Contract funding from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) has enabled the CAAS to undertake our first independent research project: a Student Awareness Study.

Under the guidance of our Aboriginal and Academic advisors, the SAS has been developed to measure the actual learning achievements of first year university students, relative to a our own set of learning expectations. Our learning expectations are drawn from the experience of Aboriginal educators and traditional teachers within our network, as well as the recommendations of the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a review of current and exemplary curriculum, and other research.

The SAS Survey, or primary research component of this Study, will provide a baseline analysis of students' current learning about Aboriginal Peoples. A screening process has been developed to identify students who have attended First Nations and other Aboriginal community schools, as we anticipate that these students will be better informed than those who have attended Canadian schools. (It is the latter group we are most interested in studying, as Aboriginal youth who are being educated in their communities do not have need for a group such as ours; their educators are already well aware of the issues that the CAAS is raising.)

Every effort is being made to capture a representative regional, ethnic/cultural, and linguistic sample (the survey WILL be administered in both English and French). Our goal is to get 100 responses from each of: Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairie provinces, British Columbia and the North.

As of January, 2001, we have not yet met this goal and would appreciate any assistance we can get with access to first year students in some of these regions.

The surveys require approximately 45 minutes to complete, and must be administered in a supervised setting. Professors and other instructors from colleges and universities across Canada are administering them either during class time or as an optional assignment. They use our "answer sheet" (afterwards) and other resource materials to turn the survey process into a learning opportunity. For sample purposes, we prefer that the surveys are completed by students in arts, sciences, applied studies such as social work, and so on - not in courses related to "Native Studies" per se. We have addressed ethical research concerns and can provide information on this as required.

As part of the SAS, we will certainly discover some students who provide high quality responses to our questions. Through them, we will be able to identify some teachers in classrooms across Canada - including some non-Aboriginal ones - who do a REALLY good job with Aboriginal Studies. In a later phase of our work , called Teachers Teach Teachers, we will follow this trail to its source, and interview and document the strategies used by these successful, or 'exemplary', educators.