Building Innovative and Transformative Learning Environments for Online Scholar Practitioner Communities

Project Team

  • Sabre Cherkowski, Professor, Okanagan School of Education (Lead Applicant)
  • Dr. Lynn Bosetti, Professor, Okanagan School of Education
  • Dr. Bill Cohen, Assistant Professor, Okanagan School of Education
  • Dr. Scott Douglas, Associate Professor, Okanagan School of Education


Themes

  • Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
  • Indigenizing Curriculum
  • Program Development and Transformation

Year

2025


About the Project

The purpose of this project is to build and assess a transformative online EdD learning community oriented to equity and social justice. Indigenous-focused curricula will be infused through all courses and the capacity of all members of the EdD community to be in good relation will be strengthened, guided by a new conceptual model informing and influencing all program components.

We innovate with a new conceptual model of being in good relation framed within Indigenous scholarship focused on relationality and ethical engagement. Being in good relation comes from Hare (2021) who argues knowledge is constructed and understood within relationships grounded in accountability through proximity (Wilson, 2008). Kirkness and Barnhardt’s (2001) foregrounding of respect, relevance, reciprocity and responsibility (4Rs) for indigenizing and decolonizing efforts offers a frame for the qualities of ethical engagement that will foster and support being in good relation in a doctoral program.

We will hire, and then co-create, a position for a Syilx Host, a new role created since the EdD program was approved. The Host will be an important catalyst for transforming learning for all members of the online EdD learning community, offering students an opportunity for learning through this model how to be in good relation with their local community and place as educational leaders.

We will develop an assessment tool that identifies and examines the ways all members of the EdD learning community experience and live out what it means to be in good relation as scholar-practitioners (students, instructors, supervisors and field mentors, Syilx Host, program manager).