Family Literacy and Colonial Logics
This thesis is located in my relationship to Treaty 4 land, the traditional land of the Cree, Saulteaux, Lakota, Nakota, Dakota and Métis people. It starts with me, a 5th generation white settler, learning to see myself as a treaty person. Intertwined with this awareness is my developing understandi...
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ftunivtoronto:oai:localhost:1807/79686 2023-05-15T17:14:02+02:00 Family Literacy and Colonial Logics Crooks, Stacey Rae Jackson, Nancy Leadership, Higher and Adult Education 2017-11-10T00:00:13Z http://hdl.handle.net/1807/79686 unknown http://hdl.handle.net/1807/79686 adult literacy decolonization deficit thinking family literacy settler colonialism whiteness 0515 Thesis 2017 ftunivtoronto 2020-06-17T12:07:28Z This thesis is located in my relationship to Treaty 4 land, the traditional land of the Cree, Saulteaux, Lakota, Nakota, Dakota and Métis people. It starts with me, a 5th generation white settler, learning to see myself as a treaty person. Intertwined with this awareness is my developing understanding of the way that the “myth of the fort” and “colonial frontier logics” (Donald 2009b, 2009c, 2012a) shape educational practice in Saskatchewan. The focus of my research is family literacy programs, policy and research, and the assumption of deficit that I argue pervades this area of literacy education practice. As a community-based family literacy practitioner, working for many years mostly with New Canadians, I have wondered about a tension between the rhetorical commitment to strengths-based practice in the field and the ongoing presence/tenacity of deficit thinking in literacy practice. In exploring deficit thinking I have come to see how it is racialized and racializing (Valencia, 1997, 2010). As I explored in my study deficit thinking and race in family literacy work in Saskatchewan, I further came to recognize the significance of settler colonialism in shaping literacy practice. Eventually I understood, in a new way, that all family literacy programs in Saskatchewan take place on treaty land, and that the people in the programs, practitioners and families alike, are “all treaty people.” This analysis has been shaped by literature on race, whiteness and colonialism (Ahmed, 2007b; Donald, 2009c; Leonardo Porter, 2010). I have been informed by the ways in which feminist poststructuralists (Ahmed 2002, 2006, 2007a; Pillow, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2015; St. Pierre, 2000) talk about power, subjectivity and discourse. Feminist genealogical approaches (Pillow, 2003, 2004; Tamboukou 2003b; Tamboukou Ball, 2003) have directed me to explore the history of family literacy. The methods of Métissage (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, Leggo, 2009) and Indigenous Métissage (Donald, 2009b, 2012b) have informed how I have made sense of my research journey. Observing community programs in Aboriginal settings has led me to focus on how a robust understanding of respect might enable movement away from a racializing deficit thinking and towards ‘better’ relationships (Ahmed, 2002) or towards what Donald (2009c) calls “ethical relationality” in education practice and policy. Ph.D. Thesis Nakota University of Toronto: Research Repository T-Space |
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University of Toronto: Research Repository T-Space |
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ftunivtoronto |
language |
unknown |
topic |
adult literacy decolonization deficit thinking family literacy settler colonialism whiteness 0515 |
spellingShingle |
adult literacy decolonization deficit thinking family literacy settler colonialism whiteness 0515 Crooks, Stacey Rae Family Literacy and Colonial Logics |
topic_facet |
adult literacy decolonization deficit thinking family literacy settler colonialism whiteness 0515 |
description |
This thesis is located in my relationship to Treaty 4 land, the traditional land of the Cree, Saulteaux, Lakota, Nakota, Dakota and Métis people. It starts with me, a 5th generation white settler, learning to see myself as a treaty person. Intertwined with this awareness is my developing understanding of the way that the “myth of the fort” and “colonial frontier logics” (Donald 2009b, 2009c, 2012a) shape educational practice in Saskatchewan. The focus of my research is family literacy programs, policy and research, and the assumption of deficit that I argue pervades this area of literacy education practice. As a community-based family literacy practitioner, working for many years mostly with New Canadians, I have wondered about a tension between the rhetorical commitment to strengths-based practice in the field and the ongoing presence/tenacity of deficit thinking in literacy practice. In exploring deficit thinking I have come to see how it is racialized and racializing (Valencia, 1997, 2010). As I explored in my study deficit thinking and race in family literacy work in Saskatchewan, I further came to recognize the significance of settler colonialism in shaping literacy practice. Eventually I understood, in a new way, that all family literacy programs in Saskatchewan take place on treaty land, and that the people in the programs, practitioners and families alike, are “all treaty people.” This analysis has been shaped by literature on race, whiteness and colonialism (Ahmed, 2007b; Donald, 2009c; Leonardo Porter, 2010). I have been informed by the ways in which feminist poststructuralists (Ahmed 2002, 2006, 2007a; Pillow, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2015; St. Pierre, 2000) talk about power, subjectivity and discourse. Feminist genealogical approaches (Pillow, 2003, 2004; Tamboukou 2003b; Tamboukou Ball, 2003) have directed me to explore the history of family literacy. The methods of Métissage (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, Leggo, 2009) and Indigenous Métissage (Donald, 2009b, 2012b) have informed how I have made sense of my research journey. Observing community programs in Aboriginal settings has led me to focus on how a robust understanding of respect might enable movement away from a racializing deficit thinking and towards ‘better’ relationships (Ahmed, 2002) or towards what Donald (2009c) calls “ethical relationality” in education practice and policy. Ph.D. |
author2 |
Jackson, Nancy Leadership, Higher and Adult Education |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Crooks, Stacey Rae |
author_facet |
Crooks, Stacey Rae |
author_sort |
Crooks, Stacey Rae |
title |
Family Literacy and Colonial Logics |
title_short |
Family Literacy and Colonial Logics |
title_full |
Family Literacy and Colonial Logics |
title_fullStr |
Family Literacy and Colonial Logics |
title_full_unstemmed |
Family Literacy and Colonial Logics |
title_sort |
family literacy and colonial logics |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/1807/79686 |
genre |
Nakota |
genre_facet |
Nakota |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/1807/79686 |
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1766071267303096320 |