Includes ancient knowledges that have been transmitted from one generation to the next through millennia; spiritual knowledges that are practiced through ceremony and everyday living; land-based knowledges and empirical observations that are grounded in particular ecologies, both rural and urban; and the ontologies and epistemologies encoded in Indigenous languages that shape perceptions, ideas, and knowledge creation practices.
Published in Chapter:
Educating for a Sustainable World: Bringing Together Indigenous and Western Knowledges
Asaf Zohar (Trent University, Canada) and David R. Newhouse (Trent University, Canada)
Copyright: © 2019
|Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-7302-9.ch006
Abstract
Educating for a sustainable future and learning to live within our planetary limits is the most pressing challenge of our times. In this chapter, the authors present an emerging model of transcultural education that brings together Indigenous and western knowledges. This approach aims to engage learners from different cultures and knowledge traditions with the purpose of guiding them through ideas and processes of imagining, listening, speaking, and working together in a way that respects differences, acknowledges common ground, and seeks to co-create new knowledges. Bringing together Indigenous and Western knowledges in this manner creates a unique context that can potentially build the mindsets, skills, and dispositions that are needed for living and managing sustainably. A pedagogy grounded in this approach can potentially promote student interest and engagement across cultural and social divides, foster successful learning about bridging social inequalities, and cultivate an ethos of social, cultural, and environmental responsibility.