Education Library Blog

A blog post by Tiffany Tse

On June 23-26rd, 2022, early childhood researchers, scholars, educators, pedagogues, teacher-educators, and activists gathered together for the Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education (RECE) Conference at UBC Vancouver. The theme was “Being Together In/With Place: Reimagining Pedagogies in Transformational Times” to reflect the radical changes, uncertainties, and new connections that our world is experiencing.

Our library is featuring a book display to spotlight early childhood education, place-based learning, Indigenous connections to land, sustainability, outdoor education, and communities. Below is a list of relevant teacher resources, e-resources, board books, and fiction and nonfiction books for young children, some of which are included in the display.

Featured materials

	Hello Humpback! (2017) by Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd is a vibrant board book with gentle embossing for babies and toddlers to experience the animals and landscape of the Pacific West Coast through beautiful Indigenous artwork.
	One Little Lot: The 1-2-3s of an Urban Garden (2020) by Diane C. Mullen and illustrated by Oriol Vidal is a colourful picture book on how an abandoned lot was transformed into a communal urban garden by the hands of a multi-cultural and multi-aged community.
	Early Years Education and Care in Canada: A Historical and Philosophical Overview (2019) edited by Susan Jagger compiles research from multiple perspectives on the past, present, and potential future direction of early childhood education in Canada. Themes and approaches include Indigenous ways of knowing, holistic education, play, children’s rights, diversity, and inclusion, and more.
	Decolonizing Place in Early Childhood Education (2019 eBook) by Fikile Nxumalo discusses how early childhood education can critically and pedagogically respond to environmentally damaged places, anti-blackness, and settler colonial legacies while highlighting Indigenous presences and land relations within settler colonialism.
	Unsettling the Colonial Places and Spaces of Early Childhood Education (2015 eBook) edited by Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw and Affrica Taylor offers decolonizing strategies for early childhood practitioners and scholars. Topics include postcolonial theory, place theory, feminist philosophy, ecological humanities, and Indigenous onto-epistemologies.

 

Additional resources

Board books:

• Animals of the Salish Sea: Coast Salish First Nations and Native Art illustrated by multiple Coast Salish artists with text by Melaney Gleeson-Lyall (2016)
• Sweetest Kulu by Celina Kalluk, illustrated by Alexandria Neonakis (2016)
• Plant a Kiss by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated Peter H. Reynolds (2015)

Picture books:

• Cedar: The Tree of Life by Brenda Boreham (2016)
• Cloudwalker by Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd (2014)
• Imagine a Place by Sarah L. Thomson, illustrated by Rob Gonsalves (2008)
• In Lucia’s Neighbourhood by Pat Shewchuk, illustrated by Marek Colek (2013)
• In Your Community by Janet Gurtler (2018)
• Look Where We Live! A First Book of Community Building by Scot Ritchie (2015)
• The Mangrove Tree: Planting Trees to Feed Families by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore, collages by Susan L. Roth (2011)
• A Stick is an Excellent Thing: Poems Celebrating Outdoor Play by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by LeUyen Pham (2012)
• Tiny, Perfect Things by M.H. Clark, illustrated Madeline Kloepper (2018)
• A Walk on the Tundra by Rebecca Hainnu and Anna Ziegler, illustrated by Qin Leng (2011)
• What Matters by Alison Hughes, illustrated by Holly Hatam (2016)

Teacher resources:

• Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension by Sara K. Ahmed (2018)
• The Big Book of Nature Activities: A Year-Round Guide to Outdoor Learning by Jacob Rodenburg and Drew Monkman (2016)
• Bridging Cultures: Scientific and Indigenous Ways of Knowing Nature by Glen Aikenhead and Herman Michell (2011)
• Childhood and Postcolonization: Power, Education, and Contemporary Practice by Gaile Sloan Cannella and Radhika Viruru (2004)
• Developing as a Reflective Early Years Professional: A Thematic Approach by Carol Hayes, Jayne Daly, Mandy Duncan, Ruth Gill, and Ann Whitehouse (2014)
• Outdoor Learning Environments: Spaces for Exploration, Discovery, and Risk-taking in the Early Years by Helen Little, Sue Elliott, and Shirley Wyver (2017)
• A Pedagogy of Place: Outdoor Education for a Changing World by Brian Wattchow and Mike Brown (2011)
• The School Garden Curriculum: An Integrated K-8 Guide for Discovering Science, Ecology, and Whole-Systems Thinking by Kaci Rae Christopher (2019)

 

This display is on the left side of the entrance when you first come into the UBC Education Library.

