Hyper-activating Inukshuks: The renewal of social studies in Alberta - Couture, 2017 Canadian Social Studies - Volume 49, No. 1

Oct 15, 2026

Article examines Alberta’s social studies curriculum renewal through the concept of “milestones,” arguing that policy-driven reform can reproduce tensions between prescribed outcomes and lived classroom realities. Drawing on teacher survey findings and national and international Indigenous education policy contexts—including Truth and Reconciliation recommendations—the piece critiques linear modernization and highlights decolonization as both process and goal. It connects the “inukshuk” as navigation and localized history to the curriculum redesign’s promises and challenges.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages4

Reading Time10 min

AccessFree to download

Context

Marking Milestones on the ‘Indigeneity’ Journey

Milestones as policy narratives and power signals

The Future of Social Studies - Hyper-activating the Inukshuk?

Inuksuit history and localized meaning

Couture, 2017 Canadian Social Studies, Volume 49, No. 1 Hyper-activating Inukshuks: The renewal of social studies in Alberta J-C Couture Associate Co-ordinator, Government-Research Alberta Teachers’Association [JC.Couture@ata.ab.ca](JC.Couture@ata.ab.ca) Context A recent study that surveyed close to 500 Alberta social studies teachers concluded that irreconcilable pressures “point to tensions between the formal program of studies and its prescribed outcomes, and the realities and complexities of classrooms where teachers attempt to realize good practices”(Alberta Teachers’Association, 2016, p, 46) . As the researchers observed, while there is widespread support for addressing “indigeneity” and “multiple perspectives,” such expectations need to be contextualized in the experiences ofthe lived curriculum in classrooms where teachers are putting in 60-hour work weeks in the midst of ever increasing prescription and control over their practice (pp. 30-31) . Seven years ago, Education Minister David Hancock informed Albertans that the government's blueprint for “the transformation” of provincial K-12 education had achieved a number of key “milestones”(Alberta Education, 2011, p. 50) . These included the publication of The Framework for Student Learning: Competencies for Engaged Thinkers and Ethical Citizens with an Entrepreneurial Spirit (Alberta Education, 2012) and The Learning Technology Framework (2013) to name a few documents that promised significant change in teaching and learning in Alberta. As another milestone in Canadian public policy, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada (2015) report created a political imperative and a sense of urgency for policy makers and educators. Immediately following their election, the Alberta New Democratic government unveiled an ambitious plan to infuse and embed indigeneity into the complex ecologies of Alberta’s 2,000 classrooms through a redesign of the K-12 curriculum. Further fuelling the government’s reform agenda, this past summer, an international report cardon Indigenous education released in August 2017 (OECD, 2017) Promising Practices in Supporting Success for Indigenous Students further advanced the narrative of First nations as a collective body that continues to live in a policy space defined as an “achievement gap.” Marking Milestones on the ‘Indigeneity’ Journey By unpacking the narratives of milestones and the linear march of curriculum policymaking, I sketch here why Alberta cannot make the mistake of assuming that reform will be a clear march forward where a western Enlightenment view of the world continues to frame Indigenous people as “failed versions of ourselves”(Davis in Grainger, 2009) . Instead, we need to see “decolonization is as much a process as a goal (Harsha Walia in Kino-nda-niimi Collective, 2014, p. 45) . As one teacher recently wryly shared at a curriculum workshop: Couture, 2017 Canadian Social Studies, Volume 49, No. 1 I understand the proposed changes in direction for the new curriculum—which by the way I agree with—but after breaking open and scrambling the philosophical, cultural, and political eggs of the western worldview that drives what we teach and assess success, well, I ask myself, what kind of omelet, what do I serve on Monday morning in my class? Millions (2014) identified the need to resist the unintended totalization of Indigenous peoples as a singular body politic that has been collectively traumatized. While the trauma of the residential schools is a critical historical reality – so too is the fact that since 2014 two-thirds of all First Nations communities in Canada had been under at least one drinking water advisory since 2004 and currently in Alberta 13 communities are subject to these same conditions (Hampshire, 2017) . These predicaments, both philosophical and material, raise questions as to the ways we have configured educational progress through milestones – pursuing a linear policy pa

FAQs

What problem does the article identify in Alberta social studies reform?

It argues that irreconcilable pressures emerge between the formal program and prescribed outcomes versus the realities and complexities teachers face in classrooms.

Why does the article use the concept of “milestones”?

It treats milestones as narratives of linear policy progress, showing how such framing can ignore tensions and material realities while reinforcing power and control through symbolic markers.

How does the article connect decolonization to curriculum change?

It presents decolonization as a process and goal rather than a straightforward march forward, emphasizing the need to contextualize “indigeneity” within lived curriculum experiences.

Oct 15, 2026

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