Listening to the 2023 Teaching Practices Survey: Consultations and Stewarding Good Relations 

Part 2 of our monthly blog series: Listening to the 2023 Teaching Practices Survey.  

Crunching the numbers  

Every four years, UBC faculty and those with teaching appointments are invited to participate in the Teaching Practices Survey (TPS). The purpose of the TPS is to “better understand how instructors structure learning for students and give participants a forum for confidential feedback on the teaching climate at UBC” (TPS Website). The most recent iteration of the TPS wrapped up in May 2023 with responses from 714 faculty members, 70% of whom have over 10 years of teaching experience in a higher education setting. 

Read more about our process for interpreting TPS data in the first blogpost of our ongoing series: Listening to the 2023 Teaching Practices Survey: Integrating Indigenous Topics 

CTLT Indigenous Initiatives (II) in collaboration with the Office of Strategic Indigenous Initiatives (OISI) analyzed responses to the only Indigenous content specific open-ended question: “If you have integrated Indigenous topics, perspectives and worldviews into your course, please describe your approach to doing this work (i.e., your decision-making process, decisions around support/resources sought)” (Question 9.4, TPS survey, 2023). Four prominent themes emerged during our analysis, which will be further expanded upon in this monthly blog series: 

• Content integration 
• Consultation 
• Professional development 
• Inviting guest speakers 

Consultations and best intentions  

During our data analysis we categorized all responses that included mentions of consultations with department heads, non-academic units, fellow faculty, students, teaching assistants, and Indigenous communities and colleagues under the broad theme of “consultations.” Some of the reoccurring considerations for the II and OISI TPS working group were good relationship building and stewardship, systematic and institutional power dynamics and equitable labour sharing amongst consulted Indigenous colleagues, community and students.

Collegial asks amongst colleagues are normal; they are something we do every day in our work, yet when it comes to tapping on Indigenous colleagues, students, and other community members there are some deeper considerations. In this blog post, we are going to talk about those considerations, while thinking through how our individual positionalities can be brought into a larger examination of our institutional and systemic power to better develop more holistic understandings of what it means to build these connections in a good way. 

“Non-Indigenous people are recognizing the important of proceeding with respect, and increasingly reach out to Indigenous scholars or communities for guidance on how to do so.” Jesse Pop

Want to reach out to an Indigenous scholar? Awesome! But first, here are 10 things to consider.

Asking in a good way  

From the data we have learned that colleagues are leaning on colleagues for support in indigenizing their classes. While demographic information is outside the scope of the TPS survey, we know through the shared experiences of Indigenous faculty and staff, that they are often approached by their non-Indigenous colleagues for support: “Many Indigenous scholars forge ahead to passionately contribute to systemic change; however, as requests mount, and there’s not enough time to go around, we are stretched incredibly thin.”¹ Conversations around capacity, institutional, and systemic power can be uncomfortable. When we hear that someone is ‘at capacity’ it sets a boundary for us to listen to, but it does not have to be a conversation stopper. Understanding the nuances to what it means to ask a colleague to exert more time and energy for collegial shared learning comes from building and stewarding ongoing relationships based within reciprocity.  

There is no roadmap or ‘one size fits all’ approach to creating relationships, but there are some reflection questions we can ask ourselves when we are wanting to reach out to our colleagues, especially Indigenous colleagues who have lived experiences:  

Connecting with community  

23% of respondents identified that they consult with Indigenous community members, communities, and organizations for support in integrating Indigenous contexts into their teaching practice.

UBC 2023 Teaching Practices Survey: Vancouver Campus Report

Much of the conversation around stewarding strong relationships comes from understanding our own positionality: “positionality refers to how differences in social position and power shape identities across society”(CTLT Indigenous Initiatives: Positionality). When becoming more aware of our own positionalities in relation to each other and the lands we live on, our relationship to place becomes visible. If we do not have historical, ancestral, and living connections to the places we are working with or living on, making connections with the communities who do feels like a natural and necessary step.  

