Drawing upon Mi'kmaw pedagogies

This paper draws upon conversations with Mi’kmaw (Indigenous) elementary school teachers in a Mi’kmaw controlled school in what we now call Nova Scotia, Canada, as they reflect upon their students’ drawings of math class. As part of a larger research project, we invited Mi’kmaw students to draw pictures of themselves doing math, and pictures of themselves in math class. These drawings served as a prompt for their teachers to reflect upon the pedagogical practices revealed in the drawings. The resulting conversations provide an illustration of the pedagogy these teachers enact in their classroom spaces and their tacit beliefs and values about learning. The discussions with these teachers reveal the deeply relational pedagogy that is an integral part of this school community striving to decolonize education.