Abstract
After 400 years of imposed and mandated Americanized schooling, indigenous youth in the United States have suffered consequences that are evident in their social relationships and academic performance. The competing ideologies and messages of cultural pluralism and assimilation have negatively impacted the daily schooling experiences of approximately 1.2 million indigenous youth (Swisher and Tippeconnic, 1999) across the United States who mostly attend public schools (Indian Nations At Risk Report, 1990). Since the Meriam Report of 1928 to the present, standardized testing has unfairly labeled indigenous youth. Reyhner and Eder (2004) have asserted “… the greatest danger facing Indian education … is the push for outcomes assessment, state and national standards, and the associated increased use of high stakes testing in all facets of education …” (p. 11). Conflicting expectations of assimilation and diversity as well as biased assessments have marginalized indigenous youth and have contributed to a self-fulfilling prophesy for both indigenous students and the teachers who teach them.
The most effective school pedagogies have been revealed by the study of Native American classrooms that use their traditional cultural patterns of activity and interaction…. The communities of Native Americans, uniquely, can be the seedbed for infusing fundamental human processes of teaching/learning into public education.
— Tharp, R. G., 2006.
It is the responsibility of the teacher or educator to show how dominant forms of knowledge and ways of knowing constrict human capacities.
— Ng, R., 2003.
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© 2009 Soula Mitakidou, Evangelia Tressou, Beth Blue Swadener, and Carl A. Grant
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Manuelito, K.D., Roanhorse-Dineyazhe, M. (2009). Rethinking American Education through Indigenous Wisdom and Teachings. In: Mitakidou, S., Tressou, E., Swadener, B.B., Grant, C.A. (eds) Beyond Pedagogies of Exclusion in Diverse Childhood Contexts. Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622920_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622920_14
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