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A clear, well defined policy can help empower school personnel to make informed decisions on how to handle cases of suspected child abuse. This article presents an analysis of (N = 64) school board child abuse reporting policies and procedures in Ontario and explored what training, resources, and support school boards state they will provide to help teachers recognize and report cases where a child may be in need of protection. The results showed that, while most boards had documentation, the amount of information provided by each school board varied greatly, with documents ranging from 1 page to 155 pages long. An analysis of the documents revealed a lack of clear expectations around training and support to assist teachers in reporting child abuse. Policy recommendations are proposed based on the results of the online search.

Over the past 50 years, a consensus emerged from the scientific literature regarding the positive effects of school, family and community partnerships on school achievement. However, researchers noted that the implementation of these partnerships still gives rise to tensions on the ground. This research tackled with how parents and teachers get involved in the school-family-community cooperation process to support pupils at the elementary school (age 6 to 12). The goal of this paper is to compare on the one hand, the parents' views in their narratives on parents and teachers practices, and on the other hand, the teachers' views in their narratives on parents and teachers practices as well, to gain insight on the tensions characterizing these partnerships and on the possible solutions set forth by these actors. To this end, the empirical analyses are based on a approach with qualitative interviews among 14 teachers and 45 parents of pupils at six elementary schools in the Greater Quebec City area. To this end, interviews were conducted with 14 teachers and 45 parents of pupils at six elementary schools in the Greater Quebec City area. The results suggest that practices such as school-family communication or homework are privileged among parents and teachers. The analyses also suggest that parents and teachers diverge over the tools teachers use to support parents involvement.

For children to know how to fully participate in and most effectively lead the world they will inherit, they must learn how to critically engage with it and be knowledgeable about foundational rights and instruments that support such engagement. Together, critical literacy, which encourages the examination and interrogation of the underlying assumptions of dominant narratives and 'legitimate' knowledge, and children's rights education, which involves children in learning how to express their ideas and fully participate in society (as appropriate to their age and ability), offer a powerful approach--theoretical and pedagogical--to engage children in active engagement of the world, especially with respect to the promotion of social justice. However, the layers of complexity and risks associated with deep consideration of challenging topics require expert guidance and compassionate role modelling from teachers of young children. Our paper considers the intersections between critical literacy and global child rights with reference to a study conducted with young school children in Canada and Uganda to discuss how teachers can support meaningful learning experiences in the classroom that can promote children's agency and social justice commitments.

This paper discusses the role of mediation as it arose in developing and teaching two online American Sign Language (ASL) courses for parents of deaf children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaf children and their families who are still acquiring ASL have ongoing learning needs that are most often not met in mainstream educational systems, and these inequities have deepened during the pandemic. Combining reception, production, and interaction, mediation is a mode of language activity in the "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages" (CEFR) that involves "languaging" to develop ideas and facilitate understanding and communication. In this nine-month study, intensive parent ASL courses were adapted and developed for rapid implementation of online instruction in order to meet the second or additional language ASL learning needs of parents of deaf children. Online questionnaire, interview, observational, and assessment data were gathered regarding participating parents' learning processes and experiences. As study findings reveal, a main theme that arose was the role of mediation in terms of alleviating various barriers for participants and facilitating the linguistic and cultural dimensions of parents' online ASL learning and understanding through cognitive and relational means.

Children in low-income neighbourhoods experience an intersection of socio-structural factors that delimit their engagement with out-of-school (informal) science education. Using Bourdieu's framework of habitus, this paper explores how informal science educators and children in a given low-income community in western Canada described the attitudes, dispositions, and experiences that influence the informal science education practices of children in the community. Participants in the study included 32 children (aged 9-14) attending 4 different subsidised community clubs (each of which incorporated some science programming), 5 science centre staffers, and 11 community club program leaders. This multi-method study uses habitus as a thinking tool that bridges theoretical and methodological domains. The study employed various data sources in order to develop rich descriptions of participant perspectives; these sources included individual dialogues, focus groups, a statement sorting exercise, and participant responses to pilot data. The paper outlines the synergies and contrasts in the perspectives of children and informal science educators regarding the place of informal science education in the lives of local children. Despite certain consistencies between educator and child accounts, educators underestimated the level of interest children had in out-of-school science education and the range of self-/home-directed science activities in which children were participating. The paper ends by examining the implications of adults' attempts to hide the word science from children during informal science activities and makes suggestions regarding the provision of informal science education in other low-income contexts.

