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The increasing speed of societal, environmental, technological, and workplace changes brings into sharper focus the question of how people shape and learn from transitions, such as so-called 'skilled migration'. Taking a doing transitions and doing migration perspective, I assert that transitions and migration do not simply exist but are constituted relationally through social practices and accompanied by learning processes. This paper reports findings from qualitative research into the question of how people learn and transform their understandings of (life)time when moving to a new country and seeking entry into the labour market. The study used the documentary method to analyse data from 20 biographical-narrative interviews with people who moved to Canada as adults. Findings indicate different modes of dealing with shifts in temporal contexts during migration as decompressing lifetime, losing time, and going with the flow. These modes are associated with positive transformative learning, negative transformative learning, and learning through participation in practices. This study has implications for theorising learning during life course transitions as a socially embedded process. It also points to the need for differentiated support as individuals seek to enter new labour markets or make career changes in the context of migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current heightened sensitivity around history, colonisation and the aftermath of the socio-political and cultural ethos of the world can create in many people the fear of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation. This fear can affect the ability to imagine and play in certain learning settings, especially in devising performances, socially engaged theatre, and other arts-based explorations. However, what happens when participants choose not to engage due to the abovementioned fears? This paper considers the differing ways in which fear of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation deterred students from learning while teaching in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking broadly sociocultural or sociolinguistic perspectives, the five contributions to this special issue investigate various aspects of the co-construction of knowledge, as this is manifested in K-16 classrooms in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While the authors of these papers address different educational settings, student populations, and curricular content, what unites them is their concern to better understand the cumulative, multidimensional nature of learning and teaching and the ways in which this is enacted in action and discourse across different spaces and over different scales of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A social accountability mandate for Canadian medical schools formally emerged in Canada with changes to accreditation standards in 2015. However, how social accountability is defined and operationalized within medical schools has transpired independently. Key enablers of social accountability in Canadian medical schools have been largely unexplored. This paper is the first of a two part series that seeks to explore drivers of social accountability in a sample of Canadian medical schools. Nine key drivers of social accountability emerged from the data including a unified vision, committed leadership, accreditation standards, champions of social accountability, authentic community engagement, community-based learning opportunities, a supportive organizational and governance structure, diversity within medical schools, and measurement of progress and outcomes. This is the first study of its kind to examine what is driving social accountability across Canadian medical schools. An appreciative inquiry approach highlights areas of progress for future work to focus and build upon. This paper presents the findings from part one of the study – exploring the themes emerging from key informant interviews with senior leaders. A second paper will dive into the broader perspectives of faculty, staff and students, to explore more fully the varying perspectives of social accountability within colleges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing student learning in ways that offer students, institutions and systems with sound information is a considerable challenge for higher education. Despite demonstrable progress, a disconnect remains between methods used for assessing learning, improvement and accountability. This muddled situation is illustrated through a review of contemporary practice in the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and New Zealand. To advance research and practice, this paper contributes a structured set of criteria that practitioners can use to evaluate whether an assessment functions effectively across different levels of practice. These technical and practical criteria touch on issues such as sampling, the viability of aggregation, reporting and cost-benefit considerations. The paper tests these criteria by considering their capacity to drive multi-level improvement in education quality. It is contended that the criteria provide perspective and structure for reconciling the quantitative assessment of higher education quality at different levels of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second paper of this two part series on Key Elements of Interprofessional Education (IPE), we highlight factors for success in IPE based on a systematic literature review conducted for Health Canada in its “Interprofessional Education for Patient Centred Practice” (IECPCP) initiative in Canada (Oandasan et al., 2004). The paper initially discusses micro (individual level) meso (institutional/organizational level) and macro (socio-cultural and political level) factors that can influence the success of an IPE initiative. The discussion provides the infrastructure for the introduction of a proposed framework for educators to utilize in the planning and implementation of an IPE program to enhance a learner's opportunity to become a collaborative practitioner. The paper also discusses key issues related to the evaluation of IPE and its varied outcomes. Lastly, it gives the reader suggestions of outcome measurements that can be used within the proposed IPE framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, two adult educator professors share reflections on their dialogues, spanning 15 years, focusing on their journey of work and learning at a research-intensive university. Authors refer to intrinsic principles, values, and a shared commitment to contributing to a community shaped and influenced by an intentional focus on 'relationality' in support of individual and collective well-being. By reflecting on dialogues, past and ongoing, an enduring commitment to co-creating learning spaces sustained by care, compassion, and positive regard for colleagues and students is realized. Authors advance a commitment to community as essential to support work and learning spaces that thrive. This discourse is located in the current neoliberal milieu where a focus on performance germane to teaching, securing research funding, scholarship productivity, and compliance pervades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work with groups is one of the social work intervention methods, and describes an approach directed at individuals, families, and communities. Most articles discussing this intervention method result from research conducted in larger urban centers. This research is based on the training and needs of social workers doing group work; specifically, qualitative research on social workers practising group intervention work in northern Quebec (Canada). The results indicate social workers' satisfaction with training that simultaneously integrates practical work and group theory in a university setting. Group intervention work in rural areas has certain advantages over social work in large urban centers (sharing and understanding of a shared reality, breaking down isolation barriers), but social workers also have to face certain challenges specific to their region, such as confidentiality, a lack of public transit for users, and the lack of importance placed by the health network on this type of intervention work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is general consensus that teaching and learning centres have a positive impact on promoting and supporting a culture that values teaching and learning, yet there is limited evidence on how centres evaluate their work. For this purpose, a survey was developed and administered to the directors of 88 Canadian centres; 46 of which completed the survey. In this paper, we share centres’ approaches to evaluation that emerged from the survey findings and the artifact analysis. By raising awareness of evaluation approaches, we are better positioned to identify further opportunities to develop a more systematic and coherent approach to evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that learning is a natural social process that leads to the construction of meaning, which involves the creation of experiences of coherence, purpose, identity and competence. Learning that yields a coherent social context, a worthy or compelling purpose, a strong, integrated identity and increasing levels of competence results in an experience of meaningful work. Learning as a social process is characterized by the property of capacity. Any given group will have a capacity to learn and it will be difficult for that group to take on a learning challenge that is beyond its present capacity. If a group, for example, is short-handed and is carrying out work that members see as urgent and important, then the group may focus its efforts on maintaining its equilibrium and creating stability and may diminish its capacity to adapt to change by taking on new ideas and approaches. Such a group might also have a diminished capacity to bring newcomers into the community - which is the very thing that it needs to do if it is to overcome the problem of being short-handed. These propositions will be illustrated by a specific example: teams of frontline caregivers in a long-term care facility in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If I lose my key in Canada, for instance, and I search for it in the United Kingdom, how long will I take to find it? This paper argues that problems in education are caused by non-professional teachers who are employed when trained teachers move in search of promotion friendly activities or financially rewarding duties. This shift of focus means that policy makers in education act without adequate professional guidance. The problems in education, therefore, result from demands made on mainstream education based on misconceptions about what education can offer. It is argued that the implementation of e-learning in education faces the risk of developing on the basis of unproven theories. This scenario increasingly sees the replacement of formal education activities in institutions of learning with non-formal and informal education practices. Given that the contents and influences of non-formal and informal education are not under the control of the teacher, the experiences that learners bring to education settings are increasingly difficult to manage. The paper proposes that by integrating e-learning in teacher education and rewarding ‘good teaching’, there is a potential for a successful e-learning revolution in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a critical feminist theoretical framework is used to explore the challenges of creating democratic learning spaces that will foster active and inclusive citizenship for women. Three democratic considerations are addressed to assess how adult educators can create more inclusive opportunities for lifelong education for women. The first consideration is the need for a careful examination of structural inequalities that create disadvantages for women in pursuing lifelong education. The second consideration is the need to create a broader and more gender inclusive understanding of the scope of lifelong learning possibilities, so that women's learning experiences are not devalued. The third consideration explores how to take up gender as a complex variable within the broader discourse of inclusion. This paper is informed by preliminary results from a current SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council) study on lifelong learning trajectories for women in Canada and a CCL (Canadian Council on Learning) study on active citizenship for women in Nova Scotia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the health care community expects its members to make effective presentations, presentation strategies are seldom explicitly taught.Those who do attempt to systematically teach or learn these skills soon realize that 'how to' guides for making effective presentations contain useful, but not sufficient, information. To become an effective presenter, it is necessary to understand not only the generic strategies that characterize effective presentations, but also the context-specific presentation strategies of a particular practice community.The framework for making effective presentations proposed in this paper is grounded in the knowledge of how experts acquire and use strategy knowledge, and takes into account not only the 'how to' of making presentations, but the circumstances and belief systems that determine effective presentation strategies in varying contexts.The framework is designed to make presentation strategy knowledge more transparent, and to permit presenters to learn from every presentation they give and attend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an experiment designed to evaluate an attempt to improve the effectiveness of an existing L2 idiom-learning tool. In this tool, learners are helped to associate the abstract, idiomatic meaning of expressions such asjump the gun(act too soon) with their original, concrete meaning (e.g. associatingjump the gunwith the scene of a track athlete who starts running before the starting pistol is fired). This association lends concreteness to target lexis, which is known to facilitate learning (Paivio, A., & Desrochers, A. (1979). Effects of an imagery mnemonic on second language recall and comprehension.Canadian Journal of Psychology, 33, 17–28). It is a mental operation that orients the learner first and foremost to the semantic dimension of the expression, however. It does not as such engage the learner with formal properties of the expression, such as its orthography. In an effort to stimulate the latter engagement, a copy exercise was incorporated in the learning procedure. The merit of this additional exercise was evaluated by having one group of students (N= 21) study 25 idioms according to the new procedure, while a comparison group (N= 21) was given an additional meaning-oriented task instead. Recall by the two groups was compared immediately and two weeks after the treatment by means of a gap-fill test. The copy exercise was not found to promote better recall, a result we discuss with reference to levels of processing theory (Lockhart, R.S., & Craik, F.I.G. (1990). Levels of processing: A retrospective commentary on a framework for memory research.Canadian Journal of Psychology, 44, 87–112). