Title: Making the classroom a healthy place : the development of affective competency in Aboriginal pedagogy

Author: Brown, Francis Lee

Degree Doctor of Philosophy - PhD

Program Educational Studies

Copyright Date: 2004

Abstract:

This thesis explores the development of affective competency in Aboriginal pedagogy through the exploration of the Native Training Institute (NTI), an institute that functioned from 1980 to 1987 in Kamloops, British Columbia. Ten students, two administrators arid one elder were interviewed to explore how the processes of affective education were included in the NTI curriculum. The thesis develops a theory of educational transformation based on the educational principles developed at the Native Training Institute that posits a theory of affective development founded on Aboriginal knowledge, learning identity, values, competencies, ideals and vision. Four arguments for the inclusion of affective education in contemporary curriculum are presented. First, the Indigenous assertion that emotions and values are essential to the decolonization process and therefore necessary for Aboriginal success in the educational environment is defined. Second, the argument of modern European philosophy that affect is more essential to the process of learning than has been previously thought. Third, the recent developments in cognitive science that uphold the Aboriginal world view that thinking and feeling are not only connected but that emotion plays the major role in the functioning of mind and memory. Fourth, the comments of the students from the NTI that the affective aspect of the curriculum at the institute was essential to their learning.

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/16109

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