Notes that Canada has no federal law which guarantees rights of exceptional children to education or which coordinates a national effort toward this goal. Suggests that mandatory provision of services might have little meaning without a social consciousness that there is a moral obligation to obey the law. (RC)

Asthma often starts before six years of age. However, there remains uncertainty as to when and how a preschool-age child with symptoms suggestive of asthma can be diagnosed with this condition. This delays treatment and contributes to both short- and long-term morbidity. Members of the Canadian Thoracic Society Asthma Clinical Assembly partnered with the Canadian Paediatric Society to develop a joint working group with the mandate to develop a position paper on the diagnosis and management of asthma in preschoolers. In the absence of lung function tests, the diagnosis of asthma should be considered in children one to five years of age with frequent (≥8 days/month) asthma-like symptoms or recurrent (≥2) exacerbations (episodes with asthma-like signs). The diagnosis requires the objective document of signs or convincing parent-reported symptoms of airflow obstruction (improvement in these signs or symptoms with asthma therapy), and no clinical suspicion of an alternative diagnosis. The characteristic feature of airflow obstruction is wheezing, commonly accompanied by difficulty breathing and cough. Reversibility with asthma medications is defined as direct observation of improvement with short-acting ß2-agonists (SABA) (with or without oral corticosteroids) by a trained health care practitioner during an acute exacerbation (preferred method). However, in children with no wheezing (or other signs of airflow obstruction) on presentation, reversibility may be determined by convincing parental report of a symptomatic response to a three-month therapeutic trial of a medium dose of inhaled corticosteroids with as-needed SABA (alternative method), or as-needed SABA alone (weaker alternative method). The authors provide key messages regarding in whom to consider the diagnosis, terms to be abandoned, when to refer to an asthma specialist and the initial management strategy. Finally, dissemination plans and priority areas for research are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the need for effective educational programming for students living in poverty. The reviewed literature outlines research that stresses the importance of self-regulation and working memory in learning, particularly for students living in poverty. As well, the paper provides a review of the research regarding the value of building relationships within classrooms, schools, and communities in order to encourage academic and social-emotional growth for students. Within the paper, the promotion of academic programming that integrates kinesthetic activities and social-emotional learning is also examined. Finally, the discussion section provides a focus and direction for the author's current and future practice as she aspires to be a change agent within her school for students who are experiencing poverty

OPAL -- Outdoor Play and Learning, in collaboration with Earth Day Canada, is a national program that encourages outdoor play in public schools across Canada. This paper focuses on the implementation of OPAL in an elementary school in Toronto. The initial implementation strategies of the program are discussed, which include efforts to create a play policy framework that centres childhood relations with the outdoors or 'environment'. Employing posthuman and/or more-than-human frameworks, I examine the potential of OPAL to become a practice of learning with environments as opposed to learning about the environment. This is a significant shift in childhood thought and practice that requires serious consideration and pedagogical attention to how environmental education can move toward transdisciplinary practices in more-than-human worlds.

Longstanding impressions of children as innocent to human frailty, alongside the emphasis on efficiency and management in schools, play undeniable roles in the way teachers engage with children experiencing death and illness. This paper draws from a larger study of 116 written childhood memories from prospective teachers and practitioners enrolled across four universities in Canada and the United States and focuses on the 12 memories that specifically reference childhood experiences with death or illness. Bearing witness to death evoked a range of participant responses, including guilt and shame, a sense of childhood immaturity, or the need to "grow up" in the face of mortality. In contrast, memories of illness almost always occurred in school, featuring a neglectful teacher or adult figure with anxiety about disrupting normalcy and order. Drawing on affect studies and psychoanalysis, our examination surfaces three repeating motifs: (1) the management of the bodily 'normal' in school, (2) the appeal to childhood innocence as a refusal of affective experience, and (3) the abjection of illness as an opening to thinking about vulnerability in education. Although these memories account for a small portion of the overall collection, they linger in our minds as significant, made even more so by the current context of COVID-19. For educators, the challenge may be how to engage with children as they attempt to make sense of the turmoil they are living, all of which may require teachers to support a wide range of childhood experiences unburdened by the ideal of innocence. A study of these tropes demonstrate the affective challenges that bodies pose to education, and open critical ways to think about the relationship between illness, childhood, and education as the ethical ground to reimagine post-pandemic schooling.

