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- ItemStudent, parent, and teacher perspectives on reconciliation-related school reforms(2022) Milne, Emily; Wotherspoon, TerryCanadian schools have implemented initiatives in response to the Calls to Action that accompanied the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission final report. This paper aims to address two questions that speak directly to these calls. How have these initiatives been implemented in Canadian classrooms and affected educational practices? How do education stakeholders perceive and experience these initiatives? We present a study conducted in Alberta to explore these questions, drawing on data from interviews and focus groups conducted with 201 Indigenous youth and teachers and parents of Indigenous children. Findings suggest that schools are engaged in innovative activities to introduce knowledge about Indigenous cultures and experiences. Most participants believed, however, that more work is needed to support teachers’ ability to include Indigenous content in classrooms and to increase awareness about Indigenous peoples’ among non-Indigenous students to prevent discrimination. These tensions can undermine schools’ capacities to advance reconciliation.
- ItemSituatedness: seeing thestrals, understanding social marginalization(2022) Overend, AlissaIn the famed fantasy series Harry Potter, written by J.K. Rowling,thestrals are a type of horse, with bat-like wings, skeletal bodies, and reptilian faces. Despite their ominous appearance, thestrals are harmless. But what makes them special in the series, and central to this discussion on situatedness, is that thestrals can only be seen by people who have witnessed death.
- ItemKnowing and eating: a brief western history of nutrition paradigms(2022) Overend, AlissaAs a sociologist, I have long maintained that food is cultural. Food ties us to our childhoods, to our families and their ancestral histories, and to our cultures and their traditions. What we eat today—our tastes and distastes—is a reflection of those cultural histories. What we eat today is also a reflection of our access to various foods, whether through geographical location and food availability, or through the social determinants of health, such as income, affordable housing, and job security, which affect our ability to procure and prepare food. While food can be studied through a range of disciplinary lenses (psychological, anthropological, biological, etc.), this chapter analyzes how historic framings of food shape contemporary understandings of health. To understand why we eat the way we eat, we also have to examine the changing social and historical paradigms in and through which we come to know food, and, correspondingly, frame health and nutrition. This chapter offers a broad overview of three paradigm shifts in Western nutritional wisdom: (a) ancient humourism; (b) the Middles Ages and the Doctrine of Signatures; and (c) modern nutritionism. Knowledge about food is contingent and changes over time, depending on the values circulating at any given historical moment.
- ItemExploring definitions of Indigenous student success(2022) Milne, Emily; Wotherspoon, TerryBringing together twenty-one articles written by experts, Social Inequality in Canada explores the many dimensions of social disadvantage and injustice that exist in this country today. Beginning with a thorough examination of structural inequality issues before moving on to address the wide-ranging impact that social inequality can have, the text presents students with a comprehensive overview of both the persistent patterns of inequality as well as the progress that has been made.
- ItemNavigating personal, professional, institutional, and relational dimensions of community-engaged research(2021) Milne, Emily; Hamilton, Leah K.As universities around the world face plunging revenues coupled with rising expenses, many argue that today’s post-secondary sector is in crisis (Anderson et al., 2020). In some regions, budgetary challenges are exacerbated by performance-based funding models that place an increased focus on impacting local economics and communities more broadly (e.g., Blue Ribbon Panel on Alberta’s Finances, 2019). In response to growing public, personal, and institutional demands for post-secondary institutions to improve their relevance and impact, increasing numbers of academics are pursuing community-engaged approaches to their research. In this paper, two Canadian researchers provide a collaborative autoethnographic account that reflects on and examines their experiences with meaningful and authentic community-engaged research partnerships. The authors explore themes associated with navigating personal, professional, institutional, and relational dimensions of faculty community engagement. In doing so, they draw on and present a modified version of Wade and Demb’s (2009; Demb & Wade, 2012) faculty engagement model that includes relational factors informed by Bringle and Hatcher’s (2002) theoretical framework of relationships. The results of this collaborative autoethnography have broad implications for the practice of research, including implications for work-life balance, tenure and promotion, how service is recognized/categorized, and institutional ethics review board processes.