A Portraiture Study of Three Successful Indigenous Educators and Community Leaders Who Experience Personal Renewal in Their Practice of Cultural Restoration Kathrin W
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Lesley University DigitalCommons@Lesley Educational Studies Dissertations Graduate School of Education (GSOE) Spring 8-25-2017 Full Circle: A Portraiture Study of Three Successful Indigenous Educators and Community Leaders Who Experience Personal Renewal In their Practice of Cultural Restoration Kathrin W. McCarthy Lesley University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/education_dissertations Part of the Adult and Continuing Education and Teaching Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, and the Indigenous Education Commons Recommended Citation McCarthy, Kathrin W., "Full Circle: A Portraiture Study of Three Successful Indigenous Educators and Community Leaders Who Experience Personal Renewal In their Practice of Cultural Restoration" (2017). Educational Studies Dissertations. 125. https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/education_dissertations/125 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School of Education (GSOE) at DigitalCommons@Lesley. It has been accepted for inclusion in Educational Studies Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Lesley. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Running Head: PORTRAITS OF THREE SUCCESSFUL ALASKA NATIVE EDUCATORS Full Circle: A Portraiture Study of Three Successful Indigenous Educators and Community Leaders Who Experience Personal Renewal In their Practice of Cultural Restoration By Kathrin W. McCarthy A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Educational Studies Lesley University August 2017 PORTRAITS OF THREE SUCCESSFUL ALASKA NATIVE EDUCATORS ii PORTRAITS OF THREE SUCCESSFUL ALASKA NATIVE EDUCATORS iii Abstract This qualitative inquiry uses the narrative methodology of portraiture to explore how the experiences of three successful Native educators and community leaders can contribute to the adult learning and development literature. In portraiture study the researcher uses diverse methods of gathering data, including interviews, observations of participants, and participant artifacts to co-construct a story of each participant’s life. Participants’ portraits were analyzed using well-established adult learning theories including Erickson’s developmental lifespan concept of generativity, Lave and Wenger’s concept of situated learning and communities of practice; Wlodkowski’s concepts of motivation and culture; Belenky and her colleagues’ conceptions of voice as development; and various concepts related to leadership. Newer, less well-established adult learning theories were also used in the analysis: those of indigenous meaning making, spirituality, and narrative learning or “storying.” Cultural sustainability, done in ways particular to each participant, is the overarching theme common to their portraits. The participants, two Tlingits from Southeast Alaska, and one originally from Taos, New Mexico but married to a Tlingit man and adapted into the tribe, work to sustain Tlingit culture through practices of Chilkat weaving, Tlingit language teaching, and performing Tlingit ceremony with younger generations. Their practices as educators and leaders are anchored in a value system that is grounded in relationships, and in an indigenous cosmology that understands interconnectedness of all life. This study may benefit others by making the connection between personal renewal and cultural restoration explicit, by showing how a grounding in culture can foster not only belonging and connectedness, but also personal identity; by showing how adversity and intergenerational grief can be overcome with social support and opportunities to PORTRAITS OF THREE SUCCESSFUL ALASKA NATIVE EDUCATORS iv cultivate social-emotional assets; and by providing a genuine encounter with authentic voices of the three participants. PORTRAITS OF THREE SUCCESSFUL ALASKA NATIVE EDUCATORS v Table of Contents Page Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... ix Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... x Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study.......................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background of the Study .................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Problem Statement.............................................................................................................. 3 1.3 Research Problem and Dissertation Question .................................................................. 4 1.4 Procedures for Data Collection .......................................................................................... 5 1.5 Data Analysis ....................................................................................................................... 5 1.6 Interpreting and Discussing Results.................................................................................. 6 1.7 Who I Am As A Researcher ............................................................................................... 7 1.8 Social Significance of the Study ......................................................................................... 9 1.9 Definitions ............................................................................................................................ 9 Chapter 2: Literature Review .................................................................................................... 15 2.1 Introduction to the Literature Review ............................................................................ 15 2.2 Historical Marginalization and Colonialism .................................................................. 15 2.3 Contagious Disease Epidemics: Southeast Alaska ......................................................... 16 2.4 Contagious Disease Epidemics: New Mexico Pueblos ................................................... 17 2.5 Religious Oppression: Southeast Alaska ........................................................................ 18 PORTRAITS OF THREE SUCCESSFUL ALASKA NATIVE EDUCATORS vi 2.6 Religious Oppression: American Southwest .................................................................. 19 2.7 Boarding Schools in Alaska ............................................................................................. 20 2.8 Boarding Schools in New Mexico’s Pueblos ................................................................... 21 2.9 The Complexity of Boarding School Experience ........................................................... 23 2.10 Ways of Knowing and Learning .................................................................................... 24 2.11 Experiential Learning ..................................................................................................... 25 2.12 Situated Learning............................................................................................................ 26 2.13 Reliving Past Experience ................................................................................................ 28 2.14 Interrogating Structures of Dominance ........................................................................ 29 2.15 Complexity and Ecological Learning ............................................................................ 31 2.16 Co-construction of Knowledge and Collaboration ...................................................... 31 2.17 Voice ................................................................................................................................. 32 2.18 Lifespan Development .................................................................................................... 34 2.19 Portraiture ....................................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 3: Methodology............................................................................................................. 39 3.1 Research Methodology ..................................................................................................... 39 3.2 Research Participants ....................................................................................................... 40 3.3 How Participants Were Chosen ....................................................................................... 41 3.4 Data Collection .................................................................................................................. 42 3.5 Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 46 3.5.1 Step One: Getting the Story ......................................................................................... 48 3.5.2 Step Two: I Poems ....................................................................................................... 49 3.5.3 Step Three: Listening for the Contrapuntal Voices. .................................................... 50 PORTRAITS OF THREE SUCCESSFUL ALASKA