Indigenous Knowledge Systems and their underlying ethical qualities guide social interaction and the process by which Indigenous children learn what it means to be a person within family and community life. Using the Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI) framework as a starting point, this paper explores a case study of a death in the Cowichan Tribes community to illuminate four ethical qualities (relationality, reciprocity, responsibility, respect) associated with (1) the social organization of the community guided by a sense of community consciousness and (2) Indigenous concepts of time and space. Using the social organization of the community and Indigenous concepts of time and space as broad themes, we aim to illustrate how culturally determined ethical qualities guide every social interaction and thus inform human development and learning, broadly. By including ethics that guide social relationships in the LOPI framework, educators and researchers may gain a deeper understanding of how children learn in communities and how their participation in community activities informs their sense of self. [Translation from English by Mercè Rius.]

In 1973, British Columbia (B.C.) became the first province in Canada to forbid corporal punishment in public schools (B.C. School Act), followed by the majority of the other provinces. Alberta and Manitoba however, still have no provincially enacted legal prohibition, although many school boards have updated their policies to state that corporal punishment should be prohibited. The spotlight on efforts to repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code may have dimmed over time on the national stage, but the recent Canadian Truth and Reconciliation report has ignited this issue once again. My article explores the existing laws with a comparative approach (Reimann & Zimmermann, 2008; Orucu & Nelken, 2007), in terms of where Canada stands in relation to other nations' legislative standards and practices. It also addresses the severe behavioural and psychological implications on impacted children. As a developed nation, Canada needs to reconsider its current state of "progress" by inspecting and reviewing existing discourses and legislatives to ensure successful prevention of corporal punishment in schools. This paper intends not only to contribute to the advancement of Canadian legislative standards, but also to practices in local and international education.

With over 1 in 5 Canadians identifying as an immigrant, Canada has been proud to call itself a nation of immigrants with a commitment to supporting refugees, from accepting thousands of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s to Syrians fleeing civil war in 2015. In 2017, 44,000 refugees came as government-sponsored or privately sponsored refugees, having been offered permanent residency in Canada prior to arrival. Fewer arrive as asylum seekers -- 24,000 in 2016, 40% of whom arrived via the Canada-US border. Given Canada's geographic location, individuals may arrive by air, sea, or land across the longest shared land border in the world with the United States. In 2011, Canadian officials reported 4,205 claims made at this border. This number nearly quintupled in 2018, with 19,085 claims, totaling nearly 40,000 asylum claims since 2016 and coinciding with the changes in US governmental administration and their immigration and temporary resident policies. Families reported that for them, the US was no longer safe and they sought asylum in Canada. Due to the Safe Third Country Agreement, which does not permit asylum claims from the United States at official border crossings, many asylum seekers have crossed through unofficial border crossings, most of them in the provinces of Quebec and Manitoba. This article touches upon a number of issues that have come to light with the rising numbers of children who are asylum seekers trickling across the US-Canada border.

The realization of the goals of environmental education may involve a critique and transformation of the dominant model of schooling. Specifically, a greater emphasis on second-order change is necessary in order to address the mechanistic structures and dynamics of schooling that may frustrate environmental education. Several of the mechanistic practices that define the dominant model of schooling and that may inhibit the adoption of holistic or ecological thought are systematically identified and discussed. The paper is primarily a critique, pointing to future work needed in reconceptualizing schooling so that it is more compatible with the goals of environmental education. The piece concludes with the suggestion of revisiting the deschooling movement for what it may be able to contribute to the questions at hand.

In pediatric settings, the concept of hope is frequently positioned as a fundamental aspect of care and at odds with the possibility and proximity of death. This arguably fosters silence about death and dying in childhood despite evidence indicating the benefits of open communication at the end of life. In this paper, we describe the unspeakable nature of death and dying in childhood, including its conceptual and clinical causes and dimensions, its persistence, and the associated challenges for children and youth facing critical illnesses, their families, and society. We explore how the tension between hope and death can be reframed and apply our analysis to the context of medical assistance in dying for mature minors in Canada. Considering the lack of related literature, this paper offers initial reflections to form a framework for the unspeakable nature of death and dying in childhood and to advance the crucial need for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the best available evidence to inform decision making is important for the design or delivery of effective health-related services and broader public policy. Several studies identify barriers and facilitators to evidence-informed decision making in Canadian health settings. This paper describes how the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health, as an intermediary organisation, facilitates evidence-informed decision making at organisational and system levels in Ontario's child and youth mental health sector through two unique knowledge mobilisation services. This paper describes these services, offering them as exemplars for other sectors seeking to support evidence use in policy and practice decision making.

