As professional educators and researchers who were part of the Curriculum Specialist group invited by Alberta Education to contribute our collective expertise towards the development of the new K-6 Social Studies curriculum, we have significant concerns with the draft curriculum released this week by Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides. We are asking the Government of Alberta to reconsider the path forward.
Curriculum experts University of Calgary Indigenous Education director Dr. Yvonne Poitras Pratt and social studies education professor at the University of Alberta Dr. Carla Peck review the delays and changes to new draft elementary school curriculum announced by the provincial government on Monday, December 13, 2021. (Excerpt from Real Talk with Ryan Jespersen)
In less than three months since Alberta’s draft K-6 curriculum’s release, educators across the country have released a torrent of criticism levelled at the social studies portion of the curriculum. More apparent to me however is how the curricular narratives construct not only a racialized and exclusionary Albertan “we”, but how that “we” also carries with it gendered intonations.
As a scholar concerned with how teachers’ own education shapes what happens in classrooms and how curriculum in Alberta schools can help students to be ethically engaged treaty partners, there are two concepts that may be helpful: considering learning in schools as a process of encounter and thinking about people’s relationships to stories about the past.
Read the Maskwacîs Education Schools Commission Board of Governors’ response to the draft K-6 curriculum.
Dr. Pamela Roach expresses concern about the development and content of the draft Social Studies K-6 curriculum recently released by the Alberta government.
Yvonne Poitras Pratt and Jennifer Markides suggest that the draft K-6 curriculum now being proposed to educators, students, and families across Alberta is a “white-washed” curriculum.