The Curriculum and Instruction in Social Studies and Aboriginal Education course explores the shared histories of Indigenous and settler relationships across Turtle Island and, while recognizing the US/Canadian divisions as colonial constructs, will focus more specifically on the Canadian context. This course provides a practical and conceptual introduction to the teaching of Social Studies (Grades 4-6), History and Geography (7-10) within the context of Aboriginal (First Nations, Métis and Inuit) understandings. This course consists of a series of seminars and workshops designed to emphasize the expectations, pedagogy, methodology and content integrating both Social studies and Aboriginal Studies in the junior/intermediate grades.

The course provides opportunities to develop practical understandings relating to instructional methods and skills through unit and lesson planning, including practical assessment strategies, in a variety of classroom contexts as well as the incorporation of Indigenous and Western knowledges and understandings. It seeks answers to questions of identity, meaning-making, complex issues concerning community and nation, past and present. It looks to bring local histories and traditional ecological knowledges- and to provide a template for understanding the complex interplay relating to constructions of identity (personal, local, and national) and sovereignty.