This paper draws on findings from a two-year study of gender and gender transgression among school children and youth in rural Ontario, Canada conducted while running gender equity workshops for students aged 8-18 years, in which I asked participants to document what gender looked and felt like. Through writing prompts, pictures, discussion and theatre, roughly 600 participants had the opportunity to describe gender as well as responses to perceived transgressions of gender. In the course of this work, I became especially interested in the emotions identified by participants as being part of, or experienced through, their gender. In this paper, I focus on notions of happiness, enjoyment and fun, as described by participants in their responses. Happiness is a part of gender that is often overlooked in human rights definitions of gender identity and expression, as well as in the translation of legal discourse into a social justice-oriented curriculum. While participants in this study expressed a wide range of emotions, a focus on happiness offers insights into contemporary definitions of gender, as well as a potentially transformational curriculum for gender diversity.

Using both child-guided and adult-guided learning, Intentional Teaching in the early years can be a powerful tool for enhancing young children's numeracy skills. As Epstein (2009) notes, this can include providing "opportunities for children to represent things by drawing, building and moving" (p. 47). This paper investigates how kindergarten (four-five year olds) children represented and demonstrated numeracy concepts through their drawings and explanations, completed for a research study that used arts-based strategies to enhance children's environmental understanding. This research study involved kindergarten children in Australia creating and exchanging postcards (drawings and explanations) of their local environments with their peers in Canada. Findings include that the kindergarten children, through creating postcards of their physical environments and explanations, demonstrated their growing understanding of numeracy concepts, such as spatial orientation, quantification and attributes of objects. The study argues for quality Intentional Teaching and the development of an "early childhood numeracy progress monitoring framework" that maps and assesses children's mathematical development.

In a recent paper, Reardon found that the relationship between family income and children's academic achievement grew substantially stronger in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. We provide an international context for these results by examining the income-achievement association in 19 other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries using data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Programme for International Student Assessment. First, we calculate and compare the magnitude of "income achievement gaps" across this sample of countries. Second, we investigate the association between the size of a country's income achievement gap, its income inequality, and a variety of other country characteristics. We find considerable variation across countries in income achievement gaps. Moreover, the U.S. income achievement gap is quite large in comparison to this sample of countries. Our multivariate analyses show that the income achievement gap is positively associated with educational differentiation, modestly negatively associated with curricular standardization, and positively associated with national levels of poverty and inequality.

This paper considers a person's endogenous and emotional relationships to outdoor childhood or adolescent (trans)formative places. By revisiting the (trans)formative places of four citizens and filming the experiences, I gained an understanding of how these places engage emotional learning. The emotional data were explored through phenomenology and participatory analysis. Places transformed my participants through identity development, memory and anxiety, resiliency behaviour, nostalgia, and loss. My participants related to places through knowing a place and being home, engendering bliss and appreciation, the development of pride and hope, and experiencing emotionality. Part of our emotional development is linked to our relationships to place because we are, in some ways, part of that place. Returning to (trans)formative places can rejuvenate our relationships to those places through our emotional reactions.

This paper presents a framework for what we consider are essential elements for realising the linguistic rights of Indigenous children in the twenty-first century. The global impacts of colonisation on various Indigenous communities have resulted in loss of cultural practices, knowledge and loss of languages. This framework points to ways forward for addressing Indigenous children's rights to reclaim their languages in early childhood. The linguistic rights of Indigenous children are at the intersection of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in this, the International Year of Indigenous Languages. The enshrined rights of Indigenous children to an education in their own culture and language is a right yet to be realised in nations who are signatories to the Convention and the Declaration. Examples are presented of Indigenous language programmes in early childhood settings in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Sápmi and the USA to highlight the significant roles of policy, Elders, communities, teacher education and the role of early childhood education in supporting children and families to reclaim endangered Indigenous languages.

Objective: Digital storytelling and other methods of self-expression and autobiography have become an increasingly important tool for those working with young people, including those from migrant, refugee or other 'culturally diverse' backgrounds. A structured scoping review was undertaken to better understand the potential value and challenges of using digital stories to promote the health and well-being of these diverse groups of young people and to identify key knowledge gaps. Design: The review process comprised a systematic search of the literature and strategic consultations with professionals working with young people in the area of sexual and reproductive health promotion and care. A descriptive-analytic method was used to collate and synthesise the literature and apply narrative and thematic analyses. Results: In total, 28 papers were deemed eligible for inclusion. Findings are presented as two analyses: what is known from the literature and key knowledge gaps. Identified themes included the use of digital stories as social activism and as research intervention, recognition of digital stories as complex terrain and recommendations for good practice. Three key gaps of particular relevance to our research aims were identified. These were (1) the lack of digital stories on sexual health and relationships by 'culturally diverse' young people in Australia, (2) the need for discussion of the ethical considerations of using digital storytelling and related methods in sexual health fields and (3) the value of exploring opportunities to employ digital methods as self-representation and autobiography to generate new knowledge and build organisational capacity. Conclusion: As confirmed in discussions with professionals working in the youth, migrant and sexual health sectors, the literature highlighted the many potential applications of digital storytelling to promoting the sexual health and well-being of young people from diverse backgrounds. Additional research is required to understand the particular ethical and contextual issues shaping, and at times constraining, this engagement in specific cultural contexts.

