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In 2015, The Truth and Reconciliation Report (TRC) was released in Canada, outlining 94 Calls to Action which, include pushing Canadian post-secondary institutions to ethically engage Indigenous communities and knowledge systems. This paper seeks to respond to the TRC by offering a spatial analysis of the differences, broadly conceived, between Indigenous and western ontological structures. We consider these differences in terms of 'circles and lines' through a novice, settler understanding of how Mi'kmaw concepts of etuaptmumk (two-eyed seeing), netukulimk (conservation laws) and m'sɨt No'kmaq (all our relations) can be brought to support decolonial teaching and learning about such important and urgent matters as climate change. A related goal in this paper is pedagogic: we hope our own ambivalent learning here can be used as an example to reflect deeply on how settlers like us might/should/can't work with the ethical, political, and practical challenges of responding to the TRC in our research, involving, and considering Indigenous ways of knowing and being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outdoor education is often undervalued. As such, we believe there is merit in critiquing the field and focusing more attention on its value and importance. This paper seeks to offer a critical exploration of ‘if’ and ‘how’ outdoor education is a discipline. The paper begins with a brief overview of the literature that seeks to define a ‘discipline’. We then present a six-component discipline model and examine whether and how outdoor education aligns with its first three components: a focus of study; a worldview or paradigm; and an active research or theory development agenda. In our analysis of these components we seek to not be definitive; rather, we invite readers to ponder our evidence in light of their lived experience. The ultimate hope is that this paper will encourage readers to deliberate the arguments that arise as a consequence of assessing outdoor education as a discipline. In doing so we hope to challenge readers to conceptualise outdoor education in innovative ways and to stimulate critical discourse to strengthen the field so that it may realise its potential and best serve society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Building on the recent studies revealing that official bilingualism policies in Canada are often used to reinforce a specific racial and linguistic order, this paper addresses the impact of these federal-level policies on education policies at the provincial level. From the policy genealogy perspective, we examine Ontario's Heritage Languages Program (HLP), a highly contentious provincial policy that is still in place today. By analysing the discourses circulating in public and within the Ontario Ministry of Education around a proposed bill in the legislature to bolster heritage-language instruction and a subsequent Ministry initiative, we argue that official bilingualism and policies of multiculturalism functioned as discursive vehicles for resisting an enhanced HLP and to heritage-language education per se in politically more tolerable ways. The first part of the paper describes the research design, and introduces the historical context which produced the HLP and the early conflicts over it. The second part discusses three specific findings: (1) a discussion of the Proposal and its relationship to Bill 80; and (2) the discourses present in the general public; and (3) the discourses present in Ministry-internal deliberations of the HLP in Ontario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acknowledging differences in contexts, the purpose of this paper considers how physical education and sport pedagogy (PESP), while maintaining our collective identity, can most effectively develop a capacity to engage with academic and institutional changes in productive, proactive ways. This, we contend, entails considering extending the groups or communities in which PESP is represented to increase the potential to access substructures with other academic communities. We have chosen a metaphor to frame this work, acknowledging that metaphor can often open-up new ways to view a specific aspect or phenomenon that has been conceived in a common, or perhaps static way. Worked examples of the metaphor are presented from an Irish and Canadian perspective and implications of these examples pose possible ways forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from a review of studies and reports on teacher diversity in the Canadian public education sector, in this paper, I argue that the underrepresentation of minority teachers in the public education workforce cuts across all public educational system levels. To address this institutional dilemma, I suggest that lawmakers should inspire provincial ministries of education to enforce cross-cultural accountability policies on schools and universities in order to increase the hiring and the integration of minority teachers in the school and academic workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Paper presents and discusses the findings of an empirical qualitative study that was conducted in one school district in British Columbia, Canada. The paper explores the perspectives of the educational leaders and their understanding of multicultural education and how they implement it in the school district's teachers' professional development (ProD) and in-service education. It discusses the theoretical frameworks that shape the participants' choices and actions concerning how they educate and support teachers to handle the complexities of diversity and the changing demographics in the school district. The findings highlight the dominant liberal framework of multicultural education, the systemic barriers to move beyond the tokenistic approach of cultures and the organizational constraints to move towards transformative, critical multiculturalism and anti-racism education in teachers' training and professional development. The paper proposes critical transformative multiculturalism as an alternative to transform teacher education and engage with educational reform from a