JELPP – Volume 37 (2023)
Culturally responsive policy development: Co-constructing assessment and reporting practices with First Nation educators in Alberta
S. Laurie Hill and Paolina Sietz
Faculty of Education, St. Mary’s University, Alberta, Canada
Abstract
Informed by an adaption of the tri-level reform framework, we collaborated with a First Nation district student assessment committee, school principals, and district personnel to develop a student assessment policy. Through a series of workshops and meetings with school administrators and classroom teachers from Tsuut’ina Nation, located in southern Alberta, Canada, we created an assessment, evaluation, and reporting policy aligned to Tsuut’ina fundamental values, provincial priorities, and best practices in student assessment. Teaching practices that are aligned to the three educational pillars of learner outcomes, instruction, and assessment, as well as the Tsuut’ina fundamental values, have the potential to impact the Nation’s student educational success. We discuss implications of this work in relation to collaboration, Indigenous world view, and outcome- based reporting.
Storying family experiences in higher education: Surfacing, awakening, and transforming developing leader identity
Maria Cooper, Kiri Gould, and Louise Gorst
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Abstract
Storying family experiences provides a means to explore and support leader identity development. The idea of recalling and reflecting on stories about and from families can surface how orientations to lead are learned early on in life. We report on students’ narratives generated during a postgraduate early childhood education leadership course to understand the significance of family storytelling in leader identity development and the awakenings this process encouraged for those involved. Using McCain and Matkin’s (2019) concept of retrospective storytelling, narrative inquiry underpinned our analysis of students’ family-oriented stories and the identification of two themes regarding their orientation to leadership: the influence of families’ hardships, work ethic and selfless actions; and the expectations associated with being the first-born in the family and the assumed responsibilities. Our findings affirm the transformative potential of selecting, telling, and reflecting on family stories to both understand the roots of leadership motivations and develop leader identities. Implications include promoting a narrative-based pedagogy for leadership development that centres on postgraduate students’ retrospective storying of family experiences.