Despite emerging evidence of the contributors to high-quality family day care, a comprehensive comparison of international family day care systems has not been undertaken. The aim of this paper is to compare regulated family day care (FDC) in Australia, Canada, England and Wales, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, and the USA, using standard information about FDC usage and each country's structural characteristics, regulatory approach, quality assurance indicators, supervision and support, and sector challenges. A template was developed by representatives of the International Family Day Care Organisation, including academics, FDC providers, and FDC educators and management staff. The paper demonstrates that, although the existing body of published research is sufficient to provide clear guidance for developing and maintaining quality FDC, this knowledge is not always being applied in current practices. Three practices, each pertaining to several countries, are of concern: (a) minimal requirements for being a regulated FDC provider, (b) minimal quality assurance guidelines, and (c) minimal provider supports. There is great potential to learn from countries that have a high level of success in providing high-quality FDC and strong support for providers and families. (Contains 6 tables.)

This paper describes the methodological changes that occurred across cycles of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS), specifically outlining the rationale for tracking investigations of families with children at risk of maltreatment in the CIS-2008 cycle. This paper also presents analysis of data from the CIS-2008 examining the differences between those investigations focusing on risk of maltreatment and those investigations focusing on an incident of maltreatment. The CIS-2008 uses a multi-stage sampling design. The final sample selection stage involves identifying children for which (a) there was a concern of a specific incident of maltreatment, and (b) there was no specific concern of past maltreatment but the risk of future maltreatment was being assessed. The present analysis included 11,925 investigations based on specific inclusion criteria. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to better understand maltreatment and risk only investigations in the CIS-2008. Families investigated for alleged maltreatment, compared to those investigated for future risk, were more likely to live in a home that was overcrowded, live with the presence of at least one household hazard, and run out of money for basic necessities. Younger children were more likely to be the subject of a risk investigation. Caregiver alcohol abuse, household hazards, and certain child functioning issues were associated with an increased likelihood in a finding of substantiated maltreatment. Several primary caregiver functioning concerns were associated with the decision to substantiate risk, as well as household hazards and overcrowding. This study represents the first exploration of a national profile of risk only investigations. The analyses provided an opportunity to examine differences in the profile of children and families in risk only investigations and child maltreatment investigations, revealing several important differences.

This paper draws on a collection of retrospective narratives of childhood and adolescent spiritual experiences to explore the qualities and characteristics of the spirituality of the young. They recall a range of spiritual experiences that touch on death, mortality, visions, and perceptions and connections beyond the self. Their experiences include varying intensities of emotion and invoke a range of responses in them and others. The paper considers the social, emotional and familial context of these early life experiences and their impact on spiritual experience and the possibility/impossibility and freedom/lack of freedom to express, and integrate spirituality. (Contains 1 note.)

Over the last four decades, research in environmental education (EE) has offered valuable theoretical insights spanning a number of pedagogical and philosophical arenas. EE literature offers expansive accounts of projects looking at a multiplicity of factors involved in bringing EE to the forefront of educational endeavour. Within all this activity, however, a "gap" between the field of EE and the recipients of such endeavour appears requiring some consideration and exploration. This paper discusses this "gap" and suggests the need for future research initiatives utilising student voice as a mechanism for reflecting on and informing EE philosophy and pedagogy. Premised on an ongoing international doctoral study examining children's experiences of EE, this paper discusses an approach that builds on emerging EE research nodes and assists in addressing this "gap". It argues that understanding EE conceptions as described by schoolchildren offers environmental educators important considerations for future learning experiences and researchers important insights into factors influencing those experiences. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper describes the partial results of a research project which investigated conceptions of nature and the role of place in environmental education in children who attended Camp Arowhon. Through interviews and observations, utilizing a hybrid research drawing from phenomenography and ethnography, local common wild animals emerged as playing an important role in campers' embodied connection to place. Through structured "nature programs" and unstructured "free-play," campers discovered and increased their familiarity of common local animals. Using the deleuzeoguattarian concept of "becoming," these interactions are proposed to serve as a starting point through which a child can move on to engage with increasingly abstract aspects of the natural world. Implications for urban environmental education, where these children spend the majority of their year, are discussed. (Contains 3 tables and 7 notes.)