sherry fukuzawa

The Indigenous Action Group (IAG) is an alliance of solidarity between Indigenous and settler faculty at the University of Toronto Mississauga with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN), whose Treaty lands the campus is located on. This partnership of responsibility supports the MCFN goals of truth (through public knowledge and recognition of their history), and reconciliation (through the support and equitable sustenance of Indigenous pedagogy, knowledge systems, and research methodologies in educational institutions). The IAG has developed a Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) course to bring ontological pluralism to the Academy to legitimize Indigenous knowledges, epistemologies, and involve the placemaking of local Indigenous communities (Tuhiwah Smith, 2012). This second year undergraduate course entitled “Anthropology and Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island (in Canada)” was developed and implemented by the Indigenous Action Group to prioritize first person voices fro...

This paper reflects on the impact of community-engaged learning (CEL) in post-secondary education, as guided by local Indigenous community members, specifically members of the Anishinaabeg Nation and more specifically Mississauga peoples. This CEL way of educating highlights a fundamental difference between Indigenous axiology, where localized relationships and community contributions are paradigm, with traditional Euro-Western hegemonic pedagogies. Within this framework, we hope to contribute to the larger discourse in revising the axiological foundation applied to knowledge within the Academy, based on authentic expressions of an Indigenous way of knowing and learning.  We seek to recapitulate the ways that knowledge in the field of anthropology (and post-secondary education in general) is valued and assessed through the first-hand experiences of two cis male Anishinaabe academics, and one cis female Japanese Canadian academic, involved in the development and delivery of community...

In order for teaching and learning to improve throughout an institution, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) must be valued within institutional culture and contribute to the scholarly identity of researchers. This chapter emphasizes some of the challenges for SoTL researchers, whether educational developers or faculty members, to consider as they begin their foray into educational research. SoTL challenges are divided into four inter-related themes: (1) scholarly identity, (2) institutional challenges, (3) accessing and searching the SoTL literature, and (4) conducting SoTL research (SoTL research design, methodology, funding and time commitments, and ethical considerations). The chapter includes a series of opportunities and resources to help SoTL researchers reframe these challenges into opportunities for their institutions.

Graded Response Method (GRM) is an alternative to multiple-choice testing where students rank options accordingto their relevance to the question. GRM requires discrimination and inference between statements and is acost-effective critical thinking assessment in large courses where open-ended answers are not feasible. This studyexamined critical thinking assessment in GRM versus open-ended and multiple-choice questions composed fromBloom’s taxonomy in an introductory undergraduate course in anthropology and archaeology (N=53students).Critical thinking was operationalized as the ability to assess a question with evidence to support or evaluatearguments (Ennis, 1993). We predicted that students who performed well on multiple-choice from Bloom’staxonomy levels 4-6 and open-ended questions would perform well on GRM involving similar concepts. Highperforming students on GRM were predicted to have higher course grades. The null hypothesis was question typewould not have an effect on criti...

This paper is a creative, poetic and experimental intervention in the form of collective reflections and writings on Anthropology, as the discipline we have experienced and/or been a part of within the University. It is also a reflection on the process of how the authors came together to form the River and Fire Collective. As a collective we have studied, worked and taught in more than 15 universities, and the aspects we point to here are fragments of our experiences and observations of the emotionality of the discipline. These are experiences from different forms of Anthropology from Northern Europe and settler-colonial contexts including Great Turtle Island Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. In a metaphorical manner we invite the reader to our collective fireside dialogues and reflections, to be inspired, to disagree or agree and to continue a process of transformation. The paper sets out to provocatively question whether Anthropology is salvageable or whether one should ‘let it bur...