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose: Changing the current geographical maldistribution of the medical workforce is important for global health. Research regarding programs that train doctors for work with disadvantaged, rural populations is needed. This paper explores one approach of remote supervision of registrars in isolated rural practice. Researching how learning occurs without on-site supervision may also reveal other key elements of postgraduate education. Methods: Thematic analysis of in-depth interviews exploring 11 respondents’ experiences of learning via remote supervision. Results: Remote supervision created distinctive learning environments. Respondents’ attributes interacted with external supports to influence whether and how their learning was promoted or impeded. Registrars with clinical and/or life experience, who were insightful and motivated to direct their learning, turned the challenges of isolated practice into opportunities that accelerated their professional development. Discussion: Remote supervision was not necessarily problematic but instead provided rich learning for doctors training in and for the context where they were needed. Registrars learnt through clinical responsibility for defined populations and longitudinal, supportive supervisory relationships. Responsibility and continuity may be as important as supervisory proximity for experienced registrars. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Continuing professional development (CPD) is a substantial, but hitherto largely unappreciated component of lifelong learning and education (LLL/LLE). CPD encourages analysis of the LLL/LLE of those with high education in early years. It draws attention to the influence of particular organisations, professional associations and regulatory bodies, not only as suppliers of LLL/LLE, but also as facilitators of perpetual cycles of learning and in so doing connect lifelong learning with individual identities as professionals. This study highlights the importance of bringing a sociological perspective into understanding participation in LLL/LLE through consideration of a wider range of stakeholders. Data is presented on these organisations' CPD policies from a large-scale survey carried out in the UK triennially between 2003 and 2018, in addition to interviews, focus groups and other surveys of employees of these organisations in the UK, as well as in Australia, Canada and Ireland reported in many publications. The development path of CPD and the changes this has led to for the exercise of professionals' lifelong learning and for the functioning of these organisations themselves is analysed. CPD policies and programmes are portrayed as a structured system distinct from university continuing education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflection is generally acknowledged as an important part of teacher education and a central activity in teacher development. The close connection between reflection and identity development has been noted in literature on teacher education. This paper will focus on the interplay among the concepts of reflection, identity and the ideal, and will report the results of a pilot study which attempted to elicit from student teachers their reflections on an ideal identity for their future lives as teachers. The implications of such reflection for teacher education programmes will be indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is substantial evidence that formal educational attainments increasingly exceed the educational job requirements of the employed labour force in many advanced market economies - a phenomenon variously termed 'underemployment', 'underutilisation', or 'overqualification'. Conversely, both experiential learning and workplace case studies suggest that workers continually negotiate such 'gaps'. This paper summarises results of recent national labour force surveys and workplace case studies in Canada to further assess the relations between workers and their jobs. Underemployment is found to be increasing among all types of employees. Underemployment is found to decline with work experience but persists in virtually all categories of employees - most notably service and industrial working classes and among non-white immigrant workers. Case studies of teachers, computer programmers, clerical workers, autoworkers and disabled workers demonstrate how underemployed workers as well as others engage in continual learning and try to reshape their jobs. Implications of these findings are identified in terms of the incompatibility of narrow economic market objectives with wider social objectives of democratic education, and of the systemic limits of appeals for still greater formal educational efforts by already highly educated and continually learning labour forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The (un)reality of open/porous borders is starkly represented/manifested in the experiences of immigrant women in lifelong learning contexts. While globalization effectively destroys some borders, it simultaneously creates new ones. State institutions respond to global reconfigurations of borders at local levels by establishing policies that exclude women from working in their fields unless they participate in re-education programs. At the same time the global competition among states within the discourses of the knowledge economy for attracting 'the best and the brightest' entice women to leave (or the effects of Western imperialism force them to flee) their homes with the promise of economic wellbeing or physical safety. Within this environment, lifelong learning can (dangerously) serve to privilege some forms of learning, knowledge and citizenship while devaluing others. This paper draws on research conducted between 2004 and 2006 in two immigrant service organizations. We explore possibilities for developing policies and practices that redress symbolic and cultural injustices with respect to immigrant women in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the experiences of new graduate supervisors, individuals who have just moved as it were from one side of 'the table' to the other. We describe how their learning to 'do supervision' relates to their understanding of academic work and how they make sense of the transition from doctoral student, someone supervised, to someone supervising, how they connect the past to the present (and future). The particular contribution is the examination of new academics' experience of supervision within the broader context of undertaking to establish oneself as an academic. This study is part of a broad research programme in Canada that investigates the experiences of doctoral students and the academic staff who support them and then works collaboratively with those in the units in which we are collecting data to ensure the findings can inform and support doctoral policies and pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews literacy learning conducted in two laboratory preschools in Hong Kong and Canada, and examines the link between cultural values and educational practices. Both preschools maintain that a constructivist view of child learning underpins their practice. However, the author's experience in these two settings illustrates how similarities and differences are identified in the