Narrowing the Achievement Gap for Native American Students (original) (raw)
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Cultivated Ground: Effective Teaching Practices for Native Students in a Public High School
2013
In the spring of 2013, the authors participated in a class at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education that connects students who act as consultants to native communities who want students to work on specific projects. Dr. Dawn Mackety of the National Indian Education Association submitted a project request to this class. This project was to assess the effective teaching practices being used in one or more superiorly performing United States public high schools that had a high number of American Indian/Alaskan Native students. Research on effective teaching practices for American Indian/Alaskan Native students has occurred primarily in tribally owned or charter schools and have identified culturally based education and language-based curriculum as effective for native students. In a similar vein, research in these schools and public schools has also identified culturally responsive teaching as effective for this population as well. We identified schools using testing data...
culturally appropriate changes in education are critically necessary for Native American students, 2020
History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. (Baldwin, 2017). The purpose of this project is to analyze-What culturally appropriate changes in education are critically necessary for Native American students? This study aimed to answer the following question: How can education from a human right based perspective incorporate cultural awareness into the school curriculum to express interest in Native American students? How can we improve equality in Education for Native Americans? What is the impact of colonization on Native American students? What are the human rights laws applicable to the United States under state laws? The overarching themes that emerged, as a result, include the establishment of diverse and equitable education through a right based Education to teaching practices. The right-based education approach has been identified as supporting student curiosity and embracing a universal design for learning as well as principles of culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy that ensure success for all students. Therefore, a rights-based approach to education is imperative. Schooling that values human rights-both in language and in practice, in schoolbooks and the schoolyard-is crucial to realizing quality education. Complex barriers can hinder the goals of Education for All; a rights-based approach to education plays a crucial role in overcoming such obstacles. (UNICEF, 2007).
Teaching American Indian and Alaska Native Students
The Evergreen State College, 2007
This paper examines a significant body of research that pertains to American Indian and Alaska Native learners in order to determine what causes the trends of low academic achievement and high drop out rates among this population. The historical background of American Indian and Alaska Native education gives a comprehensive summary of how policies and practices, such as the formation of government boarding schools, were used to acculturate and assimilate students into the Anglo-American, Christian society; and later, how the concept of self-determination was established. The review of the research studies represents a broad range of American Indian and Alaska Native populations in order to reveal some of the potential causes for such trends, and to reveal effective strategies for teaching American Indian and Alaska Native students across the country. The research studies concentrate on the following areas: curriculum, parent and community attitudes, schools and current policies, high drop-out rates, racism, traditionalism, motivation, learning styles, methods of assessment, and teaching strategies. Suggestions for how teachers can improve the academic opportunities of American Indian and Alaska Native students are presented in three key areas: teachers as learners, teachers as innovators, and teachers as allies.
Journal of Transformative Leadership & Policy Studies, 2014
American Indian cultural traditions and practices are presented for their merit in promoting student learning within the K-12 educational system. Spe-cific culturally imbedded practices are provided as examples by which student learning can be enhanced while honoring First Nation’s teaching and learn-ing practices. Five developmental theorists noted in this concept paper speak to pedagogical practices that are in alignment with American Indian cultural orientations and that support their inherent value for application in the classroom. This paper asserts that by valuing and promoting American Indian culture and practices in the K-12 curriculum, that the United States would make greater strides in not only affect-ing the achievement gap, but in taking steps toward equity and achieving social justice goals.
2020
Low academic performance among Native American students has been a problem for several decades. Some researchers like Bradbury et al. (2012) have studied issues related to education, but have not targeted elementary and secondary school students’ academic performances. More needs to be done, specifically on Native American students’ academic achievements, to understand the problem and provide data that could potentially ameliorate the situation. Data on state assessments from North Dakota’s Department of Public Instruction has shown low academic performances for students from kindergarten through 12th grades in school districts with high Native American student enrollments (Insights.nd.gov, 2018). This quantitative study examined approximately 90 teachers’ perceptions available within three school districts with high Native American student enrollment regarding Native American students’ school attendance, student-teacher relationships, students’ quality of life at home, and parental...
Daedalus, 2018
American Indian/Alaska Native education – the training for life of children, adolescents, and adults – has been locked in battle for centuries with colonial schooling, which continues to the present day. Settler societies have used schools to “civilize” Indigenous peoples and to train Native peoples in subservience while dispossessing them of land. Schools are the battlegrounds of American Indian education in which epistemologies, ontologies, axiologies, pedagogies, and curricula clash. In the last century, Native nations, communities, parents, and students have fought tenaciously to maintain heritage languages and cultures – their ways of being in the world – through Indigenous education and have demanded radical changes in schools. Contemporary models of how educators are braiding together Indigenous education and Indigenous schooling to better serve Native peoples provide dynamic, productive possibilities for the future.