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This paper reports on curriculum analysis of climate change expectations in Canada's provincial curricula. The research is focused on curriculum policy in Canadian provinces; however, it pertains to an international audience as Article 12 of the Paris Agreement, the international treaty on climate mitigation, adaptation and finance, calls for signatories to "enhance climate change education," and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have called for environmental education to be a core curriculum component by 2025, which will require all countries to evaluate and improve their curricula globally. Curriculum policy within Canada has not yet been aligned with these policy calls, and our analysis showed fractured and uneven inclusion of climate change. Data findings present explicit climate change education curriculum expectations for each province according to grade, subject, and mandatory versus elective courses. The review shows uneven inclusion of climate change topics, themes, and units within grade 7-12 curricula, with most expectations occurring in elective senior secondary courses. A second level of analysis with a ranking tool indicates shallow inclusion. The paper concludes with recommendations for addressing gaps.

This paper reviews existing policies related to anti-racism and anti-discrimination at five major universities in Canada and assesses the equity initiatives undertaken by university authorities to promote greater access and inclusion of different ethnic minority groups. The study is based on secondary data sources. Therefore, policy papers, documents, study reports available in those universities, government policy and legislation, journals, and similar were consulted to construct the piece. Findings reveal that although the universities have some sort of antiracism and anti-discrimination policies to combat racism and discrimination in their educational setting, they face challenges or limitations in adopting holistic and inclusive measures for the different ethnic and diverse minority groups studying there. The study argued for promoting discussions and responses to specific policies, programmes, and practices, including behaviours and attitudes in the institutional and professional contexts, for combating racism and discrimination. The findings may be helpful for academics, policymakers, and administrators to develop their understanding of institutional racism, identify challenges, and adopt policy measures to address it.

Drawing from principles of ethical research derived from our review of national and international policy documents, in this paper we reflect on our research experiences working in partnership with Indigenous educators in a project to support young Indigenous children's oral and written language development through collaborative action research. Then, acting on lessons learned from this first partnership project, we describe our efforts to attend to these ethical research principles in a second partnership project to support Indigenous children's writing and Indigenous language and cultural learning through teacher-initiated, culturally specific, play-based activities. We offer our reflections as a starting point for conversations that will inspire and call for the necessary ethical and relational responsibilities of doing partnership research with and for Indigenous communities.

This analysis will argue that university educators have an ethical obligation to advocate for admission policies that are not exclusively competitive in nature -- what will be referred to later as levelling and remedy approaches. This argument will be detailed in four stages. First, it will use an anecdote and an appeal to virtue to argue that educators in universities should feel an ethical obligation to level the playing field of competitive admissions. Second, it will draw on the work of a Chris Martin and Ben Kotzee to provide a philosophical framework for my argument. Third, it will discuss examples from Scotland, Ontario, and British Columbia to consider the ways in which the status quo fails to meet our ethical commitments as educators. Fourth, and finally, it will posit the virtue-ethical argument that university educators should live out their commitment to being virtuous and philosophy of education by supporting admission policies that are not exclusively competitive. [This paper was presented as the 2019 Early Career Invited Lecture for the Canadian Philosophy of Education Society.]

This comparative case study examines the policies of two new immigrant destinations in the United States and Canada that in the past 20 years experienced a rapid influx of immigrants. Using an integrated framework of policy design theory and the context of reception, this paper analyzes the framing of immigrant students in the state, district, and school-level policies. Interviews with immigrant students in these communities show how these policies shaped their schooling experiences and communicated important messages to them about their role in their new communities, thus shaping their political identities. The findings highlight the important interplay of these different policymakers in shaping the contexts of receptions students encountered. The paper concludes by discussing educators' role in working to craft more equitable policies.

In late 2020 the Government of Alberta's Ministry of Advanced Education sent a guidance document to Alberta post-secondary institutions to lay out how work-integrated learning was to be conducted. This document also informed the institutions that work-integrated learning should be included in all future program proposals. The guidelines were sent without the context or purpose stated. This paper applies Carol Bacchi's "What's the Problem Represented to be" post-structural policy discourse analysis to the Ministry of Advanced Education guidelines. There is a broad consensus in work-integrated learning research that work-integrated learning is beneficial for participants beyond employment outcomes. However, this analysis shows the Ministry of Advanced Education's representation of the problem displays an assumption that the purpose of work-integrated learning is to improve labour market outcomes. The analysis also spotlights that the likely effects of the policy have more to do with making work-integrated learning programs easier to assess than to improve student education. This paper proposes an alternative framework that would integrate the constructivist and humanistic origin of work-integrated learning and allow institutions to develop appropriate experiential learning components for their programs while still standardizing work-integrated learning components across and within institutions. This proposed framework can improve work-integrated learning programs in Canada by widening the focus beyond human capital theory.

