Systematic evaluation of Geoscience education programs that are designed for American Indian Alaska Native students, use Indigenous epistemologies or Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

Abstract:

As the geoscience community continues to address centuries of harm to, and erasure of Indigenous communities done by environmental scientists, recruiting American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) students into the geosciences has become a priority. Educators in both K-12 and higher education have new interest in “decolonizing” their curriculum, increasing their broader impact portfolios or reaching out to indigenous communities in their area. However, in order to recruit and, more importantly, retain AIAN students, geoscience education needs to become culturally responsive by explicitly centering AIAN people and narratives. To center AIAN students, curriculum-builders and educators need guidelines about how to approach and evaluate educational programs that are designed for AIAN students, and / or use indigenous ways of knowing and indigenous epistemologies.

Many recent initiatives, especially those lead by AIAIN scientists and faculty, have done this well. However, potential pitfalls can lead well-meaning faculty and educators to do harm, such as challenges in working with tribal communities, historic distrust of outside researchers, challenges in evaluating programs for AIAN peoples with small sample sizes, concerns about appropriation, and who has access to or is given knowledge.

We present here a systematic review of publications about AIAN / traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) geoscience initiatives for both K-12 and higher ed with the goal of identifying areas which need improvement or further research. In building this review, we have developed a rubric for criteria which make a successful program centering AIAN students and cultures. Our evaluation examines the implementation of the program, its approach (i.e. if the program used AIAN ways of learning and knowing, or taught AIAN concepts in a western education framework) and if or how the program was evaluated. In building this review, we hope to highlight recommendations for future initiatives.