When Learning Is Life Giving: Redesigning Schools With Indigenous Systems of Relationality

Abstract

This article illustrates how designing schools with Indigenous systems of relationality can be life giving for a healthier post-COVID world. Indigenous systems of relationality—the worldviews, beliefs and practices, and moral precepts of being in relation with the rest of the living world—are the cornerstone of Indigenous knowledges, and the cornerstone of Indigenous families and communities. We consider the ways in which Indigenous systems of relationality can offer strategies for educators, families, and communities to redesign approaches to learning in schools in ways that sustain and promote life. Drawing on three case studies of schools in Thailand, México, and Colombia, we show how educators might respond to the specific needs within their communities, repair the fracturing of humans from nature, and orient us to life-giving forms of activity that are beneficial beyond our current crises and into the future.

The developing of executive function skills through culturally organized autonomy and helping

“…According to Indigenous child‐rearing practices, respect forms a person, and even babies are shown respect (Bolin, 2006; García, 2015). As children are recipients of respect, they learn to respect others and everything in their environment, keeping the well‐being of the community at the centre of any learning endeavour (Alonqueo Boudon et al, 2020; Meixi et al, 2022; Urrieta, 2015). Similarly, Mexican‐immigrant parents report that respect and being bien educado (respectful and considerate) are central factors that guide their parenting practices (Díaz & McClelland, 2017).…”

“…Asking them to engage in a task they have never or seldom seen completed does not align with their experiences of learning and skills development. Some Executive Function measures resemble school-like activities which are embedded with Eurocentric cultural practices and expectations that can be contradictory and even violent to the experiences of Indigenous children (Fish & Syed, 2018;Meixi et al, 2022;Rogoff et al, 2017). Formal schooling has been used as a colonial tool to erase Indigenous practices and values, resulting in violent imposition of ways of organizing learning and everyday interactions, using a hierarchical control over children.…”

Origin Theories of Learning: A River With Many Sources

“…They instead are practices, stories, and teachings that have ensured the collective continuance of communities across time and space in spite of colonial onslaughts and occupations. Furthermore, we articulate why deeply recalling, "re-membering," and recentering the scholarship of our ancestors and relatives builds on ongoing restorative currents in the field and can support a collective reach toward more lifegiving learning designs (Meixi, Moreno-Dulcey, et al, 2022).…”

A bridge to [em]power: A commentary on ‘collaboration at a microscale: Cultural differences in family interactions’

“…This can be accomplished in part by embedding skills instruction within meaningful and purposeful community contexts and collaborative, communal activities that involve students, their families, and communities, in authentic, rather than aesthetic ways in schools and classrooms. Some of the very important work of designing schools with Indigenous systems of knowledge and relationality is already being carried out in various places around the world (See Meixi et al, 2022;Sumida Huaman, 2020).…”