This paper is concerned with long term strategic planning in higher education and focuses on Ontario's strategic mandate agreement (SMA) sector planning framework. In 2012, the province initiated its new SMA planning process by requiring all higher education institutions to propose their own strategies for their academic visions, missions, and objectives. The proposals submitted by Ontario's universities furnish the empirical content of this paper: a historically unique, comprehensive and comparable set of documents capturing institutions' self-understanding and plans for their respective futures. Using concepts from organizational theory, content analysis of universities' SMA proposals reveals divergent strategies, both in terms of institutional administrative responsiveness to the SMA process as well as the academic (i.e., education and scholarship) content of the submissions. In addition, two further sub-themes are analysed: proposals for experiential learning and so-called town-gown connections. Both themes also reveal very different visions amongst institutions. In general, the proposals appear to be independent of institution type and community size/location. Setting the stage for future research, the paper concludes with policy discussion of: (1) the possibilities for institutional diversity in the context of policy discourses on institutional differentiation; and (2) implications for system planning given the structure and process of Ontario's ongoing SMA framework.

This paper examines the recent growth of experiential learning (EL) and the university-community (or so-called town-gown, TG) connections created as a result of this expansion. The research is framed by critical scholarship on the nature and role of the university and the place of liberal education specifically, as well as policy drivers aimed at social and economic impacts from EL. Two subthemes are also examined: first, the role of the arts, humanities and social sciences disciplines in EL expansion and, second, the extent to which TG connections focus on the university's local host community as opposed to more distant and even international arrangements. Mixed research methods including public document analysis and key informant interviews are used to document and interpret EL developments across nine varied universities in Ontario, Canada. The results underline broad sector commitment to EL that in turn creates new and different TG connections for the university. Rapid expansion has brought a variety of challenges identified both by universities and community EL partners. The paper concludes with discussion of policy implications and consideration of the future of EL in light of the 'digital pivot' of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article seeks to develop the argument that it is time for a national roundtable negotiation among Indigenous peoples, the two English and French settler nations, the BIPOC communities and the various immigrant groups to consider the merits of cosmopolitanism as a moral and cultural framework of our interrelated relationships and intercultural encounters in Canada. In an interdependent globalized world that is becoming "superdiverse," I argue that it is time to shift from the language of "tolerance" of the "Other" to the language of "engagement" with "fellow human beings" guided by the moral and cultural cosmopolitanism for social and global justice, equality and equity, and inclusion through the fulfillment of human rights. The purpose of this public discussion is to urge the Canadian Council of Ministers of Education as well as the federal government to put this question on their agenda for consideration as a new framework for Canada's educational, social, economic and political policies. This argumentative paper has the potential to benefit policymakers, curriculum designers, educators, and ministries of education across Canada and beyond to consolidate moral and cultural cosmopolitanism as a national and international approach to harmonious human coexistence.

International education has become a policy sector of increasing importance to the Canadian province of Manitoba. Provincial governments with opposing political ideologies can impact international education policy differently. Using narratives as an analytical framework, we identify themes by examining the approaches taken to the international post-secondary education (PSE) sector in Manitoba under the last two governments that held office. The analysis reveals that while both governments' policies are underpinned by neoliberalism reflecting the economic benefits of international student recruitment and retention, key differences are identified. While cultural diversity and global understanding, policy coordination and collaboration, associated leadership, strategy, and a regulatory framework were important components of international PSE policy, there has been a discernible shift towards an austerity agenda, free market policies, and a reconceptualization of international PSE as an immigration-focused policy. The paper concludes that the current government's focus on labour markets and immigration when it comes to international PSE means that other aspects of internationalization are little understood and supported.

