This paper contains three short reports. The first deals with applying the concept of community-guided education, and the second discusses northern teacher training. Both are based on applied research. The third report covers the preparation that southern teacher candidates undergo before heading north.
The aforementioned research projects stem from a 1970 conference in Inuvik, “The Man in the North Inuvik Conference,” which discussed important issues in northern community development, and highlighted a lack of community involvement in formal education. Conference participants called for involvement of elders and native teachers, particularly in lower grades, to help guarantee cultural continuity and allow students to ease into the school environment, feeling understood culturally and linguistically. Task forces were assigned to research these proposals at various sites, and Site III was Great Bear Lake (boundaries not clearly defined).

Abstract: 

The 3 research topics examined in this report are identified as crucially important by the 1970 Man in the North Inuvik Conference. Eskimo, Indian, and Metis residents of the North comprise 2/3 of the conference participants. The first 2 reports are on applied research projects, the first dealing withsome practical ways to apply the concept of community-guided education, the second with training northern native teachers. The third report is a study of southern teacher preparation for professional teaching in the North. Three conclusions appear most significant for the present stage of northern education: (1) while official directives concerning northern education seem to be promising, very often they lack comprehension from the administrators, the teaching staffs, and concerned populations; (2) local committees must have well-defined responsibilities in the selection, hiring, transfer,and dismissal of teachers; and (3) efforts to post native teachers to the elementary grades should not exclude new and imaginative formulas that depart from the sempiternal tendency to accommodate northern elementary teacher training to the already existing standards and procedures of the South. (HEC)

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Brown, Doug, H.T. Murphy, Rosalee Tizya, Eric Gourdeau, and Ghislain Girard. Technical Reports: Education in the Canadian North. Montreal: Arctic Institute of North America, March 1973.