Educational Anthropology
The potential of educational anthropology could be seen in the early 1800’s with anthropologists being involved in early curriculum development but it did not take hold as a field of specialization until the late 19th century. The majority of the development, it has been argued \cite{Eddy1987}, took place during the 1920’s, coinciding with the rise in professionalism in the field of anthropology. Elizabeth Eddy, a prominent educational anthropologist in the United States, divides the history of educational anthropology into two sections: the Formative Years, 1925-1954, and the Institutionalization and Specialization Years, 1955-present. During the Formative Years, several themes were emphasized; generalizations of human development made by Freud, Piaget, and Watson, were challenged, and the eugenics movement was refuted. Anthropologists were involved in a number of commissions established by the Progressive Education Association throughout the 1930’s. Funded by the General Education Board and the Carneige Corporation, these studies included the development of proposals and material for revising the social studies curriculum in secondary schools and the initiation of intensive study of adolescents. Furthermore, during the 1930’s, several American anthropologists were involved in addressing the educational problems of Native Americans as employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. These anthropologists wrote historical and ethnographic texts and developed orthographies for use in schools. Many prominent anthropologists have been involved in the development of educational anthropology, such as Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, and Mead. Malinowski worked in Africa training anthropologists, missionaries, and educators in ethnographic field methods, and applying them to educational problems. In 1934, Malinowski addressed the New Education Fellowship in South Africa who were “deeply committed to the need of Western educators to take indigenous native systems of education into account when formulating educational policies” (Eddy 1987, p.12). During the same year, Radcliffe-Brown lectured at the “Education and Culture Contacts” conference at Yale which consisted of attendees from the West Indes, India, Philippines, Great Britain, China, and the United States. The major theme of the conference was “the need to adapt education to individual and community needs rather than to transfer Western educational practices wholesale” \cite{Eddy1987}p.12.
Mead was also involved in the organization of a conference that brought together education and anthropology in 1949. Funded by the Carnegie Corporation, “The Educational Problems of Special Cultural Groups” conference held at the Teachers College in New York was attended by colonial educators from British African territories and American educators from the south to discuss the education of African Americans. This conference was a turning point in that the methods and problems of education in the south were no longer being applied to those in Africa. Instead, each should be addressed and studied individually \cite{Eddy1987}. Mead’s most influential work, Coming of Age in Samoa, was also influenced by educational anthropology. Psychologists and educators were attempting to understand the struggles of youth and why they were not adjusting to the changes taking place, and to create resources to help. Mead, however, believed that psychology was inadequate to provide a complete understanding and focused her work on what she considered a simpler society that she believed would make analysis more easily possible. In Samoa, Mead studied the development and lives of adolescent girls, finding that adolescence in Samoa was not analogous to that in the United States \cite{mead2017}. Mead’s work in Samoa exemplifies the trends in educational anthropology leading up to the Stanford Conference, focusing on childhood and youth, and where the anthropological work was not a part of an institutionalized process, but was dependent on the individuals \cite{Eddy1987}.