social justice framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a wealth of research into various forms of educational export such as distance education and study abroad, but this paper focuses on the delivery of foreign-supplied courses and programs within a host country-in this case, China. Key findings include a high level of demand amongst Chinese students for business and management courses and programs delivered by foreign universities and their Chinese partners, and a marked preference for relatively unadapted foreign programs and, courses, which give the students an idea of what it would be like to study at the foreign university campus-for example, in USA or Canada. These and other findings contained in this paper are of value to foreign universities seeking to develop and deliver a range of educational courses and programs to China and other large, emerging education markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper assesses the causal effects of education on smoking and self-rated health in Canada. Education is instrumented using the changes in compulsory schooling laws. The sample is restricted to cohorts born between 1946 and 1964. The data are from the Canadian General Social Surveys of 1995 and 2016, allowing to observe the evolution of the gradient over the life course. The gradient is confirmed for smoking and self-rated health in correlational estimations, with stronger associations among males in later life. However, the IV regressions produce no evidence for a causal relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) passed the 'Students Without Legal Immigration Status Policy', commonly known as the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. While the policy assured undocumented students' admission to schools on paper, it remains to be fully implemented. In addition, given the discursive connection between immigration status, race, and criminalization, the TDSB has instituted procedures that further illegalize undocumented students including a more onerous and dangerous enrolment procedure. This paper examines the role of schools as border zones for undocumented immigrants in Toronto. It argues that bureaucratic processes and criminalizing rhetoric based on race actively exclude undocumented migrants from the school site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I aim to investigate the migration of Indigenous youth from the reserve to the urban environment. I will investigate the implications of an arts-based programme for youth and how they utilized my programme as a resource for learning. The goals of this paper are to provide a nuance thinking of and theorizing land as related to Indigenous communities. Indigenous young adults have had to figure out how to deal with these injustices from residential school and have taken up the call to fight for in their communities against state/nation desires for annihilation. To carry out this study, I conducted a critical ethnography and used arts-based methods to collect data. The stories of the IYAs became vital to learning about the challenges they faced and obstacles they have overcome, including fighting for recognition under the Indian Act, border politics within Canada and the United States, not knowing one’s traditional land and barriers to migrating to the city independently of one’s family. The data collected reveal the resilience of Indigenous young adults in the ways they are overcoming obstacles and speaking out using cultural production and innovative means of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Canadian federal and cross-provincial higher education policy from 1960 to 1990, a critical time when provisions for vocational and adult training came under the auspices of governmental concern, justified under both an economic rationale and as a way to address persistent forms of inequality. The problematisation of skill during this period had particular gendered implications, as addressing inequality through education subsidies intersected with the perceived training needs of employers and the market. Employing Nancy Fraser's theory of a ‘triple movement’, the following paper ‘takes stock’ of how the three political forces of social movements, marketisation, and social protection have shaped gendered discourses of education and training, the implications for which are of continued relevance to those trying to understand the education and training within the contemporary neo-liberal state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the pursuit of understanding declining levels of participation from scholastic Health and Physical Education (HPE), ethnographic research has been increasingly utilised as a tool to explore the intersubjective and intrasubjective meaning-making processes that concurrently invite or dissuade participation. Despite the ostensible epistemological benefits of deploying ethnographic research as a vehicle for better understanding contextual HPE (dis)engagement processes and meanings, a critical methodological discussion of the actual implementation and positionality of these methods is largely absent in the extant literature. Reflecting on an ethnographic study conducted with adolescent boys at a Canadian elementary school, this paper provides HPE ethnographers with a series of methodological deliberations, and reflexive points of departure for consideration in the design and implementation of ethnographic research. Specifically, this paper elucidates the process of rapport building with teachers/students, the omnipresent tensions, ethical dilemmas and triumphs that can emerge during ethnography, and the various socio-contextual interview factors that can influence data generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This narrative paper investigates a number of enduring and emerging themes reflecting teacher education in Canada over the past 40 years, including changes in information and communication technology, bridging gaps in theory and practice, English as a second language, French immersion and multicultural teacher development. Canadian teacher education programmes have become famous for their long-standing commitment to public education and social welfare. This paper examines the way in which over the past four decades such a commitment has led to effective leadership, multiculturalism, racial tolerance and global citizenship education, as well as comprehensive curriculum, teaching and learning, all figure prominently in Canadian teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I explore Discourses [Gee 1996. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. 2nd Edition, 1996; 3rd Edition, 2008; 5th Edition. 2015. London: Taylor & Francis] on language, and how they influenced plurilingual students' subject positioning during classroom interactions. I analyse documents published by a school board as well as transcripts from classroom interactions from a case study research in a grade-six classroom in a Francophone minority school in British Columbia, Canada. I argue that teachers appeared to have integrated, in their interactions with students, a Discourse on languages of French monolingualism and separate bi/plurilingualism. These Discourses also influenced how students interacted with each other. Some students, however, were able to work around these Discourses in order to position themselves as plurilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we employ a comparative life course approach for Canada and Germany to unravel the relationships among general and vocational educational attainment and different life course activities, with a focus on labour market and income inequality by gender. Life course theory and related concepts of 'time,' 'normative patterns,' 'order and disorder,' and 'discontinuities' are used to inform the analyses. Data from the Paths on Life's Way (Paths) project in British Columbia, Canada and the German Pathways from Late Childhood to Adulthood (LifE) which span 28 and 33 years, respectively, are employed to examine life trajectories from leaving school to around age 45. Sequence analysis and cluster analyses portray both within and between country differences – and in particular gender differences – in educational attainment, employment, and other activities across the life course which has an impact on ultimate labour market participation and income levels. 'Normative' life courses that follow a traditional order correspond with higher levels of full-time work and higher incomes; in Germany more so than Canada, these clusters are male dominated. Clusters characterised by 'disordered' and 'discontinuous' life courses in both countries are female dominated and associated with lower income levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the current literature on access to post-secondary education by investigating the role played by various family background characteristics related to the home environment and family habits and behaviours. Exploiting the extraordinary richness of the Youth in Transition Survey in this regard, we include whether the family ate dinner together, whether they discussed current affairs, and how often their children went to concerts – and if so, whatkindof concerts. Many of these factors are found to have a significant relationship with attending post-secondary education, university in particular. Furthermore, these factors are in addition to – and at least to some degree independent of – more conventional influences such as parental education and family income. With appeal to the paradigm of ‘cultural capital’ – which refers to the knowledge, experiences, and connections which help individuals succeed in life – these results indicate how advantages in accessing higher levels of education accrue to those from families that are rich in this kind of asset, while others are left behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada’s first-ever strategy, international education (IE) is linked to immigration policy with international students (IS) recruited as ‘ideal’ immigrants. This paper engages in policy sociology and Ball's concepts of 'policy as text' and 'policy as discourse' (10). It follows three stages of critical policy discourse analysis. The first a simple tally of the most commonly used words/phrases in the Strategy; the second analyses it using Van Leeuwen’s framework and the third presents results from a study on the perception and experiences of IS, exposing the gap between policy rhetoric and practice. The paper concludes that critical discourse analysis is a powerful tool to uncover policy values/ideologies, identify legitimation strategies and reveal perpetuation of power relations/status quo within Canadian society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines how organisations have increasingly been portrayed in textbooks as solving social problems as well as contributing to national development. Findings from 527 Canadian and U.S. textbooks illustrate the rise of an organisational society during the time period between 1836 and 2011. Discussions of for-profit and non-profit forms of organisations rise early on in both countries, creating the foundation for an organisational society, which expands to incorporate global organisations in the post-World War II period. We argue that such portrayals in textbooks both reflect and legitimise the role of organisations in society, strengthening their taken-for-granted status as social actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of media in shaping adult literacy discourse and policy in Canada. The authors show how journalists, newspapers and other media personalities have directly and indirectly influenced (1) government and public perception of adult literacy and (2) the creation of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). Overall, the paper points to the crucial role of the media in the transnationalisation of government agendas and policy discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on ideas of assemblage to examine the contingency and (in)coherence of education policy. The paper is a conceptual and thematic attempt to understand the policy terrain, broadly conceived, pertaining to opposition to the establishment of private Islamic schools in Australia and public Afrocentric schools in Canada. This opposition is located within complex policy terrains