Dr. Sandra Barton Instructor in Racial Equity & Educational Justice Graduate Certificate Program

Bio

Dr. Barton currently serves as the Training and Continuous Improvement Coordinator for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians in Bowler, Wisconsin. She earned her Ph.D. in Education with a specialty in Curriculum Development and Instructional Design from Southern Illinois University and brings over 40 years of teaching experience in higher education. Her dissertation, titled, “Web Walkers, A phenomenological study of adult Native American distance learning experiences: Toward a standard model of Indigenous learning” focuses on identifying and navigating barriers to culturally relevant and responsive teaching, changing mindsets in educational institutions, and challenging oppressive educational paradigms. Dr. Barton’s recent presentations have brought her to Alaska, Virginia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Tennessee, North Carolina, and include culturally responsive and sustaining education, Indigenous models of learning, curriculum, and instruction, Indigenous leadership in curriculum and instruction, supporting Indigenous learners, and applying Indigenous curricular design to support culturally responsive literacy practices in the classroom. Dr. Barton’s prior area of expertise is in marine geology and sedimentology.

About the Course

GED 575 Indigenous Perspectives: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, Curriculum, and the Arts

This course examines Indigenous pedagogies, instructional design models, theories, and applications grounded in Native American identity, culture, and Indigenous epistemologies. In the context of vast diversity among Indigenous people, ways of knowing, teaching, and learning, we explore perspectives that emphasize interconnectedness, place, storytelling, the arts, intergenerational relationships, experience, mentorship, and an awareness of the culturally mediated factors that influence educators’ worldview and classroom practice. Students will think critically about historical narratives, the stories we consume, curate, preserve, and pass on, curricular implications for educators (including the political, historical, current, personal, geographic, intersectional, cultural, and unexamined,) and the ways our individual and collective worldviews shape and are shaped by history. With Indigenous perspectives at the center, this course examines the legacies and ongoing consequences of colonization, including how historic and current events, policies, and power structures force change and continue to reinforce continuity for Indigenous people.