This paper presents reflections on an international field trip for Indigenous students enrolled in an Education degree at a university in Australia. The field trip was co-developed with staff, students, and community partners of a Canadian university, as a pilot project to prepare Indigenous students for work in various cultural contexts. This…

In narrative style, this paper looks at how a particular teaching-learning event, a meeting in 2003 between Canadian high school students and their Costa Rican host families in Pedrogosso, Costa Rica, unveils pedagogies of global citizenship. By interweaving insights obtained from scholars of education, experiences of students, and reflections by…

Learning spaces in higher education are fraught with colonial barriers such as teacher-centered, front facing, stark, feelingless, and unwelcoming classrooms that diminish students' feelings of well-being. For pre-service teachers, these are also the types of classrooms that they often inherit as they foray into the profession. Three Bachelor of…

Amongst a group of poet-scholar friends, all of us students of the American poet Robert Bly, we often speak of our "gratitude to old teachers," the title from one of Bly's (1999) poems. We cherish a meditative awareness of deeply rooted presences holding us up, buoying us as we stride across "Water that once could take no human…

In this article I discuss the ways in which writing poetry and reflecting on its meanings may be a valuable tool for promoting an educator's reflexivity surrounding issues of reconciliation. As Canada embarks on the work of healing the difficulties its colonial past has caused its original inhabitants (i.e. Indigenous peoples), educators must…

Social movements are pedagogical spaces for collective learning across difference. Divergent worldviews, interest and identity, historical legacies and relations of power complicate notions of allyship and solidarity for common cause. In this article, we draw on social movement and transformative learning to reflect on our experiences of learning…

Feeling 'solid' is no longer an option as we are fraught with uncertainty in Zygmunt Bauman's (1925-2017) liquid modernity. The discussion of strategies to deal with uncertainties is open to educators. How might educators engage inner silence, sound, and re-sounding in order to navigate uncertain waters? If sounds are educational and the listener…

Educators often wonder how to respond purposefully to vexing issues such as ecological sustainability, social justice and holistic health and wellness. The search for useful ways of proceeding can be addressed through engagement in the process of Transformative Inquiry (TI), a mode of inquiry for educators that resonates with indigenous views and…

Research on authentic learning has been predominantly focussed on skills-based training: there is a paucity of research on models of authentic learning available for adaptation in the humanities undergraduate classroom. In this article, I will seek to address this gap by proposing that legal trials are ideal models for designing authentic learning…

If changes that make a difference to Aboriginal learners are to be effected in public schools, then transformational change is required (Menzies, Archibald, & Smith, 2004). How is transformational change best achieved? In this article, I argue, based on a recently completed study (McGregor, 2013) that teacher learning--particularly among…

At a time of substantial change, globalization, and ubiquitous access to information, educators struggle to change even the most basic aspects of their classrooms. This is especially true for those in challenging contexts where many perpetuate the "mind numbing" practice of rote instruction. This paper describes a collaborative…

Indigenous worldviews remain at the margins of education, science, and sustainability efforts. The emergence of sustainable science holds promise as a means of advancing deep sustainability and recentering Indigenous knowledge. Transformative learning's engagement with sustainable science has the potential to play an integral role in this…

Promising pedagogical practices is described in relation to incorporating ICT (Information, Communication and Technologies) with the study of Human Rights issues in Visual Arts Education for teacher candidates. As part of a course, "Senior Years Art," students at the Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba during 2013-2014…

This article focuses primarily on our research group's year of preparation before the opening of a new K-7 publicly funded ecological "school" for students aged 5-12. The article begins with a discussion of the reasons for seeking ways to change the values of a culture which fails to confront the consequences of its destructive…

This essay explores and presents strategies we, as Canadian faculty facilitators of a teaching practicum in Kenya, used to foster the pre-service teachers' knowledge and understanding of critical reflection and transformative learning processes by using arts-based activities. Participation in the arts-based activities while in Kenya encouraged the…