In my book chapter, “Re-storying Matricultures” (2024), I developed a new methodology for listening for silences in curricula. It builds on Carol Bacchi (1999) who developed a policy-analysis method for detecting who and what was excluded from policy, and then to interrogate why it was rendered invisible.
In “Re-storying Matricultures”, I selected keywords from my matricultures research project and searched for those words in Grade 9-12 Social Studies curricula in four provinces. Here is a sample finding: “There is profound silence across provincial curricula regarding Canada’s policies and practices for reducing the capacity of Indigenous women to reproduce their culture” (p. 69). The implication is that curricular silence renders this form of genocide invisible. The tactics of erasure are not named, so high school students would not be able to interrogate or problematize this form of genocide.
In my PhD dissertation research, I used the same research method to analyze Grade 12 Social Studies curricula in two provinces for silences on climate change adaptation. In my posts over the next month, I will name a curricular gap that I found and discuss its implications. If you are outraged, I invite you to write a comment.