MRC Brown Bag: Teresa McCarty (UCLA)
***Note new location!***
Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy and Academic Well-Being:
Lessons from Indigenous Education
This presentation explores recent research and practice on critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy (CSRP) in Indigenous education (Lee & McCarty, 2017; McCarty & Lee, 2014). The presentation foregrounds academic well-being as a holistic alternative to conventional measures of academic achievement, encompassing learners’ intellectual, cultural, linguistic, affective, and physical well-being. Building on Ladson-Billing’s (1995) call for culturally relevant pedagogy, extensive research on Indigenous culture-based education, and Paris and Alim’s (2017) recent work on culturally sustaining pedagogies, CSRP seeks to revitalize and sustain Indigenous cultural and linguistic practices disrupted by colonization, and promote education parity and equity. As an expression of Indigenous sovereignty, CSRP is inherently decolonizing, recognizing the need for educational accountability to Indigenous communities. Examining selected cases, the presentation highlights the potential of CSRP to promote the academic well-being of Indigenous and other minoritized learners, both inside and outside of schools.
Teresa L. McCarty is the G.F. Kneller Chair in Education and Anthropology, and Faculty in American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research, teaching, and outreach focus on Indigenous education, language education planning and policy, and ethnographic studies of education in and out of schools. Her recent books include “To Remain an Indian”—Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education (with K. Tsianina Lomawaima, 2006), Language Planning and Policy in Native America—History, Theory, Praxis (2013), Indigenous Youth and Multilingualism (with L.T. Wyman and S.E. Nicholas, 2014), Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Americas (with S.M. Coronel-Molina, 2016), and The Anthropology of Education Policy (with A.E. Castagno, 2018). In 2010 she received the George and Louise Spindler Award from the American Anthropological Association for lifetime contributions to educational anthropology, and in 2015 she gave the 12th Annual American Educational Research Association Brown Lecture. Her current research, funded by the Spencer Foundation, is a U.S.-wide study of Indigenous-language immersion schooling.
