Teaching at UCN
Teaching and learning are complex processes. Academic Development and CLEaR have adopted the following list of Beliefs About Teaching and Learning to inform and to guide practices and approached. The Beliefs acknowledge UCN’s context and provide an ideological framework for teaching at UCN.
Beliefs About Teaching and Learning
The Nature of Learning
1. Learning is influenced by the experiences and knowledge of everyone in the learning environment.
2. Learning is holistic and mediated by relationships.
3. Learning is enhanced by responsive instructional practices.
4. Learning requires engagement and reflection.
5. Learning enhances the well-being of the individual, family, community, and the environment.
6. Learning is enhanced through land-based approaches.
7. Learning includes understanding local, traditional, and Indigenous knowledges.
8. Leaning includes understanding Indigenous theory, practice, and method.
Learners at UCN
9. Learners each have unique motivations for pursuing education and training.
10. Learners bring their unique experiences and knowledge to bear on their learning and instruction.
11. Learners demonstrate learning and mastery in different ways.
12. UCN learners bear the legacy of colonialism in northern Manitoba and may be impacted by multi-generational impacts of residential schools, child welfare removals, dislocation from traditional territories and economies, loss of language and entrenched poverty.
13. UCN learners carry the potential to confront and transform endemic and systemic social, cultural, economic and political issues concerning northern Manitoba and Canada.
Teaching at UCN
14. Relationship-building, experiential learning, and collaborative approaches contribute to better learning.
15. The learning environment is enhanced by the inclusion of Elders and opportunities for land- based education.
16. Teaching at UCN respects the spirit of treaty-making that created Manitoba and Canada.
17. Teaching at UCN is an act of reconciliation.
18. Teaching is best when it is healing, empowering and motivating.
19. Incorporating more sophisticated research over the duration of a program will enable graduates to develop information, digital, and media/technical literacy and to apply these skills to the workplace and life.
20. Incorporating critical and analytical thinking over the duration of a program will enable graduates to bring these skills to workplace and life.
Some content of this list was adapted from the First Peoples Principles of Learning created by the First Nations Education Steering Committee of British Columbia.