Engaging preservice students in decolonizing education through the blanket exercise

ABSTRACT

This article explores the impact of the so-called ‘blanket exercise’, an interactive learning activity that engages individuals in rediscovering Canadian history and society through an Indigenous lens, in collaboration with First Nations, Métis and Inuit elders and community members. This exploratory and qualitative research discusses how the blanket exercise can engage education students on an emotional level and how it impacts their learning regarding a revised teaching quality standard that now requires teachers to contribute to a greater intercultural understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and therefore play an active role in the reconciliation process.

Cet article propose une réflexion sur la mise en œuvre de « l’exercice des couvertures », une activité pédagogique créée en collaboration avec des aînés et des membres des communautés Premières Nations, Métisses et Inuites, qui permet de (re)découvrir l’histoire et la société canadienne à travers une perspective autochtone. Cette recherche exploratoire et qualitative discute de la manière dont cet exercice peut impacter la formation des futurs enseignants et leur permettre d’atteindre une norme de qualité de l’enseignement nouvellement révisée qui exige qu’ils contribuent à une meilleure compréhension interculturelle entre peuples autochtones et non-autochtones et qu’ils jouent ainsi un rôle actif dans le processus de réconciliation.

KEYWORDS:

• Blanket exercise
• preservice teacher
• reconciliation
• social justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Eva Lemaire is Associate Professor of Education at Campus Saint-Jean and Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Policy Studies (University of Alberta). Her research interests include multilingual language acquisition, crosslinguistic awareness, language revitalization, social justice education, education of reconciliation, as well as French language acquisition in both minority and immersion contexts. Her current research focuses on michif language awareness in French immersion and French-speaking schools in Western Canada.

Notes

1 This term refers to the children being placed in non-Indigenous families while the residential school system started to disappear in the 1960s.

2 https://www.kairosblanketexercise.org/photos/.

3 ‘Indigenous Education’ is a multifaceted term that conveys different meanings, as explained by Goulet and Goulet (2015). It does not refer in this paper to the education of Indigenous students, but rather to the inclusion of Indigenous pedagogies, perspectives and relationships, as well as to the attempt to deconstruct the colonial system of education.

4 http://bentarrow.ca/.

5 I want here to take the opportunity to thank warmly Bent Arrow for their generosity. The team accepted to donate for free their time and to share their stories; and the emotional labour they provided should be properly acknowledged.

6 Term prompted by the question: did you find the blanket exercise relevant?

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education under the Innovation in Teacher Education Grant Program (#2018-0249).