We hope these resources can help you reimagine the possibilities of early childhood education and reflect on your connection with place. Our librarians would be happy to chat more about relevant books and resources with you. Feel free to contact us at ed.lib@ubc.ca.

A blog post by Hikaru Ikeda

Both a framework and a process, antiracist pedagogy is a form of Disruptive Teaching located within Critical Theory. In a perpetual state of “becoming”, antiracist pedagogical practice is lifelong and ever-evolving. Ongoing critical self-reflection, integration of learning and an anti-racist framework are needed to examine the role educational systems and teaching practices play in furthering and entrenching racism, as well as their ability and responsibility to abolish it.

As defined in Kyoko Kishimoto’s (2018) article, “Anti-Racist Pedagogy: From Faculty’s Self-Reflection to Organizing Within and Beyond the Classroom,”

Anti-racist pedagogy is not about simply incorporating racial content into courses, curriculum, and discipline. It is also about how one teaches, even in courses where race is not the subject matter. It begins with the faculty’s awareness and self-reflection of their social position and leads to application of this analysis in their teaching, but also in their discipline, research, and departmental, university, and community work. In other words, anti-racist pedagogy is an organizing effort for institutional and social change that is much broader than teaching in the classroom. (p. 540)

The Education Library recently hosted Our Stories: A Living Library of Antiracist Pedagogy. The event’s goal was to foster space for intimate learning exchanges around lived experiences of race and (anti)racism in pedagogical contexts.

Selected Books

Books to compliment the learning generated through the Living Library were on display at the Education Library. These resources may also be used to support theoretical learning and steps toward implementing and furthering antiracist pedagogy for Education Department faculty, students, teacher candidates and all who are interested.

The books cover a range of audiences and topics, including children’s and young adult literature, resources to inform professional practice in K-12 and higher education settings and teacher guides.

Click here to view a list of antiracist pedagogy resources available at the Education Library!

 

Resource Spotlight

Textured teaching: a framework for culturally sustaining practices / Lorena Escoto Germán.
LC1099.515.C85 G47 2021
http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=11944467

“Be prepared to be embraced with words, images, stories, examples, experiences, and a love for teaching in community with young people toward social and cultural justice.”—Django Paris

With Culturally Sustaining Practice as its foundation, Textured Teaching helps secondary teachers in any school setting stop wondering and guessing how to implement teaching and learning that leads to social justice.  Lorena shares her framework for creating a classroom environment that is highly rigorous and engaging, and that reflects the core traits of Textured Teaching: student-driven, community centered, interdisciplinary, experiential, and flexible.  Throughout the book, Lorena shares lesson design strategies that build traditional literacy skills while supporting students in developing their social justice skills at the same time. The actionable strategies Lorena uses to bring Textured Teaching values to life illuminate what is possible when we welcome all types of texts, all types of voices, and all forms of expression into the classroom.

White double-consciousness: a critical analysis of discourse in teacher education / Kenneth P. Sider.
LB1707 .S57 2019
http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=9915342

The complicated relationship between preservice teachers, teacher education instructional practices, and White privilege is examined in this phenomenological study, suggesting that a sense of self and pedagogical wholeness are needed for preservice teachers to become capable educators who will provide the appropriate environment and support their students will need.

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Finding further materials in the UBC Catalogue

Try these basic strategies to begin your research in the UBC Library Catalogue.

Keyword Searches
Combine keywords relating to concepts of racial justice AND keywords about pedagogy. For example:

• Race, Racial
• Antiracism, Racism
• Justice
• Equity
• Whiteness

AND

• Pedagogy
• Teaching
• Education
• “Primary school”, “Secondary School”, “Higher Education”

Helpful Hints for Keyword Searches:

Use quotation marks to search for a specific phrase.

• Example: “Antiracist Pedagogy”, “Critical pedagogy”, “Critical whiteness studies”, “Racial justice”

Use a question mark to search for all words with the same stem.

•  Example: Raci? retrieves results for Racial, Racism, Racialization, etc.

Subject Headings
Designed to help researchers find similar materials, subject headings are a tool indicating what a resource’s content is about. When you find a resource in the catalogue that supports your research, take some time to explore the subject headings listed in its catalogue record to find works with similar subject areas.

Some recommended subject headings:

Browse Catalogue > Subject begins with

Critical pedagogy.
Indigenous peoples–Education.
Racism in education.
Social justice and education.

 

References

Kishimoto, K. (2018). Anti-racist pedagogy: From faculty’s self-reflection to organizing within
and beyond the classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(4), 540-554.