relating to multiculturalism, whiteness and race/racism. The paper focuses on the complex racialised politics surrounding education policy initiatives that support marketisation and choice in private and public K-12 schooling – with an interest in what forms of choice are legitimated in and by a racialised education market. The paper concludes that opposition to Islamic and Afrocentric schooling highlights the ambiguity of equity, and the fragility of identity in racialised education policy environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides an analysis of international literature and focus group data arising from a three-year critical ethnographic study with 795 young people, educators and parents speaking about transitions through public education in Canada. It fills fissures in qualitative and process-based sociological work on youth transitions and redresses school transitions as critical, nested social ensembles. Moving from elementary to secondary school evokes emotional, social and academic paradoxes for young people. Policy and practice shifts are required and a policy activist stance begins to cut through embedded ideological and practical goings-on surrounding youth. The paper takes particular aim at that which continues to encourage individualised and pathologised treatment of this social transition, including the continued use and abuse of ‘at-risk’ labels, and the need to support transitions teams with and for youth living through complex resiliency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the discursive construction of ‘active citizenship’ within recent civics curriculum documents across three provinces in Canada. New secondary school civics curricula have emerged across liberal democratic states since the year 2000, presumably in response to the perception of youth as disengaged from political involvement. Many of the new curricula subsequently emphasize ‘active’ engagement within the polity. The central task of this paper is to better understand what such ‘active citizenship’ actually means, via the methodological tool of discourse analysis. Engaging a theoretical frame that incorporates Foucauldian governmentality theory and cultural theories of the role of the state in creating subjectivities, the paper ultimately argues that the ‘active citizen’ of contemporary civics curricula is, in fact, a deeply neoliberal subject. The article then draws on feminist theories of citizenship in order to assess the forms of exclusion that the curriculum documents inadvertently create, arguing that they ultimately participate in a long tradition of devaluing such elements of citizenship as relationality and emotional ties. We conclude that one of the fundamental goals of citizenship education – to expand access to citizenship participation for all – has failed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the links between language, social difference and political domination in the practices of parental school choice at the heart of a global city, Vancouver. Vancouver is a highly diverse city, especially in terms of language. Its inner city is replete with multiple languages whose exchange values are not equal. In this context, our case study of two elementary schools observes that white middle-class parents choose a predominantly white school - whose students are non-ESL and have a second language choice of French - in a socially and ethnically mixed inner city neighbourhood, creating a stark imbalance in the student population of local neighbourhood schools. This paper examines parents' accounts of their choices, which they rationalise on the basis of linguistic competency and differentiation from multilingual others. We draw from Pierre Bourdieu's theory of language and symbolic power and Ghassan Hage's spatial theory of nationalist practice to understand the linguistic dimension of school choice rationalisation made by white middle-class parents. In the context of these insights, we argue that the way anglophone white middle-class parents choose their children's schools is intricately linked to active processes of reproducing a stratilingual society in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores ways in which Aboriginal students from an Aboriginal school in western Canada take an ethical stance whereby they apply concepts of privacy and confidentiality when dealing with or storying cultural experiences in the school context. The question that guides this paper is the extent to which Aboriginal students choose to protect their cultural experiences from the formal school setting by taking an ethical stance through which they express their Aboriginality relationally and informally rather than explicitly. I suggest that this ethical stance is related to cultural loyalty as a way of living authentically and relationally in the world, which means living with, rather than enduring or living against, the complexities of today’s world. I argue that cultural loyalty has three voices: an ancestral voice, a relational voice and an ethical voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students' performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP) offers a differentiated international curriculum and is perceived as a program that contributes to students' achievements, it has been increasingly adopted in school districts and schools. This paper explores the marketing strategies developed in schools and districts in response to school competition by tracing the incorporation of the IBDP in high schools in different districts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Based on interviews with school staff, district officials and IB local association representatives, this study analyzes schools' marketing decisions from a consumer and producer orientation taking into account the macro environment (federal government) and micro-environment (provincial government and districts). Rather than fostering efficiency and improving students' achievement as intended, marketization policies resulted in an increased focus on the recruitment of high achieving students, which led to a competition between schools, between districts and between other programs in the districts