1954 marks the end of what Eddy terms “the formative years” of educational anthropology, with the Stanford Conference that looked to address the future cooperation of education and anthropology. Educational anthropology still did not formally exist at this time, nor was it the purpose of the conference to create the sub-field. Four themes were the focus of the conference: “the search for a philosophical as well as a theoretical articulation of education, the necessity for sociocultural contextualization of the educative process, the relation of education to ‘culturally phrased’ phases of the life cycle, and the nature of intercultural understanding and learning” (Eddy 1987, p. 13-14). The Stanford Conference was the beginning of the formalization of the subfield of educational anthropology, a notion that was furthered by the postwar growth in the discipline during the 1960’s. While applied anthropology declined during the 1960’s, it was during this time that anthropology received its first federal support for curriculum development and discipline oriented teacher training. A number of other projects that linked education and anthropology were undertaken throughout the decade: Anthropology Curriculum Study Project (1962), Man: A Course of Study, and the Teacher’s Resources in Urban Education Project. In 1965 the Culture of Schools program was initiated under Stanley Diamond as a collaboration between anthropologists and behavioral scientists to develop foundations for research in American mass education. This resulted in the Program in Anthropology and Education directed by Fred Gearing. These programs were important in the national visibility of what was becoming educational anthropology. The formal institutionalization of educational anthropology as a field of specialization concluded in 1970 with the organization of the Council on Anthropology and Education, followed by the journal Anthropology and Education Quarterly in 1977\cite{Eddy1987}. Much of the history of educational anthropology has been an attempt to move away from colonial practices but has still been colonial in nature. The involvement of colonial educators and anthropologists in conferences, the themes of which often focused on localizing the education for the needs of individual communities instead of generalizations, demonstrates the desire to create educational systems that are founded on local knowledge and practices but are nonetheless still undertaken through Western methods. In Canadian anthropology, the colonial influence in educational anthropology can be seen through the study of residential schools.
PhD candidate Peter Sindell conducted an anthropological study of the effects of a residential school on the cultural identities of Cree students at a school in Quebec from July 1966 to September 1967. Sindell studied 13 Cree children who had all been raised in “traditional” Cree homes before attending La Tuque Residential School, operated by Anglican Church of Canada for the Indian Affairs Board. La Tuque Residential School opened in 1963 and was located 180 Miles northeast of Montreal. Through interviews with the children, parents, and teachers before, during, and after attending school, a series of behavioral rating forms administered by counsellors and teachers, and observational protocols, Sindell determined that most students experience a conflict in identity in later years from alternating between the residential school and the trading post where they were raised \cite{Sindell1987}. While in this study Sindell does not make any recommendations for solving the problem of the disassociation of identity nor does he partake in curriculum formation, it is an excellent example of the colonial background of educational anthropology in Canada. Furthermore, the lack of suggestions, or cultural emendations, demonstrates the shift in perspective that was taking place at the time from addressing the "Indian Problem" and trying to provide solutions, to studying the cultures without making emendations \cite{Buchanan2013}. Despite the colonial background of both education and anthropology in Canada, strides are being made to work toward decolonization. Current trends in curriculum development and educational anthropology in Canada have the decolonization of education as a central theme.
Current Trends
Innovations in educational ethnography have showcased the ways in which ethnography can shed light on the educational process. Currently, educational researchers are applying ethnographic tools to their work and forming strong relationships with ethnographers. The benefits from these partnerships have included cultural dialogue being built into curricula, and the cultural training of educators, who, with the use of ethnographic tools, are able to “analyze their own reactions reflexively” \citep*{spindler2006}p. xviii).
Across Canada, curricula development has come to focus on the incorporation social justice and ecological and indigenous perspectives over recent years \citep*{young2011}. These three themes work together toward decolonizing Canadian education and anthropologists have played a key role in this. William Pinar summarizes the current trends in curriculum development as “the concept of decolonization- not only of Indigenous Peoples, but of Canadians of European decent as well- seems to summarize the pressing curricular concern” \cite{Pinar2011} p. 7). This has become a pressing concern because of the systematic racism that is the legacy of the colonization of Canada and the Residential Schools that followed. Families have been torn apart and damaged, and students traumatized resulting in cycles of internalized colonization evidenced by high rates of suicide and incarceration and low rates of graduation and achievement in school. One way that this can be addressed is through the reconciliation of Treaty rights to education and the incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge into curricula \cite{battiste2011}. The development of curricula has not been free from politics because of the government and corporate funding for education, conferences, and projects, such as those that early educational anthropologists were involved in. Indigenous Knowledge focuses on holistic development: intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and physical, and is necessary for the survival of Indigenous people in Canada \cite{bell2011}. What were life-long learning practices based on the ecological needs of the community included language and oral traditions, community socialization, ceremonies and relationships, are now being incorporated into curricula to confront hidden standards of racism and colonialism in what has attempted to be a culturally sensitive and authentic manner \cite{Battiste2011}.