In the current climate of ever-increasing pressure on parents to become more responsible for the achievement of their children, which forms an element of neo-liberal governance with its shift from public to private, it is necessary to understand the discourses generated by parental involvement policies. This analysis showed that existing policies in Ontario (Canada) are permeated with discourses of barriers and parental deficiency. They employ a narrow definition of parental involvement, privilege parenting strategies of White middle classes, and represent diverse and immigrant parents as lacking. Although the difference among parents is acknowledged, parents receive no recognition for funds of knowledge they have. Policy documents remain silent on issues of inequality and present parental involvement as a neutral tool rather than a socially constructed and historically specific practice with its set of winners and losers. Implications for policymakers include adding parental involvement content in preservice and in-service teacher education to make parent--school partnerships truly democratic and effective for all.

This paper examines the PhD by publication in the humanities and social sciences in US, UK, Canadian and Australian universities. A set of PhDs by publication from each of these countries were collected for the study. The theses were analysed to see to what extent they fitted, or not, with discussions of thesis types described in previous research into the PhD by publication. Interviews with students and supervisors were carried out to investigate the choices that students made in their writing. University rules for the submission of PhDs by publication and related policy documents are also examined. The study found that there seems to be a preference for different types of PhD by publication in each of the countries. In the US they were all prospective PhDs with the work being especially written for the thesis. In the UK, by contrast, retrospective PhDs, the PhD by published work, largely dominate. Canada was similar to the US, at least in the area of study where the data were collected for the paper, Education. In Australia, both prospective and retrospective PhDs were found, although it was the former, the prospective PhD, which dominated.

This article empirically examines the ways in which Initial Teacher Education in Scotland and Alberta, Canada, seeks to 'get students in', 'get them out and into the workforce', 'get on with teaching future teachers' and how it should 'get on with students'. Using Adams' (2016) policy heuristic, which posits that policy can be discerned in three realms: frame; explanation; and formation, this paper considers the middle realm: that of policy explanation. Here, attempts to position policy through public pronouncement, policy directive, mandate and/or missive are examined in the context of ITE in Scotland and Alberta. By analysing policy explanations, the paper marks out how both jurisdictions should begin to attempt to craft ITE located in career-long, professional learning and development that understands and acknowledges tensions between ITE and later teacher-education phases. Finally, the paper makes a tentative proposal as to what such ITE might hope to achieve and how it might contribute to a well-developed workforce, so that both locations and other jurisdictions might orient initial teacher development.

Teacher federations are often criticized as "roadblocks" to educational change. It is arguable, however, that their advocacy work has been paramount in securing safer return to school conditions across Canadian Educational jurisdictions. Utilizing Carter et al. (2010) framework of union responses to changing policy environments, this paper draws on publicly available documents and social media posts from March through to October of 2020 to examine the ways in which teacher unions in various Canadian contexts have responded to the issue of school reopening plans amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the paper analyzes the extent to which Canadian teacher unions have been able to move into the realm of union renewal as a means of building internal capacity and developing external networks to strengthen their public advocacy work.

The COVID-19 pandemic brings to the fore strengths and weaknesses in many public policies, including higher education. There are at least three separate but related areas where institutions of higher learning have been stressed by COVID-19: financing, issues related to the logistics of learning, and inequality. These problems are especially pronounced in countries that suffer from high levels of inequality, such as Chile. This editorial offers a review of some of these challenges and their implication for long-term education policy, touching on the cases of Chile, Canada, and the United States.

Our paper examines the latest frontier of the "War on Terror," countering violent extremism (CVE), non-coercive approaches that aim to prevent "radicalization" that may lead to "violent extremism" or terrorism. We look at the recent implementation of CVE in Québec's education sector. Based on an analysis of key policy documents and interviews with CVE practitioners, we find that: (1) teachers are responsibilized to safeguard society from the risk of terrorism through being expected to "know the signs" of radicalization and to build "resilience," (2) students are responsibilized as agents who can influence their peers against violent extremist messaging and toward "prosocial" behaviour, and (3) elements of school curriculum are responsibilized, especially social studies education, to provide students with "critical thinking" skills thought to be lacking among those at risk of radicalization. We highlight the inherent contradictions in CVE, which, in Québec, claims to foster pluralism and inclusivity to combat Islamophobia, but as a modality of the "War on Terror" also targets and stigmatizes Muslim communities. Critical discussion of CVE's social implications are needed to initiate critical dialogue in Canada over the impact of CVE in social services provision and the risk of securitizing the education sector in Québec.

This paper engages narratives from Tess Lea's (2020) book 'Wild Policy' for how they help consider the messy or 'wild' nature of global policy interventions on sustainability, including in its latest formation as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We do so alongside data from research on education in the territory of Nunavut, as well as informed by our experiences as settler and Cree university researchers concerned with place and land-informed education policy. Engaging with a methodological framing of policy ecology, the article considers both policy artifacts and 'ambiences' or materialities, and their interrelations. We examine how a Saskatchewan university's draft SDG plan manifests aspects of pre-fabricated globally mobile 'wild policy', including in its gaps in land-informed Indigenous engagement. Instead, we suggest how more systemic and decolonizing approaches to land-informed education policy, as in development in Inuit-based higher education in Nunavut, can inform both future policy decision-making and policy research.

Purpose: This study aims to describe and illuminate the ways in which Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU)--an urban, undergraduate institution with a strong focus on teaching, learning and related research and scholarship, and a substantial international student population--adapted to pandemic conditions in 2020 in an effort to meet community and pedagogical priorities, institutional/legal responsibilities and strategic goals. Design/methodology/approach: Three institutional leaders at KPU draw together their respective insights and experiences, reflecting on how governance, pedagogy and operations were impacted by COVID-19. Findings: After two years of continuous operation during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the strong support of its learners and the faculty, KPU has undergone significant pedagogical and technological shifts to become a multi-modal university for study, teaching and administration. Research limitations/implications: This is a "practitioner paper" with a practical focus on institutional leadership and adaptation in a period of rapid adjustment. It is more of an accounting and reflection piece than a critical analysis. Practical implications: It offers post-secondary leaders' insights into ways in which institutional values and community needs inform policy-making, operations and innovation in education. Social implications: KPU's domestic and international student constituencies are complex and required unconventional post-secondary strategies regarding faculty autonomy and growth, de-colonization and inclusion. Originality/value: KPU has a distinctive mandate in British Columbia and its commitment to experiential learning--typically associated with hands-on education--presented unusual challenges for delivery. While research-and-teaching universities were tested by COVID-19, their tests were largely alike. KPU's experience illustrates what practical- and teaching-focused institutions confronted.

This paper critically examines two policy responses related to Canadian study permit processes that were adopted during two crises: the COVID-19 pandemic and the displacement of Ukrainian nationals due to war. We look at the expansion of the Student Direct Stream (SDS) to the Americas in 2021 and the creation of the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) in 2022 to discuss the effects of these crisis responses on the access to higher education (HE) in Canada for international students and forcibly displaced people. In this study, we conduct a policy analysis that draws on Bacchi's post-structural approach named 'What's the problem represented to be?' (WPR). We use the WPR approach to answer the question: how are students constituted as policy subjects in policy responses to crisis? Findings indicate that the two responses are accompanied by power imbalances that deepen barriers to equity in the access to HE in Canada.

Canadian schools have implemented initiatives in response to the Calls to Action that accompanied the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission final report. This paper aims to address two questions that speak directly to these calls. How have these initiatives been implemented in Canadian classrooms and affected educational practices? How do education stakeholders perceive and experience these initiatives? We present a study conducted in Alberta to explore these questions, drawing on data from interviews and focus groups conducted with 201 Indigenous youth and teachers and parents of Indigenous children. Findings suggest that schools are engaged in innovative activities to introduce knowledge about Indigenous cultures and experiences. Most participants believed, however, that more work is needed to support teachers' ability to include Indigenous content in classrooms and to increase awareness about Indigenous peoples' among non-Indigenous students to prevent discrimination. These tensions can undermine schools' capacities to advance reconciliation.

Notions of "student success" feature prominently in emerging educational discourses and policy orientations. Current policy frameworks focusing on equity, performance, and reconciliation claim to offer validation for perspectives of Indigenous peoples and other racialized communities, but they are simultaneously raising the stakes for individual responsibility and performance. This paper explores these developments by examining how Indigenous students and family members understand and experience educational success in relation to the notions of success advanced by school systems. We present a case study conducted in Alberta, Canada, drawing on data from ten focus groups with 77 Indigenous youth and parents of Indigenous children connected to one school division. Highlighting the ways that social and educational policy frameworks related to employability and performance exacerbate contradictions inherent in settler colonial societies, we reveal how school systems, despite claims to the contrary, continue to adopt practices that undermine the capacity for many Indigenous people to achieve their aspirations.

