Collectively Dreaming Toward Indigenized School Psychology Education and Training

Abstract

Indigenous Peoples comprise a significant portion of the population whose mental health needs must be appropriately addressed, and schools are important contexts for this service provision. The author presents findings from a culturally-grounded, strengths-based, qualitative, Two-Eyed Seeing study that engaged with current and previous Indigenous graduate students from Canadian mainstream and Indigenized counseling psychology programs to explore their graduate school experience and dream for the future of psychological education and training. Community-led analysis with aspects of qualitative thematic analysis guided a collective results narrative. Eight findings emerged including: (1) the importance of relationality in education and training; (2) the significance of experiential learning (i.e., land and art-based, ceremonial, interpersonal relations); (3) diversity in knowledge sharers and inclusion of elders in psychology education; (4) critical decision-making about cohort member inclusion (i.e., all indigenous cohorts vs. mixed); (5) mandatory Indigenous pre-requisite courses; (6) cultural humility; (7) teachings about how to be a good person rather than how to be a good counselor; and (8) interviews for program entry. These findings are discussed in the context of future practice, intervention, education, and training of school, educational, counseling, and clinical psychologists, as well as pedagogical and curricular programmatic changes in multi-educational levels (i.e., K-12 and post-secondary). Considerations and areas of future research are discussed.