragments that weave photographs of and narrative writing about campus sites anchor exploration of three central themes: wandering in relation to (a) evolving understandings of self, (b) a situated and significant historical moment (i.e., Canada 150), and (c) the (imagined) classroom as a site of reconciliation. We conclude with a discussion that explores the relationship between Faculty of Education coursework, identity, and place-based pedagogies for truth and reconciliation education. Keywords: truth and reconciliation education, higher education, decolonizing, place-based education, teacher identity Cette etude s’est deroulee dans le contexte d’un cours offert par la Faculty of Education et developpe en reponse a l’appel de la Commission de verite et reconciliation du Canada aux etablissements postsecondaires pour qu’ils identifient les besoins en formation des enseignants quant a l’histoire et les sequelles du systeme des pensionnats indiens au Canada et qu’ils repondent a ces besoins. La chargee de cours (Madden) debute en expliquant ses demarches pour theoriser l’education de verite et reconciliation en se penchant sur la litterature produite par la Commission de verite et reconciliation du Canada et sur la reaction des gens aux efforts de la commission. L’activite pedagogique Wandering With/In the University of Alberta est une animation de ses efforts pour mobiliser ces nouvelles connaissances par la conception de son cours. Ensuite, nous presentons les processus collectifs que nous avons entrepris comme co-auteurs (c’est-a-dire, la chargee de cours et les trois etudiants aux etudes superieures ayant complete le cours): la creation, l’analyse et la representation des donnees, ainsi que l’elaboration des declarations presentees dans l’ensemble du cours. Par la suite, des fragments de donnees tissent des photos et des recits narratifs portant sur des sites sur le campus et offrent des balises pour l’exploration de trois themes centraux: errer par rapport a: (a) une comprehension en evolution de soi-meme, (b) un moment historique significatif (par ex., Canada 150) et (c) la salle de classe (imaginee) comme site de reconciliation. Une discussion portant sur le rapport entre les cours de la Faculty of Education, l’identite et les pedagogies reposant axees les lieux au service de l’education de verite et reconciliation vient terminer l’article. Mots cles: education de verite et reconciliation, etudes superieures, decolonisation, identite des enseignants

A de/colonizing theory of truth and reconciliation education

The author suggests that educators’ responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada cannot be reduced or reducible to practice without also considering the theories that are enfolded into reconciliatory initiatives and actions. She is guided by the central questions: How do I understand prevailing constructions of reconciliation in circulation? and How might I theorize a philosophy of truth and reconciliation education that responds to and upholds my de/colonizing commitments? The author develops a de/colonizing theory that includes four interrelated components. They include: (a) the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s notion of reconciliation and education for reconciliation, (b) Indigenous land-based traditions for establishing and maintaining respectful relationships, (c) the central role of Indigenous counter-stories in truth and reconciliation education, and (d) critiques of the construction and enactment of reconciliation. Together, these components provide orientations, challenges, and possibilities for consideration when engaging theory building, community involvement, research design, policy development, and practice for truth and reconciliation education.

On the land gathering: education for reconciliation

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the meaning of education for reconciliation in the context of Canadian settler-colonialism. It captures an attempt to delve into the meaning of reconciliation as an experiential process, through learning on the land with the Tahltan People. We focus on reconciliation not as a theory or political discourse, but rather as a meeting point of theory and experience. We identify and discuss four main components of education for reconciliation: Land as educator, Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy, reciprocity, and sovereignty. We argue for the need to shift from superficial and theoretical discourses of reconciliation in the classrooms to deep engagement with Indigenous knowledge and ways of living on the land.