Teaching Life Narratives in the Classroom: Strategies Based on Indigenous Traditions

The life narrative is an oral genre grounded in Indigenous tradition and teaching practice. In Canadian Indigenous communities, the expertise and content transmitted by life narratives are a part of their oral heritage. Drawing from their personal and professional experiences in Indigenous school environments, as well as the results from exploratory studies, the authors have developed an educational model for teaching life narratives in the classroom. This paper begins with an overview on the pedagogical use of life narratives for historical reconciliation, knowledge and expertise preservation, and ethical education. This enables the authors to propose a definition supported by the existing scientific literature. An analysis of the data collected from Innu, Algonquin, and Mohawk communities revealed the main strategies commonly used by their teachers and Elders. A pedagogical model dividing these strategies into planning, integration, and implementation phases for using life narratives is finally presented.     

Taking a stance: child agency across the dimensions of early adolescents' environmental involvement 1

This article examines the nature of early adolescents' environmental involvement based on a study with 10–13‐year‐olds. Drawing from literal and metaphorical interviews, a visual survey and visual maps, the study points to the dimensions of environmental involvement: connectedness, engagement with the environment, questioning, belief in capacity, taking a stance and strategic action. Children's agency runs across the dimensions, as children intentionally and strategically figure their way through significant life influences, beliefs towards nature and age‐defined barriers. Of interest is what the sources of environmental involvement are, as well as how a child interacts and engages in situations and with resources at hand. Along with awakening to the natural environment, children are discovering themselves and carving a place in the world.     

Interactional effects of the environment on interviews

This study investigates the effect of the environment factor on discourse mode and content in an interview situation. Fifteen eight-year-olds were interviewed in three specific and different locations in their school (classroom, doctor's office and playground) that formed the three experimental groups. Analysis of the interview data (propositional discourse analysis) shows that each experimental group produced a specific type of speech characterized by the occurrence of particular language markers.