or in other words –an 'all against all' competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Reciprocal Learning Programmes between Western and Eastern educational systems through a Sister School project as well as, a Reciprocal Learning Programme through preservice programs between a Canadian university and a Chinese university. Benefits of the Reciprocal Learning Programs include reflective practice of content and pedagogical learning, cultural and societal learning, globalisation and emotional and social impact. Qualitative documentation demonstrates that educational, social and cultural dimensions are cultivated and nurtured through the Reciprocal Learning programs and have positively affected the students, educators and leaders involved in the project. Criteria for success in the programs included professional and personal commitment, educator inquiry, vulnerability, organisational commitment and multi-dimensional partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Green Chemistry Initiative (GCI) is a student-led group founded in 2012 with the primary mission of promoting green chemistry education at the University of Toronto. In order to achieve this, the GCI's activities have included undergraduate curriculum development, arrangement of an external speaker seminar series, and organization of an annual three-day symposium along with biweekly trivia challenges. To broaden education beyond the Department of Chemistry, a successful YouTube video campaign articulating the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry in an accessible manner has also been undertaken (acquiring over 40,000 views), in addition to monthly blog posts and conference/outreach presentations. Descriptions of these activities are discussed in this paper, along with the resulting impact they have had. Through such efforts, undergraduate and graduate students are showing a growing understanding of the relevance of green chemistry in today's world, with the GCI serving as a platform for similar groups to build upon across Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the causal effect of education on entrepreneurship choice in Canada taking into account the endogeneity of education. The data come from the General and Social Surveys (2000–2009). We consider the effect of two extreme education levels: university and some/no education. Regressions are based on fixed effects with two-stage least squares. We find that university education positively impacts entrepreneurship but some/no education reduces self-employment propensity. Implications for entrepreneurship are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores major historiographic “turns” in history of education with a focus, although not exclusively, on English-speaking Canada. It addresses the transformative intellectual impact of the turn toward social history on the history of education, the impact of cultural history and the linguistic turn, the reception of Michel Foucault, and the state of the debate in history at-large today and its implications for the history of education. It also attempts to contextualise the intellectual trends permeating the writing of the history of education in light of developments in education, and signals new directions in historiography influencing history of education. Given the limitations of space, rather than engaging in a historiographical analysis of individual historians of education, the paper traces broad trends, while highlighting the contributions of a significant few. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International service learning, a form of service learning where students travel to developing countries to provide community services of varying types, has come to be common practice at universities throughout the Global North. This paper reports and discusses a case study focused on the ethical questions arising from current practice at one Canadian university. The study follows the path students take from their home university to their final placement. In the context of the political economy of North-South relations in a period of neoliberalism, the analysis considers the ethics of power differentials, reciprocity, accountability, student preparedness and qualifications in relation to host communities. The article concludes with a critique of post-secondary institutional involvement with and promotion of international service learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial historical research indicates that during World War II Canadian schools were considered optimal sites for fostering nationalistic sentiments in teachers and learners. Policymakers directed educators and students to collect scrap metals, purchase war savings certificates, salute the flag, and undertake marching drills. These wide-reaching directives give the impression that schools were considerably reshaped during the war. Nevertheless, since much of the literature has used official information sources, such as curriculum documents and government missives, it is unclear to what extent teachers implemented such directives. No Canadian scholarship has tapped the memories of former teachers to determine their compliance in promoting nationalistic sentiments and activities. Nor have existing histories categorised activities by geographic area (such as rural versus urban; coastal versus inland) or school level (elementary versus secondary). Thus, the “unity of purpose and experience” implied by some of the literature may be overemphasised. This paper challenges the suggestion that throughout Canada all children and teachers in schools fervently engaged in nationalistic behaviour during World War II. To supplement government perspectives found in newspapers, magazines, curricular documents, and other Department of Education sources, I interviewed two dozen teachers who taught in 40 schools throughout British Columbia between 1939 and 1945. Despite policymakers’ intentions, there were many factors influencing schools’ abilities to support the war effort. These included a community’s geographic proximity or access to centres of larger war-related activity, such as munitions factories or collection stations; the