Indigenous thought is founded “on a deep understanding that we all live in relation to the land” \cite{ng-a-fook2011} p.315). Therefore, environmental education must become a key component of curricula. Kulnieks, Longboat, and Young (2011) argue that all education needs to become environmental education in order to rectify the separation between humans and the natural world. To do this, Indigenous ways of knowing, not Indigenous culture must be applied to the classrooms. This can be accomplished through inquiry into personal and cultural histories, and interaction with the natural landscape such as with the practice of growing food, learning medicinal, edible and lethal plants. Thus, a shift from learning about nature to learning from nature will take place\citep*{2011}). Ng-A-Fook accomplished this through engaging his students in creating social action based curriculum, addressing the gab between what was learned in the classroom and the knowledge used for everyday living through knowledge from lived experiences. His students worked with Algonquian Elders to create a curriculum for the Kitigan Zibi community to incorporate the Algonquian language and knowledge into the everyday lives of the students. They worked to create a curricular space of discourse and action\cite{Ng-A-Fook2011} . Land-based activities, exposure to traditional practices, and incorporation of Indigenous knowledge are all ways that educators can work toward providing experiences that will benefit all students. Using the Medicine Wheel as an educational framework with teachings and pedagogical application can provide the holistic education necessary to the survival of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Positive cultural identity among Indigenous youth is linked to happiness in school and more academic success\cite{Bell2011}. Erickson Collegiate Institute is a prime example of how these curricular trends have been incorporated into the school.
Rolling River School Division Case Study
Rolling River School Division is a small school division in western Manitoba that includes elementary and high schools in Onanole, Erickson, Minnedosa, Rivers, Forrest, Rapid City, Oak River, and Douglas. The priorities of the school division are outlined as: mental health and wellbeing, cultural proficiency, literacy and numeracy. In 2015 the school division mandated that the infusion of aboriginal education into all schools was a top priority. This has come to fruition through additional training for teachers and support staff, a requirement for all classes to have at least one unit that focuses on Indigenous themes, and a database through which teachers can share their curricula. While all schools in the division have embraced this change, one school stands out: Erickson Collegiate Institute (ECI). ECI is a high school located in the town of Erickson, Manitoba, but has students attending from the surrounding towns of Onanole, Sandy Lake, and Rolling River First Nation Reserve. The school has a population of approximately 150 students from grades 7-12, with 45% of the population being Aboriginal. In 2012 ECI began the long-term goal of incorporating Indigenous perspectives into the curricula and extra-curricular activities, three years before it was required by the division. The goals of ECI are to create a space for education in which all students feel a sense of inclusion and where a better understanding of the history of all Canadians can be reached while providing role models for all students. It is important to the school that the infusion of Indigenous knowledge is not seen as an event, but rather a sustainable practice.
Outside of the classroom, this has included students participating in the Drag the Red Project, Orange Shirt Day, organizing a multicultural day, attending conferences, organizing a drumming group, and having the opportunity to smudge at school and attend ceremonies and feasts. Within the classroom, each teacher has taken a different approach to infusing Indigenous knowledge into the curriculum. The Food and Nutrition course has guest chefs come in to teach the students how to make different dishes from various cultures, including the making of bannock and Indian Tacos. In the sciences the focus is on the relationship with the natural world, studying plants and their uses, such as suggested by Kulnieks, Longboat, and Young (2011). The Horticulture class has an assignment on “the significance of wild rice crops to Indigenous people of Manitoba” in which the presentation of the information can be written, oral, or visual \cite{waterman2017}. In the fall of 2017, the photography class undertook a project where they attended a traditional dance and photograph it. This assignment provided the students, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, with the opportunity to experience and better understand the ceremonies and ways of knowing. It allowed the students to connect the land and histories with the coursework in photography.