According to the 2023 TPS, 23% of respondents identified that they consult with Indigenous community members, communities, and organizations for support in integrating Indigenous contexts into their teaching practice. The UBC Vancouver Campus is on the and ancestral, and unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) who have lived on these lands since time immemorial. The document Connecting Communities: Principles for Musqueam-UBC Collaboration, created in collaboration of the UBC Sustainability Scholars Project, and the Musqueam Indian Band, outlines the complex history between Universities and Indigenous communities:  “UBC staff must realize the university is not necessarily an asset to Musqueam. Students and faculty often want to do research with the community based on their own interests, not Musqueam’s. The community is often asked to take on projects they are not interested in, and do not stand to benefit from.”

For those of us who are not Indigenous to these lands, it is essential we listen to the directions of Host Nations. It is integral that we understand the complex and harmful history of the University and the impact extractive research has had on Indigenous communities while understanding the role formal Western education has had in colonization. Mi’kmaq scholar Marie Battiste asks us to consider the following: “for more than a century, Indigenous students have been part of a forced assimilation plan – their heritage and knowledge rejected and suppressed and ignored by the education system. Imagine the consequence of a powerful ideology that positions one group as superior” (Decolonizing Education, 2013 UBC Press). While holding this history may feel overwhelming, it is integral to understand that understanding this history is not an excuse to not form collaborations with Indigenous communities, but instead it is a call to action to “reform the relationship into a respectful, mutually beneficial one” (Connecting Communities: Principles for Musqueam-UBC Collaboration).

Learning from and with Indigenous students 

The third area of consultation we identified through the TPS data was instructors consulting with Indigenous students. Indigenous students are the experts of their own lives and come from complex and diverse backgrounds. Often in the classroom Indigenous students are tokenized by non-Indigenous instructors; they are dehumanized, viewed through a colonial lens. Sometimes, as the only Indigenous person in the room, Indigenous students feel pressured to speak on Indigenous topics either through the omittance of them in the curriculum or social pressure from fellow students and instructors. As one Indigenous student states in the original 2007 What I Learned in Class Today (WILICT) video: “in some ways you feel forced that if you don’t speak up about it and don’t say something about it than nothing is going to be said. So, you are kind of caught in that crossfire. Do you say something? Can you say something? I mean am I going to be too emotional to say something? And it can be defeating if you don’t.” 

Present in the experience of tokenization is an unequal power relationship between instructor and student. Inherently, instructors hold more institutional power and often more systemic power over Indigenous students due to their social positionality. Additionally, Indigenous students face greater barriers in receiving their education. According to the 2023 AMS Academic Experience Survey , 43% of Indigenous respondents indicated that they experience racial discrimination on campus and identified that these experiences are occurring from other students and instructors in the classroom. Furthermore, 59% of Indigenous respondents indicated that they are currently facing mental health difficulties while 46% of Indigenous respondents noted that in the last year, they are facing food and financial insecurity.  

When thinking through consultation as a process, it is important that we consider who is benefiting. Asking Indigenous students to educate the educator in classrooms that are already contentious space leads to further stress and harm. Instead, those of us with systemic and institutional power should consider the ways in which we can utilize our power to push for creating safer learning spaces for Indigenous students, addressing the institutional failures that are impacting them, and work to hold space for Indigenous students to dream and construct their own futures.  

Stewarding good relations is an on-going commitment  

It can be hard when we begin navigating the unsure waters of decolonizing our own understandings of ourselves and our work. It is important to see this as a journey and not a sprint with a finish line or a race to win. When we invest in unpacking our proximities to power, colonization, and focus on building strong relationships we are investing in our collective wellbeing. But sometimes, especially when we are facing deadlines and funding scarcity, it’s hard to “see the forest through the trees”. We are not disempowered though; we have access to resources, support units, and each other to navigate our journeys together.