Wāhkōhtowin Decolonising Teacher Preparation for Rural, Urban and First Nations Schools
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper stories the creation of the Wāhkōhtowin teacher preparation model on Treaty 6 territory in Saskatchewan, Canada. The model was created out of an educational partnership that responded to the teachings of Nēhiyaw (Cree) Indigenous Elders. We describe the theoretical framework of this Professional Development School (PDS) teacher preparation model that is designed to decolonize teacher preparation in order to foster student learning and engagement; develop Nēhiyaw teacher identity and proficiency, and; support reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The foundational constructs of the Wāhkōhtowin model of teacher preparation include relationality, ceremony, language, and child-centredness. The spirit of Wāhkōhtowin teacher preparation is premised on three intents. Firstly, teacher candidates are encouraged to be free to be themselves and share the gifts they bring to the school setting (tipéyimisowin). Secondly, they are encouraged to ‘come home’ to traditional teachings as they engage in cultural learning and identity formation (kīwēwin). Thirdly, their pedagogical growth and development as teachers is fostered with the focus on relational pedagogies, inclusiveness, and community (mamáwi kiskinomāsowin). We complete our paper by discussing the implementation of the Wāhkōhtowin model. We discuss the ways in which the model has had to shift to be responsive to the unique relationships and contexts of different school systems, provincial budget cuts, the opportunity to expand the program into secondary schools, working with/through teacher turnover, the provision of language and cultural activities, land-based programming, professional development sessions, differing comfort levels and knowledge regarding Indigenous history and traditions, and the impact of COVID-19.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".