As the majority of those reading this will be aware, the connection between lifelong learning and community well-being is a long-established one. This is reflected in the annual Vital Signs Canada report, which evaluates quality of life in 16 Canadian communities by using a measure of 10 domains, from health and housing to safety and the environment. It should come as no surprise that learning has earned a spot on this list.
The 2009 Vital Signs report highlights a fact of Aboriginal education that has been constant for more than a decade; that attendance and completion rates for Aboriginal learners in high school and university are much lower than for non-Aboriginal learners. Although these are important statistics, indicators like high-school completion rates are only part of the larger picture of lifelong learning for Aboriginal people in Canada.
Since its founding in 2004, the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) has identified Aboriginal learning as a key area of learning in need of further research and attention.
In order to better report on the state of Aboriginal learning in Canada, CCL began by asking an important question: How do Aboriginal Peoples view success in learning?
Despite their cultural, historical and geographic diversity, Aboriginal people share a common vision of learning as something that is more than simply an individual pursuit. To the majority of Aboriginal people, learning is a means of nurturing relationships between the individual, the family, the community and the Creator. It is the primary process of transmitting values and identity, the guarantor of cultural continuity—and its value to the individual cannot be separated from its contribution to the collective well-being.
In contemporary terminology, Aboriginal learning strengthens a community’s social capital. This more ‘holistic’ view of learning is all encompassing and demands recognition as an integrated whole.
Historically, conventional indicators of success in learning have failed to reflect Aboriginal Peoples fuller vision of lifelong learning. That’s why in 2007, CCL initiated a partnership with First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities and organizations across Canada to develop a more appropriate set of tools to measure progress in learning. The initiative, Redefining how Success is Measured in Aboriginal Learning, resulted in the development of three Holistic Lifelong Learning Models which reflect First Nations, Inuit and Métis perspectives on learning.
The models shift the emphasis from an external approach that focused on learning deficits relative to non-Aboriginal standards, to a more expansive, or holistic, approach that recognizes and builds on success in their own terms.
Developed in partnership with Aboriginal learners and educators, the three models helped identify indicators required to measure success, which are illustrated in the interactive versions of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis models.
Since then, CCL has used the models as the frameworks in which to report on learning in Aboriginal communities; whether it’s in the school, the home, the community, at the workplace or on the land. With this data in hand, we’ve been able to draft our first State of Aboriginal Learning in Canada (which is scheduled for a December 2009 release) that we hope will help redefine not only how Aboriginal learning is measured, but how it is understood and perceived by all.
We look forward to working with our many partners in this initiative, including the Community Foundations of Canada, to help integrate this research into their future reports, policies and programs.
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