COVID-19 poses serious challenges to the health and safety of childcare providers, and these challenges were particularly acute in early 2022 during the first Omicron wave when vaccines were not available for children. Childcare providers work in environments where the recommended methods to minimize COVID-19 infection were often not possible to implement: children could not wear masks for extended periods and were not able to maintain physical distance. Under these pressures, Canada's already-fragile childcare sector was strained, caregivers struggled, and existing deficiencies were exacerbated. As part of a larger quality assurance and improvement project examining the impacts of the pandemic on childcare in the Canadian prairie province of Manitoba, this paper reports on qualitative findings to make public health and policy recommendations for the childcare sector. Data were voluntarily provided by a sample of childcare providers between January 6-13, 2022. A thematic analysis of open-text responses was performed, finding: an urgent need for health and safety resources; a need for sustained support and guidelines; and an absence of value and respect. We also identified an emergent theme of gratitude, which was reflected by an overwhelming number of thanks to the project team for listening to the voices of childcare providers. We draw on our qualitative analysis to propose measures to improve public health and safety, funding, and infrastructure, as well as to underscore the importance of systematic data collection and evaluation to protect and support the essential childcare workforce through the COVID-19 pandemic and into the future.

Through the lens of critical policy analysis, this paper examines the context of K-12 international education in two Canadian provinces. Both Ontario and Manitoba have seen the fastest growth in Canada when it comes to international students, yet those provinces represent distinctly different contexts. In this paper, we examine how international education has been approached as policy at the K-12 level in both provinces. Empirical data was collected through document analysis and stakeholder interviews. By using Ball's (1994) framework of three policy contexts-- (a) the context of influence, (b) the context of policy text production, and (c) the context of practice--this paper reveals that policy is not simply a government directive but rather a complex and contradictory process involving practitioners from schools, school boards, and non-government organizations involving educational administrators. Therefore, to effect change, policy needs to be understood through the perspective of multiple stakeholders. The paper cautions all stakeholders to be more critical of international education as policy, given that in its present form it privileges values that undermine the very foundations of a free equity based publicly funded K-12 educational system in Canada.

This paper explores Ontario's international education policy landscape through illuminating the discursive struggles to define international student funding policies, in particular the international doctoral students' Trillium Scholarship. Adopting Hajer's (1993, 2006) Discourse Coalition Framework, the study engages with three research questions: What paved the way to this funding policy? Who were the actors engaged in this policy landscape? How has the argumentation over this policy influenced the international education policy context in Ontario? Argumentative discourse analysis was used to analyze three data sources: news articles, policy documents, and interviews. Two storylines were identified: international student funding is desirable and beneficial to Ontario versus Ontario first. Whereas the first storyline achieved hegemony, the second succeeded in bringing discourses of protectionism to the forefront influencing the government's future engagement with international student funding. The paper ends with three observations on Ontario's international education policy landscape. This study contributes to our understanding of how international student funding can be highly political and influenced by non-education policy spaces and discourses.

This paper focuses on the recent political spars between Canada and Saudi Arabia as well as China and their impact on Canadian universities. It asks three questions: (1) What key issues did Canada's political strains with Saudi Arabia and China raise for Canadian universities' international education (IE) initiatives and what issues were absent? (2) What do these key issues suggest about Canada's approaches to IE in an era of new geopolitics? and (3) What implications can be drawn from these cases about Canadian university-government relations in the context of new geopolitics? Given the powerful role media plays in education policy, a systematic study was conducted across three main media sources to identify 74 articles and news releases between August 2018 and November 2019. Three dominant themes are identified and analyzed, each vividly illustrating the close ties between global politics, government foreign policy and IE within Canadian Universities. On the one hand, the narratives speak to concerns about IE as a risk to national security and, on the other, as a vehicle for Canada's economic prosperity. However, what the media has not achieved is a broader discussion on how Canada needs to revisit its IE objectives and approaches in light of broader geopolitical shifts. Using the theoretical framework of soft power, the paper speaks to the limitations and short-sightedness of Canada's approach to IE as soft power in this era of new geopolitics and concludes with three recommendations for Canada.

