Chambers’ presentation provides valuable context for the work in curriculum development and written language documentation occurring in the early 1980s.

From the Introduction:

“Hello. My name is Cynthia Chambers. For the past two years I have been working with the Department of Education in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories in Canada, as a curriculum developer. The curriculum I have been developing has been in the northern Dene languages for use in the Territorial schools. A majority of my time has been spent in the preparation of materials for the Chief Jimmy Soldat School in Fort Franklin, N.W.T., which has been a pilot project for the use of a Dene Language as the language of instruction from kindergarten to grade two, since 1979. In conjunction with this work, I have been involved in numerous inservice training workshops with Dene classroom assistants (teacher aides) and teachers. These workshops have covered a number of topics including literacy training and methodology but most importantly what might be aptly coined as sociology of Dene bilingualism. 

The various aspects of my work have, over the last two years, forced me to examine some of the issues in curriculum development in northern Dene languages. It is really a brief synopsis of my examination of these issues that I would like to share with you now.

Many of these issues have involved the disciplines of psychology and linguistics. The lack of hard core linguistic research data on early and middle year Dene language acquisition; as well as psychological research on the cognitive development, cognitive categories and strategies of Dene children have severely hampered our ability to develop program materials based on research evidence. Without such research we have no basis from which to develop an evaluation mechanism for either our first or second language programs. We have no evidence to indicate how effective our present programming has been and what areas require improvements or change. The dearth of research has meant that we have not even tried to develop a mechanism for testing children’s oral proficiency in the Dene languages; a tool we sorely need in so many of our schools where the school population has mixed proficiency in the Dene languages. We must know how well the children understand and speak the language before a program can be developed and they can be grouped for introduction. The general lack of scientific and applied research in all of these areas has hampered the development of effective Dene language programs. Because to date most of the curriculum development has been in the language arts area for a Dene as the Language of instruction [xxx], we have tried to apply modern reading theory to the development of a tertiary level literacy program."

Access this Resource: 

This conference paper is held in the NWT Archives: accession no. 2007-14 (Cynthia Chambers Collection). 

Chambers, Cynthia. “Making Literacy in the Northern Dene Languages Functional.” Arcata: Second Annual Athapaskan Linguistics Conference, 1981.