scope, focus, implementation strategies and learning outcomes of the activities observed. Reasons for these findings are explored from the perspectives of cultural values and societal beliefs in education of the East and the West, and how the constructivist ideology is espoused in these settings. Implications of this cross-cultural comparison on the issue of 'best practice' in early childhood education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuing professional development has been identified as an important tool for advancing the competence of social workers, yet outcomes of professional development are conventionally evaluated using methods that cannot provide trustworthy information about program effectiveness. This paper suggests that innovations in social research can be applied to strengthen the evaluation of educational outcomes from continuing professional development. The benefits of designing a mixed-method evaluation of educational interventions are explored by reviewing the experience of implementing a cultural competence continuing professional development workshop series in Toronto, Canada. Review of the process demonstrates that the combination of methods results in a richer data set that can answer questions about both the process of the learning experience, and the effect that training has on professional practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Hong Kong and Canada, indeed globally, slogans about learning to learn and teaching for 21st-century knowledge and skills are common. However, there are few examples of how teacher education courses or programs are responding to these new demands. In this paper, we propose a framework for designing teacher education premised on the theoretical perspective of knowledge building. We describe two courses, a pre-service teacher education in course Hong Kong teachers and a joint graduate course for Hong Kong and Canadian teachers. In both cases, participants engaged in knowledge-building discourse mediated by a computer-supported learning environment. We present the design and illustrate how the teachers were able to work as collaborative inquirers and knowledge creators in a knowledge-building community. Implications of knowledge building for teacher development as related to socio-cultural contexts are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the essential practices and conditions for fostering transformative learning using the Canadian Human Rights Foundation's International Human Rights Training Program as a case study. It suggests that the program's participants challenge their own values and assumptions about human rights, their work and their society through critical reflection. Consequently, it argues that if human rights educators are to contribute to the transformative education of others, it is necessary for them to understand the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the learning process associated with human rights education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries, Indigenous Elders and Knowledge-keepers (IEKK) and their land-based stories have played a vital role in environmental sustainability. Following the Indigenist relational theoretical framework, in this article, I honor and respect IEKK as scientists for their community and their traditional land-based stories as scientific knowledge for their environmental sustainability. As a visible minority immigrant researcher and educator on the Indigenous land known as Canada, IEKK land-based stories helped me rethink who I am as an Indigenist environmental researcher when I learn about my responsibilities from Indigenous communities. Following the Indigenist methodology and research framework, I used deep listening and reflective journal writing as my research methods. I also highlighted how my learning from IEKK land-based stories could help me take responsibility to rethink, relearn, and reshape us as environmental researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the Tokyo Olympic Games postponement, has created unprecedented challenges for Olympic level athletes. Given the adversity athletes have faced since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the construct of psychological resilience is a useful framework for understanding athlete experiences during this time, and is conceptualized by Fletcher and Sarkar as an individual's ability to protect against the negative effect of stressors. The purpose of this research was to explore the experiences of Canadian athletes preparing for the Tokyo summer Olympic Games during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Interviews were conducted with 20 Canadian athletes across individual and team sports. The participants spoke of the multiple ways they were taking care of themselves and developing resilience throughout the pandemic, highlighting the complexity involved with managing an adversity. Four narratives illuminate the athletes' experiences: the critical role of context, the essential nature of social support, the importance of being more than an athlete, and the relevance of learning to reflect on one's life. For these athletes, factors such as Olympic qualification, stage of their career, physical and mental health, and access to resources influenced their experience of the pandemic, demonstrating the importance of both individual and environmental factors when exploring resilience. Importantly, the athletes did not manage this adversity on their own, but received strong support. Therefore, sport psychology consultants can assist an athlete's development of resilience by providing expertise and taking into account an athlete's personal context. Lay summary: Twenty athletes preparing for the Tokyo Olympic Games during the COVID-19 pandemic were interviewed and four narratives are presented. All athletes were experiencing the pandemic differently based on their personal circumstances and were managing the adversity with social support, reflection, and pursuits beyond sport. Develop resources for coaches, athletes, and sport psychology practitioners to become competent in understanding and developing a high-performance sport environment that is both challenging and supportive Recognize the importance of social support in learning how to effectively reflect and develop pursuits outside of high-performance sport Understand and develop resilience, in a way that promotes, rather than diminishes, mental health [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a reaction to imposed education systems, traditional land-based education can be viewed as a source of resistance against a capitalist settler state, and most importantly, for the maintenance of Indigenous autonomy and sovereignty. However, formal k-12 learning environments are dominated by values systems and orientations to environmental education that potentially undermine Indigenous land-based education values and approaches. Within Canada, though there is a growing body of literature outlining the advantages of land-based learning for academic success and student well-being in public schools, funding models and policy restrictions have been slower to change and can impede implementation. With this article we hope to add to the growing body of evidence, supporting land-based learning as a legitimate pedagogy in public education. We approach this through a cross-case analysis of the results of two separate research projects and identifying the parallel themes, which emerged: youth resilience, Inuit autonomy, and authenticity in learning. Although our results focus on the development of individuals, within our conclusion we extend the argument toward systemic changes needed in Canadian public education not only as an act of decolonization but in supporting the development of Innumarik. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explored the experiences of working-age and older adults with acquired vision impairment who pursued braille rehabilitation training, and the facilitators and barriers they encountered throughout this process. Semi-structured interviews of up to 90 min in length were conducted with 14 participants from across Canada who learned braille between the ages of 33 and 67 (Mdn = 46). Transcripts were analyzed by two researchers using interpretive phenomenological analysis. A variety of personal, social and institutional factors characterize the adult braille learning experience. Among these, participants highlight the role of prior identity and experience, the impact of access to resources and the cost of materials and devices needed to maintain braille skills. Findings also emphasize invisible barriers, including the role of societal perceptions towards braille, the level of support provided by family and friends, and the influence of unconscious biases towards braille and aging held by both adult learners and those around them. These findings provide important context to improve policies and practice in adult braille rehabilitation. As the prevalence of age-related vision impairment continues to increase, it will become imperative to understand the unique needs of working-age and older adults with acquired vision impairment who pursue braille. This study is one of the first to explore the experiences of working-age and older adults with acquired visual impairment who pursue braille rehabilitation training. Rehabilitation professionals must take into account prior learning and reading experiences which may shape the braille learning process. Family members require greater access to resources and support during the training process. There is a significant need for public education to address societal misconceptions about braille and blindness that can lead to a reluctance to use braille. Interactions with other braille users foster more empowering definitions of braille that align with the social model understanding of disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lower limb exoskeletons are a recent intervention promoted to improve gait disorders. Available research has focused on clinical outcomes; however, little is known about therapists' experiences using the device in practice. We explored the implementation of an exoskeleton at a tertiary rehabilitation center. In this longitudinal qualitative study we conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 therapists. One group of therapists was formally trained using the device, whereas the other group only had clinical exposure to the device. The interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed for themes. Three main themes emerged: (1) A steep learning curve described challenges in learning to use the exoskeleton. (2) One step at a time illustrated the complex process of incorporating the exoskeleton in daily work. (3) Not a magic bullet revealed the tensions using this emergent technology in practice. The exoskeleton represents one of the most complicated and labor-intensive interventions provided by therapists. Implementation requires substantial resources, raising questions regarding its efficacy and cost-effectiveness relative to other approaches. Until more evidence becomes available around the use and effectiveness of this rapidly evolving technology, therapists must contend with a high degree of uncertainty. Using a lower limb exoskeleton may reduce physical demands on therapists in high-intensity rehabilitation programs that involve repetitive, effortful movements. However, a number of potential barriers to implementing the exoskeleton into practice need to be taken into consideration, including calibration time, intensive training required to become qualified to administer the intervention, the cost of the device, and comfort and safety of the device affecting user acceptance and uptake. Therapists also need to manage patient expectations related to outcomes related to use of exoskeletons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a strong international interest in the enhancement of teaching quality. Enhancement is a big job because teaching is an extensive activity. It is a complex job because learning to teach is not, mainly, a formal process: non‐formal, practice‐based learning is more significant. These two points, extensiveness and practice‐based learning, lead to the claim that enhancing the quality of teaching implies the creation of working environments that favour certain kinds of professional formation. This analysis is different from mainstream thinking about educational professional development and has significant, systemic implications for quality enhancement practices and suggests fresh directions for quality enhancement research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responds to comments made to the author's paper the local uses of international tests in Canada. Version of modern mathematics; Transparency in educational data that describes teaching and learning; Curriculum change.

Does language development drive language change? A common account of language change attributes the regularity of certain patterns to children's learning biases. The present study examines these predictions for change-in-progress in the use of must in Toronto English. Historically, modal verbs like must start with root (deontic) meanings, eventually developing epistemic (probability) meanings in addition. Epistemic uses increase over successive generations, phasing out root uses (incrementation). The modal becomes unambiguously epistemic and eventually disappears from the language. Such cyclic changes are predictable and common across languages. To explore whether children contribute to incrementation and loss, we tested intuitions about must in preschoolers (n = 141) and adults (n = 29). In a picture-preference task (deontic vs. epistemic), children selected epistemic interpretations of ambiguous sentences (e.g., Michelle must swim) at higher rates than adults. Two context-based preference tasks tested children's overall sensitivity to the presence of modals. We found sensitivity in deontic contexts. In epistemic contexts, where must is optional and functions like an evidential marker, we found little discrimination, and general avoidance of the modal. These results (epistemic overgeneration, must-avoidance) correspond to predictions of the incrementation hypothesis, suggesting children likely play an active role in language change, beyond well-known overregularization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary objective: This study represents the first large-scale research on high school philosophy in a public education curriculum in North America. Our objective was to identify the impacts of high school philosophy, as well as the challenges of teaching it in its current format in Ontario high schools. Research design: The qualitative research design captured the perspectives of students and teachers with respect to philosophy at the high school level. All data collection was structured around central questions to provide insight into the dynamics of their shared process of teaching/learning. Methods and procedures: We conducted semi-structured with interviews philosophy teachers (n = 9), classroom observations (n = 142), and student focus groups at 16 diverse high schools. Transcripts were coded according to themes. Results: Our findings reflect the complicated nature of philosophy as a discipline characterized by abstract thinking. Participants found it mind-opening, yet challenging, providing educational opportunities that are largely absent in conventional schooling. They saw multiple connections between philosophy and other subjects, but also appreciated its distinctive benefits. Teachers relied primarily on textbooks and contemporary media to deliver the curriculum. We found that a teacher's background in philosophy may influence what is taught in philosophy courses and how, especially given the flexibility of the provincial curriculum. Conclusions: The findings suggest that philosophy is a unique, beneficial subject that teachers enjoy teaching and students greatly value, characterizing it as both difficult and rewarding. Our study revealed that considerable differences exist in how philosophy is taught and learned around the province. The flexibility of the provincial curriculum appears to be an invitation for creative and responsive teaching; however, philosophy teachers' weak preparation can, by their own admission, be a hindrance to effective curriculum delivery. Studying philosophy enhances students' thinking about other academic areas of study and in some cases opens them up to new ways of thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to improve cultural competence in pediatric hearing loss services should be informed by evidence of how culture can affect services, yet there is a paucity of research in the field of audiology. The aim of this study was to gain insight into practitioners' experiences with offering early hearing loss services to minority culture families. Specifically, the objective was to examine possible barriers and facilitators to improving cultural competence in early hearing loss services by exploring the perspectives of the providers of care from across Canada. A survey, informed by our previous studies, was disseminated to practitioners providing hearing loss services. Responses to all survey questions were analyzed descriptively. Open-ended questions were analyzed with simple content analysis. Results indicate practitioners reported barriers at each stage of service delivery: during diagnoses, amplification discussions, language assessments, and interventions. Practitioners also described various strategies used to facilitate culturally competent care. Findings stemming from this study can be used to inform practitioners seeking to provide culturally competent care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010, the province of Ontario introduced a new universal two-year play-based full-day kindergarten program. The authors exploited the phasing-in of this program over five years, allowing a natural experiment in which children from full-day kindergarten could be compared with those from half-day kindergarten in matched neighborhoods. Children (N = 592) were followed from kindergarten to Grade 2 with direct learning and self-regulation measures. Grade 3 wide-scale achievement test scores were available for 269 of the children. Results showed lasting benefits of full-day kindergarten on children's self-regulation, reading, writing, and number knowledge to the end of Grade 2, including some benefits for vocabulary. Full-day kindergarten children were significantly more likely to meet provincial expectations for reading in Grade 3. The study points to the benefits of a play-based full-day kindergarten program and brings evidence to bear on the mixed findings in the research literature about the fade-out effects of full-day kindergarten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These studies tested two questions about the developmental origins of children’s sensitivity to iconicity with regard to number gestures: (1) whether children initially learn number gestures with sensitivity to the one-to-one correspondence between fingers and quantities or whether they learn them as unanalyzed symbols; and (2) whether sensitivity to iconicity increases with general cognitive development (as indexed by age) or with experience using fingers for counting. We carried out three experimental studies testing if children generalized the one-to-one correspondence in conventional number gestures to unconventional gestures. In Study 1, children between two and five years of age showed little sensitivity to iconicity, tending to be more accurate with conventional than unconventional gestures. In Study 2, we randomly assigned children to count on their fingers or to count only with words. Children with finger-counting experience did not improve in interpreting unconventional number gestures. In Study 3, we compared age-matched samples of children in school (in France) and children in daycare (in Canada). We found that schooling had little impact on children’s interpretation of unconventional gestures. These results suggest that young children initially learn number gestures as unanalyzed Gestalts and only later develop sensitivity to the iconicity available in number gestures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interprofessional collaboration is recognised as an important factor in improving patient care in intensive care units (ICUs). Competency frameworks, and more specifically interprofessional competency frameworks, are a key strategy being used to support the development of attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviours needed for an interprofessional approach to care. However, evidence for the application of competencies is limited. This study aimed to extend our empirically based understanding of the significance of interprofessional competencies to actual clinical practice in an ICU. An ethnographic approach was employed to obtain an in-depth insight into healthcare providers’ perspectives, behaviours, and interactions of interprofessional collaboration in a medical surgical ICU in a community teaching hospital in Canada. Approximately 160 hours of observations were undertaken and 24 semi-structured interviews with healthcare workers were conducted over a period of 6 months. Data were analysed using a directed content approach where two national competency frameworks were used to help generate an understanding of the practice of interprofessional collaboration. Healthcare professionals demonstrated numerous instances of interprofessional communication, role understandings, and teamwork in the ICU setting, which supported a number of key collaborative competencies. However, organisational factors such as pressures for discharge and patient flow, staffing, and lack of prioritisation for interprofessional learning undermined competencies designed to improve collaboration and teamwork. The findings demonstrate that interprofessional competencies can play an important role in promoting knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviours needed. However, competencies that promote interprofessional collaboration are dependent on a range of contextual factors that enable (or impede) individuals to actually enact these competencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the impact of audience response systems (clickers) on the learning experience and classroom behavior of Chinese and Canadian students. Based on differences in student learning styles, which are rooted in the differences in national cultures, we predict that clicker technology will result in a more positive learning experience, and have more impact