ERIC Number: EJ1469152
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1358-684X
EISSN: EISSN-1469-3585
Available Date: 0000-00-00
How Can We Teach When We Are Constantly Learning? De/Colonising Canadian Literature in Grade Seven English Language Arts
Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education, v32 n2 p156-166 2025
In this paper, I explore the transitional spaces of teaching and writing by restorying an anomalous event in my teaching of Canadian literature in a grade seven classroom and my efforts to decolonise that teaching. Thinking with Elizabeth Ellsworth's concept of pedagogy as it relates to knowledge in the making and the learning self, I take seriously the manner in which this pedagogy challenges the cultural myth of teacher as expert identified by Deborah Britzman. In my story of de/colonising teaching, a transitional space opens up when I become aware of the ways in which I work against the goals of decolonising in my very efforts towards them, the risks I take, and the damage I can do as I implicate myself and my students in this process. As I teach and as I write, I build from the ruins of this difficult knowledge what it means to de/colonise as an educator.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Literature, Language Arts, Grade 7, Decolonization, Teacher Role, Indigenous Populations, Indigenous Knowledge, History, Novels
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Education; Grade 7; Junior High Schools; Middle Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada