Holistic Education

Holistic--Education

  • Strand Leader: Glen Aikenhead, Verlie-Ann Malina-Wright
  • Strand Support: Amethyst First Rider
  • Strand Synthesizer: Pam Woodis
  • Webinar: August 14
  • Driving Questions:
  1. Why are enriching environments foundational to encouraging students to participate in being, doing, knowing, across two knowledge systems (Indigenous and scientific)?
  2. How can educators bridge the reductionist content of science and transform their teaching and learning approaches to include holistic understandings of nature held by Indigenous students?
  3. Where in schools and communities can we create a system for including youth/adults who have gifts more in tune with Indigenous wisdom while learning and applying Euro-American academic subject content, and achieving on assessment indicators?
  4. What are some essential culture-based performance indicators of holistic place-based learning that may be complementary to, integrated into, or independent of the content and context of learning; including applications to new ways of discovery in a world of rapidly changing knowledge and innovative technologies?
  5. What education contexts (school administration, community, state departments of education, national priorities) enhance place-based learning through intergenerational lifelong learning, which leads to readiness for college, a career, and contributing to one’s community?
  6. What features of current education contexts (school administration, community, state departments of education, national priorities) stifle place-based learning?
  7. What metaphors help you create useful definitions of holistic education in STEM or STREAM (science, technology, reading literacies, engineering, arts AutoCAD creative media integration, and math)?
  8. What strengths are foundational to a shift from our current education system to one that is intergenerational, nurtures lifelong-learning, and is ever evolving; a shift that will require a cyclical process of connecting our ways of teaching and learning along the continuum of past, present, and future; as well as past-to-future continuums of systems not yet developed?
  9. Why do we need to transform ourselves, our schools/communities, and our nations into where we want to be?
  10. How do we do it?