A Critical Study Of Tribal Education PDF Download

Western public education research rarely includes empirical information about or formal consultation with sovereign Tribal governments and Indigenous stakeholders. This lack has led to gaps in services, poor resource allocation, inappropriate programming, and a chronic systemic failure of the public educational system to meet the needs of American Indian learners. To address these issues and gaps, Indigenous scholars and advocates work towards operationalizing Indian civil rights. The purpose of this "indigenized" descriptive single case study is to document the educational policy-making process of one Tribe by exploring the following research questions: How does the Stockbridge-Munsee government develop educational policy? What influences the Stockbridge-Munsee government's policy making process? Guiding frameworks of the study include Critical Race Theory and Tribal Critical Theory. The constructs and methods of community-based participatory research (CBPR), Tribally-based participatory research (TDPR), and an understanding of the multi-jurisdictional legal framework of American Indian research informed the study design and ensured cultural responsiveness, scientific rigor, and adherence to ethical, professional, and legal standards. Self-assessment surveys and interviews were conducted with 27 participants (unduplicated count) representing Tribal government, local and state education agencies, and the Tribal community. Key documents were collected from participants, online, and from Tribal, local, state and federal agency records. Constant comparative analysis and triangulating data allowed emerging themes to be confirmed through multiple data sources. This study has three major findings: 1. Developing Tribal educational policy is a contextualized and multiple step process. The S-M educational policy system is series of intra-Tribal interactions. Policy is created in multiple steps involving the Tribal government, Tribal Education Board, and Tribal Education Department. Each of these Tribal educational policy stakeholder groups has distinct roles in the policy process. 2. Multiple factors influence Tribal education policy development. These include "cross-cutting" influences as well as community, cultural/traditional, and public/western education influences. 3. Tribal and public educational policy activities vary across educational agencies and affect the policy environment, inter-agency relations, and perceptions of educational stakeholders. Findings from the study suggest that multi-jurisdictional policy structures that explicitly foster intergovernmental relations across local, state, federal, and Tribal government agencies will best support public school education of American Indian students.