Decolonizing instructional design through auto/ethnography

Instructional design is the systematic process of planning and developing learning environments. In contemporary educational contexts, this has come to include also the intentional integration of digital and Internet technologies. Instructional design practitioners are trained to employ formal theoretical process models to guide their practices, roughly analogous to the ways in which a quilt maker may utilize a pattern and systematic process to guide making a quilt. There are few developed models of instructional design to be found in the literature that adequately attend to cultural orientation and none have been developed from within non-dominant cultural Indigenous education contexts. Furthermore, the literature examining the instructional designer as a culturally oriented actor within the instructional design process is limited. Few instructional designers have been trained to operate outside of Western epistemologies. This study interrogated this shortfall in instructional design scholarship and suggests new strategies for practice that can be leveraged in the decolonization project -- reclaiming education for Indigenous people according to Indigenous values.;The purpose of this study was to critically examine the practices of an instructional designer working within an Indigenous higher education context in order to identify culturally relevant approaches to instructional design. The study findings suggested that leveraging autoethnographic research strategies, together with a reflexive orientation to practice, may provide a mechanism through which an instructional designer can advance from technician to culturally competent professional, positioned to work effectively in partnership with educators who serve the Indigenous community. The study findings culminated in the Star Quilt Framework for Culturally Competent Instructional Design, a person model for practice, which acknowledges the role of the instructional designer as an actor in the design process. The study findings have implications for professional development of instructional design practitioners serving Indigenous populations, and may offer strategies relevant for culturally competent practices in higher education, in general.