First Nations Partnership Program

The development of community capacity to support optimal development of children and youth in culturally congruent ways has been the focus of eight unique partnerships in education between First Nations organizations and the University of Victoria for a decade. The original First Nations Partnership Program was initiated in 1989 when the Meadow Lake Tribal Council asked Alan Pence to collaborate in developing community-based, bicultural curriculum that would prepare Cree and Dene people in northern Saskatchewan to deliver effective, culturally relevant, child care programs both on and off reserve. This became the springboard for evolving a Generative Curriculum Model. As of 2001, there have been a total of eight partnerships that have proved to be transformative for First Nations students and their communities, and for the university-based partners. The First Nations Partnership Programs were coordinated by Dr. Jessica Ball at the University of Victoria.

The goals of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council, and the concerns they voiced about the limitations of available, “standardized” training models, mirrored themes in the literature on the experience of First Nations students at mainstream universities. These themes are also emerging as salient in indigenous communities on other continents where development assistance efforts often impose models that represent ‘best practices’ in Euro-western contexts. Using this model, the training program was co-delivered with 10 First Nations Councils/organizations in Western Canada between 1990 and 2010. Through co-adaptations with tribal and other colleges in Western Canada the program continued. Founder Prof. Alan Pence and later Director Prof. Jessica Ball co-authored Supporting Indigenous Children’s Development: Community-University Partnerships in 2006 (UBC Press).

In Canada, most aboriginal people have found neither cultural relevance in curriculum nor cultural safety on campuses or through community development programs imported from white middle class urban centres. Although the number of aboriginal students enrolled at Canadian universities has increased dramatically since the 1960s, student retention and completion rates remain low. First Nations people in Canada are seven times less likely to graduate from university as are members of the general population.

In all eight partnership programs completed to date, the Generative Curriculum Model of providing university-accredited training in students’ own communities led to unprecedented educational outcomes, vocational outcomes, and capacity building, as well as to personal and community transformations that reach far beyond the classroom.

First Nations Partnership Programs: Overview

First Nations Partnership Programs (FNPP) is the name given to the programs delivered to date using the Generative Curriculum Model. The partnerships involve a two-year, university-accredited training program that is delivered in First Nations communities through partnerships with the University of Victoria. However, the program could be used in other cultural contexts in addition to First Nations. It is ideally suited to use in cultural communities that are motivated to participate actively in co-delivery of training within their own geographical location, and to playing an active role in bringing cultural content and considerations of community life into the training curriculum. The programs focus on Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) as well as youth care (CYC). The scope of the program can be extended provided that resourcing can be found for curriculum development.

Interwoven throughout the partnership programs are the principles of a unique ‘Generative Curriculum Model’ (Pence & Ball), whereby a central place is afforded to indigenous knowledge and the role of elders in creating and teaching students about child care and development. (Refer to Generative Curriculum Model)

The over-riding aim of FNPP has been to support First Nations communities on reserves and other vulnerable and/or remote cultural communities in strengthening their capacity to provide safe, stimulating family and community environments that will promote optimal health and development. (Refer to Community Development)

Program background and community-orientation

First Nations Partnership Programs began in 1989 when the Meadow Lake Tribal Council of Saskatchewan asked Alan Pence at the University of Victoria’s School of Child and Youth Care to join with them in a new way of thinking about how to promote child well-being in aboriginal communities. Like many First Nations communities, the Tribal Council had decided to introduce out-of-home care centres to support children’s well-being, but they wanted community members to plan and operate these centres. Thus, they sought a training program that would embody valued aspects of their traditional and contemporary Cree and Dene cultures and languages, and that would also draw upon useful knowledge from mainstream theory, research, and practice. What emerged through this first pilot program was a model for generating curriculum that is:

1. bicultural;
2. construes children within the broad ecology of the community;
3. relies on local knowledge, perspectives, and experiences contributed by elders and other community resource people; and
4. furthers community development through the program being is delivered entirely in and by the community, with support as needed from a university-based team. (Refer to Community-based delivery and Community development)

PROGRAM PHILOSOPHY — PARADIGM SHIFT

Distinctive Features of the Generative Approach to Capacity Building

• Take education and training to students rather than requiring them to leave home to attend the training program
• assert the power of ‘not knowing’ where the road less traveled leads rather than maintaining the colonialist presumption of ‘knowing’ what’s best for indigenous people
• respect the culture(s) embodied in the community as a valuable source of knowledge rather than elevating the authority of Euro-western theories and research on child care and development
• ground teaching and learning in consideration of many voices rather than relying principally on the modernist approach of ‘universal’ truths and ‘best practices’ for children and families
• encourage participatory processes at every stage of program design and delivery rather than offering pre-packaged curricula developed by ‘experts’ in early childhood education
• work consciously to promote social inclusion for students and communities rather than accepting the exclusivity that has often been imposed by dominant cultures on less dominant cultures.

GENERATIVE CURRICULUM MODEL

Generative Curriculum Model: Guiding Principles

• Support community initiative in a community-based setting
• Promote respect “all ways” (multicultural inputs)
• Draw upon community and individual strengths
• Ensure a broad ecological perspective (awareness of the child in the context of family and community)
• Provide education and career laddering for students, such that credit for this coursework will be fully applicable to future study and practice
• Engage in co-construction of a bicultural curriculum, in which Elders and other community resource people figure prominently;
• Provide the basis for broader child, youth, family and community-serving training and services, while the immediate focus is on early childhood care and development.

EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES

The success of the First Nations Partnership Programs is evident:

• 86.4% of students completed one year of full-time, university-accredited study resulting, for students in British Columbia, in Early Childhood Education (ECE) certification issued by the Ministry of Health;
• 77.3% of students completed a full two years to achieve a Diploma in Child and Youth Care, compared with a national completion rate of 40% and below among First Nations students in other post-secondary programs;
• 95% of program graduates remained in their own communities;
• 65% of graduates introduced new programs for children, youth and families;
• 13% of graduates joined the staff of existing services; and
• 11% of graduates continued on the education career ladder, working towards a university degree.

PERSONAL AND CULTURAL HEALING

Students’ Perceptions of Change

Evaluation interviews revealed personal transformations in various dimensions. Positive changes reported by students are first presented in order of the frequency of their self-identification of ways in which they had experienced personal growth, as a direct result of their participation in the training program: