The Learning is In-between: The search for a metalanguage in Indigenous education

Abstract

Following the first significant research into Indigenous methods of learning, it was argued that Indigenous students could learn western knowledge using Indigenous ways of learning. Subsequent research contradicted this finding to take the position that indigenous students must learn western knowledge using western methods and so this set the scene for the development of a pedagogy where Indigenous students could learn how to learn. Theorists in Indigenous education began to search for a metalanguage. Crosscultural theorists have perceived this metalanguage in terms of an explicit and transparent pedagogy while critical theorists want Indigenous students to develop their own ways of speaking and writing and to be conscious of how they do this. However, I take the position in this paper that there is already a metalanguage at work in-between the student and the teacher in the classroom although it is often obscured from consciousness in the effort to articulate valid, quantifiable outcomes.