“Every Child Matters”: Canadian Pre-Service Teachers’ Critical Engagement with Indigenous Life-Narrative Picturebooks
Submitted by:
Eunju Choe
Abstract:
This paper explores the role of elementary pre-service teachers in connecting with Indigenous residential school survivors through counter-stories, facilitating conversations on Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. It focuses on the analysis of three life-narrative picturebooks: "I Am Not a Number" by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer, "When I Was Eight" by Jordan Fenton and Pokiak Fenton, and "The Orange Shirt Story" by Phyllis Webstad. The study investigates how these texts utilize concepts such as "systems of proximity," "internal focalization," and "characters’ avoidance or maintenance of gazes" (Painter et al., 2013) to achieve three objectives: 1) enrich Indigenous narratives beyond victimization, 2) challenge the colonizer-colonized dichotomy, and 3) foster solidarity between Indigenous characters and readers.
Drawing from the author's own experience as a pre-service teacher faced with introducing these sensitive topics to elementary students, the paper addresses the gap between theory and practice in Indigenous education courses, as highlighted by Taylor (2014), particularly in Australian teacher-training programs. Rather than focusing on teachers’ external concerns, such as the lack of preparation, resources and guidance for the pre-service teachers, I conducted a small case study involving three Canadian pre-service teachers to explore how non-Indigenous teachers critically engage with these texts and position themselves in the first place. Thematic analysis of interview data revealed a significant challenge: teachers often saw their students as the primary subjects of the texts, anticipating their students' reactions to sensitive content rather than engaging in reflective reading of counter-stories. To address this issue, the paper introduces the "identifying the inner voice" method, redirecting teachers' attention to characters' moments of focalization as entry points for immersive "sentimental reflections" and "memory work" (Strong-Wilson, 2021), essential for active empathy (Sanders, 2018).
I conclude that by adopting the role of mediators, teachers can create a safe and stimulating environment for their students, facilitating ongoing critical conversations on social justice. Through the careful analysis of narrative techniques in selected texts and a more critical engagement with the material, pre-service teachers can better connect with Indigenous experiences and contribute to the important dialogue surrounding Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.