Classroom Inquiry and Navajo Learning Styles: A Call for Reassessment

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Abstract
The educational literature continues to characterize Native American children as nonanalytical, nonverbal learners. Applied to educational practice, these generalizations downplay the use of questioning, “speaking up,” and analytical or inquiry‐based pedagogies. Here we report on the introduction of an experimental Navajo bilingual‐bicultural curriculum emphasizing open‐ended questioning, inductive/analytical reasoning, and student verbalization in both small‐ and large‐group settings. The critical elements influencing students' and teachers' positive response to this curriculum are examined as they relate to natural learning‐teaching interactions outside the classroom, and to an articulated Navajo philosophy of knowledge. These findings challenge conventional characterizations of holistic/analytical and verbal/nonverbal teaching and learning “styles,” which, when applied to educational practice, can perpetuate patterns of learned dependence that extend well beyond the classroom to the reproduction of structural relations within the wider society.

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