Introduction: Reconceptualizing learning: A critical task for knowledge-building and teaching

Reconceptualizing learning is a critically important intellectual and social project at this time. Recent scientific breakthroughs reveal new and consequential insights about the brain, the complexities of thinking, and the intertwining of learning and environment that challenge much of what authors thought they knew about learning, and much of the science our current educational structures and practices are built upon. Participation in cultural communities provides the physical and ideational artifacts, the routine tasks that embody knowledge structures and dispositions, and the relationships of support that development across the life course requires and embodies. Many Indigenous communities have elaborate theories of learning and development encoded in their knowledge systems and cultural ecologies, as reflected in stories, traditions, and the ways Indigenous peoples organize their families and communities. The body of Indigenous scholars and non-Indigenous scholars pushing to conduct scholarship that has construct validity with respect to the ontological assertions and Indigenous knowledge systems theoretically and methodological continues to expand.