This paper presents a set of testimonies from three LGBTQ families about the advocacy work they took up in their schools. The stories they share are part of an interview study undertaken from 2014-2020. Each family responded to the cisheteronormative cultures of their schools by challenging ideas teachers and principals held about gender, sexuality, and families and some of their everyday practices. The advocacy work the families undertook is discussed through two analytic lenses, the Triangle Model (McCaskell, 2005; Thomas, 1987) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), demonstrating how middle-class economic resources and professional education were key to parents' success.

University campuses around the world face significant challenges for engaging culturally diverse faculty and students with responsive programming (e.g., undergraduate, graduate, staff and faculty development programs). Policy documents espousing inclusion and the strategic institutional importance of local and global engagement, for example, are positive steps to foster institutional change. However, in practice, ad-hoc curricula renewal initiatives aimed at facilitating cultural diversity tend to be far less strategic, and with scant attention to research-informed and evidence-based scholarship. This paper attempts to address these complex challenges and provides insights toward a scholarly approach to glocalising curriculum practice for faculty development in multinational settings. In this context, data suggests that strategic institutional supports are key to glocalising curriculum practices. Further, a glocalised curriculum is inherently situated; socially and culturally mediated; and, is responsive to the professional learning needs and circumstances of educational leaders in diverse institutional contexts.

In this paper we share findings from a historical investigation into changing expectations regarding teacher conduct as connected to the evolving Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation Code of Ethics and the eventual proclamation of a Government-mandated teacher regulatory board. This study was based on the idea that views of appropriate conduct embedded in ethical codes evolve in relation to shifting societal norms and values. We demonstrate that the tone and content of ethical codes of conduct for Saskatchewan teachers transformed from explicit and concrete to abstract and ambiguous.

We use the metaphor of building a plane while flying to describe the enactment of educational policies by teachers during COVID-19 and the impact of these policies on their ability to meet the needs of their students. Drawing from a series of three one-hour focus groups with seven teachers in Alberta, we apply critical policy analysis to describe the transition of public schools to pandemic education, especially in urban centers. This paper will begin by reviewing the dynamic policy context of school closures and reentry strategies and proceed to outline the diverse ways school boards interpreted guidelines from the Ministry of Education. We discuss the frustration with and variation of policy enactment during the pandemic, especially with respect to priorities and barriers to addressing student wellbeing and access to educational and social supports. Finally, we describe the consequences of teaching through crisis as it emerges in a political context that has failed to respond to educator's professional needs.

Education policies are increasingly characterized as complex and dynamic, involving a multitude of actors and policy networks. As a result, there is a growing demand in education for research approaches that can help make sense of this complexity. This paper examines the applicability of multi-level governance (MLG) framework as a tool of education research from Canada's decentralized federalist perspective. By conducting a comprehensive literature review of 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, we determine the applicability of MLG framework, the conditions necessary for its use, and its overall relevance to education policy, which is increasingly characterized by the involvement of a variety of stakeholder groups across government levels and policy sectors. The key findings are presented following Bowe et al.'s (1992) policy cycle framework. We conclude that MLG approach is a strong tool for education research to analyze policy making in federal decentralized educational systems, as it allows a more nuanced perspective for understanding the multilayered policy dynamics often unfolding in the context of federalism.

This paper highlights action research into the practices of environmental learning through two interconnected stories focusing respectively on educational policy and the details of classroom instruction. Together these illustrate how a framework guides teachers in educational planning and supports the implementation of a curriculum for environmental learning in diverse subjects. Teacher inquiry, focus groups and interviews informed a collaborative writing process involving teachers and academics. The framework offers a conceptual view for environmental learning in all settings providing principles of teaching and learning to guide teachers in activities in a variety of learning contexts. The broader study sets the scene and the context for imbedded teacher inquiry. This study provides a personal perspective on how environmentally focused lessons were developed and researched by teachers. It highlights the story of a Grade 2/3 teacher (Ms. P) as she embarks on a program of action research about outdoor learning exemplary of other elements of the imbedded action research in the broader study. Multiple, overlapping themes emerge as she documents her reflections and students' interactions with local environments. This paper and its narratives together relate how the concepts of environmental learning and teacher experience empower us to guide learning in new, exciting ways.