on classroom behavior in Chinese students than in Canadian students. Our survey results show that, consistent with the findings of prior studies, both groups of students report a positive experience and improved classroom behavior with the use of clickers. Chinese students report a more positive learning experience, but no difference in classroom behavior changes than Canadian students. This study extends the research on clickers by considering the impact of cultural background and shows classroom technology such as clickers can potentially help mitigate the cultural barriers in international business education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is strong evidence supporting the personal and professional benefits for medical students of exposure to art. There is limited information on art-making in relation to medical education. Methods: We explored art-making within medical education by analysing 76 artist statements submitted with visual artwork by students, residents and practitioners to the 2010 and 2011 White Coat Warm Art exhibitions. We analysed the data using grounded theory strategies to identify how medical students and practitioners describe their engagement in artistic creation and how it impacts their personal and professional lives. Results: Our analysis yielded eight themes that illustrated instrumental, humanistic and advocacy-oriented implications of art-making: enhancing learning, escaping constraints, balancing life and work, surviving, expressing self-identity and discovering professional identity, bearing witness, healing self and others, and advocating change. Conclusions: Art-making can play a valuable role in medical education by providing a means of making sense of, and learning foundational information and concepts in medicine. Creative expression through artistic means also provides learners and practitioners a means of exploring their emerging sense of professional identity and clarifying their value commitments. In addition, the experience of art-making fosters well-being, empathy and commitment towards a better future for medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Physical Education (PE) programmes are expanding to include alternative activities yet what is missing is a conceptual model that facilitates how the learning process may be understood and assessed beyond the dominant sport–technique paradigm. Purpose: The purpose of this article was to feature the emergence of a Function-to-Flow (F2F) interdisciplinary curriculum support tool which facilitates the assessment of an alternative activity beyond baseline levels of participation. Participants and setting: Participants of this study include a sample ofN= 153 students from grades one, five, seven, eight, and nine located within seven different schools in Ottawa (Canada), who booked the JungleSport™ climbing programme of their own accord. Within each school, a particular class was selected under the guidance of the school principal and in consultation with the Health and PE teacher. The Head Instructor of the JungleSport™ programme also participated in the study. During the second year of this study, three classes from three different intermediate schools, including two grade 7 classes (n= 19 andn= 26) and a grade 8 class (n= 23), piloted curriculum support tools that are featured in this article. Data collection: The main source of information upon which this article is based is the small group interviews with student participants that were conducted at the conclusion of the three- to five-day JungleSport™ programme. Secondary sources of information include journal entries from prepared booklets, student, teacher, and head instructor interviews, as well as observed interdisciplinary activities. Data analysis: The main question that guided this three-year study was:What is it like to become physically educated in a way that invites an expanded movement consciousness, from the rudiments of movement function to the somatics of flow?To explore this question, several student-friendly sub-questions were developed. Responses to these questions were compiled into a summative chart, the interdisciplinary F2F curriculum support tool, which depicts how a student may climb at different levels of proficiency. Findings: Assessing movement in relation to theF2F modelhas the potential to facilitate an appreciation and understanding of the many ways a student may become physically educated. This article features how students were able to articulate understandings of muscularfunction, desiredform, kinaestheticfeeling, as well as existential possibilities for experiencingflow. It is postulated that a similar curriculum support tool could be designed for other activities, however alternative, as well as mainstream sport. Simply analysing movement experiences in terms of muscularfunction, form, feeling, andflowas exemplified in this study has the potential to broaden narrowed conceptions of learning in the PE context. Thus the ‘physical education-as-sport- technique’ paradigm which largely attends to isolated form has the potential to become the ‘function–form–feeling–flow’ paradigm. Thus, in closely observing students climbing, as described in the first year of this project and co-reflecting on the percepts and concepts that emerge in relation to the F2F-inspired curriculum support tool as featured in this article, assessment and interdisciplinary understanding in PE has the potential to reach new heights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports on the findings of a recent qualitative grounded theory research study in a metropolitan area in the south-east of Canada examining one junior/senior kindergarten classroom's engagement with nature. It focuses on the role of the learners, the children and the teacher, in co-constructing two very different learning experiences. The findings suggest that when learners play an agentive role in constructing their own learning experience and are involved emotionally as well as cognitively, the level of engagement would be deeper, richer and more sustained. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Through the accounts of the experience of recent Chinese immigrants in Canada, this study examines the changing nature of work and learning in the context of immigration. Its findings reveal the precarious nature of work and learning for immigrant professionals, characterised by part time, low wages, job insecurity, high risks of ill health and limited social benefits and statutory entitlements. The study also shows that immigrants’ foreign credentials and knowledge have been racialised on the basis of ethnic and national origins. As a consequence, they suffered unemployment and underemployment, poor economic performance and downward social mobility. The racialised experience of Chinese immigrants demonstrates how racial and socio-cultural differences have been used to entrench social inequality in immigrants’ transitions. Through the process of deskilling and re-skilling, learning has become a vehicle to colonising immigrants into the dominant norms and values of the host society. The study urges government organisations, professional associations, educational institutions and prior learning assessment agencies to adopt an inclusive framework which fully embraces all human knowledge and experience, no matter which ethnic and cultural backgrounds they emerge from. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As an aspect of the confluence between schooling and lived experiences, children develop literate identities and build personal theories of literacy. The purpose of this study was to explore the construction or children's literate identity in different contexts. Four children, two from Canada and two from the United States, were interviewed and observed in their 4th-grade classrooms. Their teachers and a parent of each child were also interviewed, and the classroom literacy instruction observed. Stories of the children's literate identities told by the child, the parent and the teacher were constructed and compared. The children who engaged in the activities presented were those whose literate identities matched schooled literacy. The other children saw the activities as tasks, not as opportunities to learn. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Traditionally, learning resources are created by an instructor and distributed to their students. A contributing-student pedagogy (CSP) is one in which this responsibility shifts, placing students in control of creating the resources and sharing them with their peers. Technology plays a central role in supporting the collection and distribution of student-generated resources. Although many CSP tools have the potential to be widely adopted, they have predominantly been applied in a local context and rarely extended to other contexts or institutions. Moreover, the use of CSP (i.e. students contributing to the learning of others) is almost never seen in cross-institutional contexts. In this article, we discuss the novel application of CSP across multiple institutions and countries, reporting on an activity in which first-year programming students in New Zealand generate learning resources for their counterparts in Canada. With the increasing adoption of Web 2.0 tools in education, such cross-institutional learning activities have the potential to become more widespread and we report here on our challenges and successes. We find that a cross-institutional approach can work as well as within-institution CSP, with students at both institutions preferring their contributions to be shared more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative research in multilingual urban primary schools indicates that the pedagogical and political goals of schooling may operate at cross-purposes. Classroom observations and teacher interview-discussions were conducted in classes for immigrant children in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where the language of instruction is French, and in classes in Pretoria, Gauteng Province, South Africa, where children from many different language backgrounds are taught in English. Two main themes emerged: (1) pedagogically, effective teacher–learner communication can break down when teachers are unaware of the roles that language and culture play in second language classrooms; (2) politically, efforts to assimilate learners into new socio-cultural/political contexts sometimes take precedence over sound pedagogical practice, such as drawing on the linguistic and cultural repertoire that learners bring to the classroom. This ongoing qualitative research underlines the importance of preparing pre-service and in-service teachers for the linguistic and cultural diversity they are bound to encounter in their classrooms, and of deepening their understanding of the influence of such diversity on the teaching–learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigated gender differences in science learning between two pedagogical approaches: traditional lecture and narrative case studies using personal response systems (‘clickers’). Thirteen instructors of introductory biology classes at 12 different institutions across the USA and Canada used two types of pedagogy (Clicker Cases and traditional lecture) to teach eight topic areas. Three different sets of multiple regression analysis were conducted for three separate dependent variables: posttest score, change in score from posttest to final, and transfer score. Interactions between gender and pedagogical approach were found across the three analyses. Women either performed better with Clicker Cases, or about the same with either instructional method, but men performed markedly better with lectures in most topic areas. Our results suggest that men and women experience two pedagogical approaches—Clicker Cases and lectures—differently, and that Clicker Cases are more favorable for women than for men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate how knowledge of different kinds is put to work in workplace education programmes for adults with low skills and adults with higher skills. A novel framework, which has moved beyond narrow conceptions of 'transfer' to concentrate on different forms of knowledge and the ways these are recontextualised as people move between sites of learning, was used to examine three work-based programmes in Canada. The aim was to compare the Canadian results with those obtained from six work-based exemplar programmes previously analysed according to the framework in the United Kingdom. Results indicate that the seven elements in the framework hold some explanatory power across a wide variety of workforce upskilling programmes as well as across learner skill levels and at the same time help to focus in on four kinds of knowledge recontextualisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite claims that prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) can act as a transformative social mechanism and a means of social inclusion, this study reports that PLAR has become a serious barrier to adult learning rather than a facilitator. Drawing from Foucault's concept of governmentality, the study examines the difficulties that immigrant professionals have experienced in having their foreign credentials and work experience recognized in the contexts of Canada and Sweden. Using document analysis and interviews, the study analyses how PLAR has created a system of governing through technologies of power and technologies of the self which work as dividing practices in discounting and devaluating immigrants' prior learning and work experience. The study concludes that PLAR has become a technical exercise and a governing tool rather than a form of social transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada, as in many countries, public continuing education of the non-vocational general interest type for people in post-work languishes on the margins of political discourse. This case study of one such traditional program for seniors run by a school board in Ontario explores the experiences of older adults and the meanings they attach to their learning. The goal is to better understand the roles and effects later life learning has in promoting health and well-being at both the individual and community levels. This study analyzes qualitative data collected through interviews, classroom observations and documents, referring to the micro, meso and macro levels of theory in adult education, psychology, health and social gerontology. The three main learning outcomes identified include: 1) the effects of enduring interest, 2) classrooms as social support networks, and 3) the awareness of the right to learn. The article examines how these outcomes function as health promoting mechanisms for individuals and communities. The results indicate the vital role played by affordable and accessible public continuing education program for retirees, especially seniors at risk. They also suggest the need for further quantitative research to measure the impact of learning on health and the quality of later life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]