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This paper analyses the coverage of Indigenous topics in K-12 education in British Columbia (BC) using curriculum documents and course enrolment. It focuses on curriculum documents published between 1995 and 2010 and mandated in public education from 1995 to 2019, and argues that Indigenous topics were marginalized in the curriculum overall. Motivated by decades of work by Indigenous leaders and educators to grapple with non-Indigenous people's prejudices, ignorance, and lack of understanding, the British Columbia Ministry of Education has increasingly recognized the importance of integrating Indigenous topics into core curricula and has offered all students Indigenous Studies course options. However, coverage remained marginalized in the core curriculum and recent curricular revisions have relied increasingly on teachers' voluntary integration of Indigenous topics and meaningful consultation with local Indigenous educators and communities, for which insufficient support and resources are provided by the Education Ministry. The paper explores challenges to the curriculum's ability to combat prejudice, eliminate discrimination and promote tolerance, understanding and good relations among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the province.

Drawing on Bernstein's concept of recontextualization, this paper explores how mid-level actors interpret and translate curriculum policies in the context of growing concerns about the performance and accountability of education systems. Little is known about the work of recontextualization agents responsible for the professional development, support and control of teachers, uniquely positioned at the interface of policy and practice, and comparative perspectives are even scarcer. Based on empirical research in France and Canada (Quebec), this paper examines the work of pedagogic advisors and inspectors intervening at lower secondary school level. Data are drawn from interviews (n = 24) conducted in three mid-level school authorities. Our comparative analysis brings to the fore specific forms of recontextualization in each education system. In particular it shows important variations in the use of knowledge based on experience and observation and decontextualized knowledge drawing on research and statistical data. Agents also elaborate different discursive strategies projecting contrasting models of teaching. In both contexts, but to varying degrees, the rise of data and 'evidence' is reshaping the missions of mid-level actors, potentially eroding professional discretion and expertise.

Why radical feminism, which until so recently appeared to be firmly identified with movements toward a common curriculum, will now exert pressure toward greater curricular differentiation is discussed. Multiculturalism and its implications for curricula in Canada, Australia, Africa, and Great Britain are also examined. (RM)

This paper introduces the questions and approaches of a five-nation cross-cultural study of state-based curriculum-making discussed in this issue ofJCS. The paper reviews the two decade-long interest of many nations in state-based curriculum-making and presents a framework for thinking about state-based curriculum-making as a tool of educational governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between September 1990 and June 1995, the Canadian province of Ontario experienced its first ever social-democratic government. This paper examines the record, in terms of both process and policy, of that government on educational equity at the elementary and secondary school levels. It reviews the government's record in educational equity and measures that record against the agenda the party had set for itself before the 1990 election. The government's policy-making on educational equity offers a rarely equalled case study of cross-purposes, non-communication, ostensibly wilful ignorance and crossed wires. The results have gone far to discredit educational equity as a meaningful (rather than symbolic) educational goal in Ontario. [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]

Within an era of change to early childhood education and care, this case study of kindergarten classroom literacy curricula sought to understand the production and effects of the curriculum within one urban, Canadian full-day kindergarten that included culturally and linguistically diverse children. Central was a concern for the place of children’s interests and funds of knowledge within this production and what opportunities the curriculum provided for children’s literacy and identity options. Theoretically, the study drew on actor-network theory and multiliteracies. Using ethnographic tools, the study found that the curriculum diverged significantly from what might have been expected. It was comprised of literacy events characterized by educator attempts to control a dynamic classroom through the management of the children’s bodies and voices. Findings suggest that this constrained children from being curricular informants and limited their literacy and identity options. Major actors in the network that produced the classroom literacy curriculum were class size, materials and space with a surprising relative absence of the programmatic curriculum and assessment. The case demonstrates what can happen when a network of actors come together and other actors are not in place to promote literacy curricula that create opportunities to expand children’s communication and identity options. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a bid to identify and gain analytic insight into the make-up and dynamics of kindergarten literacy curricula in an era of early childhood education and care reform, this study was designed to trace how classroom literacy curricula were produced in a kindergarten in a childcare centre in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on actor-network theory’s (ANT) definition of curriculum as a network effect and understandings of literacy from multiliteracies theory, this case study using ethnographic tools focused on the ways in which children’s interests and funds of knowledge (i.e. their linguistic, modal, epistemic and cultural resources) were implicated in the production of curriculum in a kindergarten milieu outside of school. Data were collected through observation, interview and document collection methods and were analysed through an ANT approach. Findings identified actors believed to be involved in literacy curriculum production which included an emergent curricular orientation, novels, educators’ understandings of children’s interests and funds of knowledge and materials and life forms from the natural world. The findings also offer a rich illustration of emergent literacy curriculum in action characterized by multimodal classroom literacy events and featuring Read-Aloud. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One route to uncovering schooling's goals for an improved citizenry is to track certain subjects of the compulsory curriculum. In this case, health is investigated, and especially its messages on smoking and drinking. First introduced as scientific temperance instruction (in the 1880s), renamed hygiene (from about 1910), then as health (from the mid-1920s), and expanded to encompass as well physical education and personal development from the mid-1940s, health curricula were an important vehicle for turning impressionable youth into personally and socially responsible citizens. An explication of the Ontario (Canada) health curriculum between 1890 and 1960 provides an insight into the changing official prescription of the good citizen. It also shows how changed notions of health in the modern age are from the 19th-century antecedents, and, especially, how self-interest has become central to that definition. Accordingly, the lessons around smoking and drinking have moved from these products being an 'evil influence' to one of social facilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines ways in which students' experiences of a culturally-sensitive curriculum may contribute to their developing sense of ethnic identity. It uses a narrative-inquiry approach to explore students' experiences of the interaction of culture and curriculum in a Canadian inner-city, middle-school context. It considers ways in which the curriculum may be interpreted as the intersection of the students' home and school cultures. Teachers, administrators, and other members of the school community made efforts to be accepting of the diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds that students brought to the school. However, examination of students' experiences of school curriculum events and activities revealed ways in which balancing affiliation to their home cultures while at the same time abiding by expectations of their teachers and peers in their school context could be difficult. The stories highlight ways in which curriculum activities and events may contribute to shaping the ethnic identity of students in ways not anticipated by teachers, administrators, and policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]