| Summary: | [Extract] This study investigates Northern Qikiqtani (Baffin Island) of Nunavut Inuit Middle Years (Grades 5 to 8) students' perceptions of learning success and the classroom pedagogical and interactive processes influencing their success. It focuses upon investigating the premise that successful classroom learning environments at the individual-microsystem level of Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological model are responsive to the social interactive patterns and norms of a school’s community, that is, the exo- and mesosystem. The project attempts to determine from the perceptions of Aboriginal students what teaching practices contribute to their success as learners. This authority is then used to question the protocols of the mainstream classroom and, in response, promote a dynamic and synergistic relationship between home and community culture and school culture (Ladson-Billings, 1995). This questioning ultimately and purposely "problematizes" teaching by upsetting the orthodoxy of classrooms by encouraging teachers to ask about the nature of student-teacher relationship, their teaching, the curriculum, and schooling. By creating this disequilibrium, educators are pushed to seek resolution of these issues so that their classrooms move towards becoming more culturally responsive as they employ a culturally preferred pedagogy. Through a variety of data collection methods, Inuit students, and to a lesser extent their Inuit and non-Inuit teachers, identify a variety of pedagogical and interactive processes that influence their educational success and learning, in particular their learning in science. Most processes identified as contributors to learning are seen to be culturally located. Of significance is the importance students place on teachers that care not only for them as people, but also for their performance as learners. Based upon this information presented by students, a profile of what constitutes the characteristics of an effective teacher in promoting learning within a positive learning environment in Inuit ...
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