values and social circumstances of families and communities; and teachers’ individual preferences, often reflecting their career stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past two decades have seen considerable growth in new apprenticeship registrations in Canada. However, this has not been matched by a corresponding increase in completions. Across provinces, trades and time, there is considerable variation in apprenticeship completion rates. In Canada, apprenticeship programmes are provincially regulated and there are differences in programme requirements across trades, provinces and time. This paper asks to what extent the differences in completion rates are related to differences in the structure of apprenticeship programmes. There is little evidence to support the view that either the length of the work experience term or the technical training requirement acts as a barrier to completion. However, there is some evidence to suggest that the format in which technical training is delivered is related to completion rates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we undertake a particular policy critique and analysis of the gender achievement gap discourse in Ontario and Canada, and situate it within the context of what has been termed the governance turn in educational policy with its focus on policy as numbers and its multi-scalar manifestations. We show how this 'gap talk' is inextricably tied to a neoliberal system of accountability, marketization, comparative performance measures and competition within the context of a globalized education policy field. The focus initially is on how the gender achievement gap has emerged in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OCED) publication of the 2009 Program For International Student Assessment Results, but attention is drawn to questions and categories of equity that are used to define and measure socioeconomic disadvantage. We illustrate that such measures and categories in use function to eschew important aspects of maldistribution, with important consequences for understanding the significance of the interlocking influences of race, social class, gender and geographical location, where there is evidence of spatial concentrations of poverty and histories of cumulative oppression. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the Canadian data to illustrate the multi-scalar dimensions of global/national/provincial 'policyscapes' through a politics of numbers. Contrary to the ways in which Canada and specifically Ontario have been marketed and celebrated by OECD and other stakeholders for their high performing, high quality education system in terms of achieving equitable outcomes for diverse student populations, we illustrate how the 'failing boys' discourse and achieving 'gap talk' have actually functioned to produce a misrecognition of the gender achievement gap, with boys emerging as a disadvantaged category in the articulation of equity policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal agendas, globalism and the marketisation of higher education have had profound implications for teacher education throughout the world, including increasing standardisation, accountability and credentialism. The rhetoric is 'teachers need better training'. However, raising the bar to a master's degree without analysing carefully the rationale for such a reform seems short-sighted. What alternatives are there to a master's degree as a standard in teacher accreditation? What are the significant issues facing learners of the twenty-first century? In a post 9/11 world, with drastic changes stemming from globalisation, what is important? Teachers need global citizenship education to nurture global citizens who have the knowledge and skills required to critically evaluate phenomena in a rapidly changing world. In this paper, a narrative case study of a unique initial teacher education programme at a Japanese university is juxtaposed with discussion of a well-established Canadian programme offering multiple pathways into teaching. The results show that effective teacher induction integrating global citizenship education and providing a gradual acculturation into teaching is possible within undergraduate programmes, providing opportunities for sharing the transcultural personal, practical and professional knowledge of teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a historical review of the education system in Canada and its impact on Indigenous women. By doing so, I hope to address the inequities that surround current educational policies and practices. Also in this paper, I critically investigate the salient aspects of the educational experiences of the women in a contemporary context, with their voices and experiences at the forefront, thereby challenging all of us to envision a formal education system that creates space in which women of Aboriginal ancestry are treated fairly and equitably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delivered as one of the keynote addresses at the International Standing Committee on the History of Education (ISCHE) Conference held in Chicago in August 2016, this paper offers a broad review of how the body and embodiment have been incorporated into histories of education. Based on this historiography, I extend three “inspiring provocations” intended to set the stage for new questions, new theorising, and new methods regarding the body in the field. By asking new questions of the past, drawing on innovative theoretical and methodological frameworks, I argue, historians can continue to give proper empirical standing to the body and embodiment in our histories of education. I conclude with a central question: What are the important questions in the history of education that the body might help us to answer? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a review of the literature relating to hard-to-reach families which has been published over the last 12 years in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. The purpose of the review was twofold: to gain insights to understandings of the term ‘hard-to-reach’ within these services – education, health and social – which might be aiming to access such families in order to help them improve their life chances and to explore the ways in which services have been successful in engaging the families. A consistent message to emerge from the review is that complex issues need complex solutions which in turn need time to implement. Additionally, it is clear that services need to develop diversity of support provision in order to meet the varying needs of families and that services need to develop a shared script for working with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the experience of Lisa, one of the co-authors, as a student with a disability completing a Bachelor of Social Work degree in Western Canada. This personal narrative of the physical, relational, attitudinal, curricular and resource aspects of Lisa's education identifies barriers experienced in the educational and practice environments, and highlights strategies that assisted in addressing these barriers. The article specifically relates Lisa's progression through the programme, including accounts of classroom and field experiences, relationships with faculty and students, resource, policy and accommodation issues, and the needs and human rights of a student with a disability. The narrative celebrates the success of a student in an environment (the university) that many believe to be more accommodating and supportive than other public and private organizations. Recommendations for both educational and social work practice organizations are provided. As a co-author of the article, Lisa was an active participant at every stage of the research and development of the article—narrative interview, analysis, identification of themes, connection to theory and literature, and presentation and final writing of the paper. [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]

Research has helped us understand that high stakes tests can have some sort of influence at the micro level on classroom practice and activity. To date, much variation has been reported. This paper discusses washback in second language (L2) education contexts and specifically the teacher factor in classroom activity. It draws on four areas of research: washback research in second language (L2) and general education, the teacher factor in washback, alignment of assessment internal and external to the classroom, and mixed methods research. It provides teacher case study examples from a larger study probing into teacher practice and beliefs when dealing with a new high stakes English as a second language (ESL) provincial exit exam at the high school level. The participants are from the population of ESL secondary teachers in the French school system in the province of Quebec in Canada. The main research question is: How do teachers mediate between classroom assessment activity and preparing students for upcoming external exams? Results indicate that teachers used common overall approaches, but that there was variation in individual practice. When first introduced to the new exam material, teachers used a formative assessment approach. As the exam time neared, their practice evolved into a summative assessment approach. This phenomenon demonstrated an interfacing or 'blurring' of formative and summative assessment in an attempt to align classroom and external exam assessment. Implications are discussed pertaining to a coherent education system across curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian women have been at the forefront of the international movement for women's rights in Afghanistan since the rise of the Taliban in the late 1990s. Focusing on the prominent group Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WAfghan), this paper looks at the role its advocacy assumes in the context of the 'War on Terror'. In Canada, as in the United States, government agencies have justified the military invasion of Afghanistan by revitalizing the oppressed Muslim woman as a medium through which narratives of East versus West are performed. While CW4WAfghan attempts to challenge dominant narratives of Afghan women, it ultimately reinforces the Orientalist logic on which the War on Terror operates. Drawing on Chandra Talpade Mohanty's study of feminist pedagogy, this paper explores the implications of CW4WAfghan's discourse and its dissemination through the Canadian school system. It highlights how CW4WAfghan's portrayal of Canadian values and responsibilities is at odds with feminist efforts to reconceptualize the gendered nature of war and national identity. [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]

This paper examines the diverse nature of multiculturalism. Although there is no lack of literature on multiculturalism, it is dominated by a Western paradigm and perspectives. This paper offers a model that takes a pluralistic perspective on diversity by locating multiculturalism within the imaginings of the nation. This model uses the concept of narratives with its ideological bases to invite dialogue among various multiculturalisms and to examine the processes by which particular multicultural narratives emerge within their socio-political and historical locations. The Canadian and Singaporean multicultural narratives are explored to tease out some of the nuances of this model. [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]

This paper focuses on the educational experiences of African-Canadian youth in Canada. Traditionally, the tendency is to emphasize the poor academic performance of black students or issues and problems related to reasons for academic failure or to stereotype them as ‘loud, lazy, muscular, criminal, athletic, dumb, deprived, dangerous, deviant, and disturbed’. In contrast, this paper looks at those who have achieved in spite of considerable adversity. The data show that factors such as pride in one's heritage and knowledge of one's culture contribute to academic success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational choice theory suggests that parents are utility maximizers who make decisions from clear value preferences, that they are able to demand effective action from local schools and teachers, and that they can be relied upon to pursue the best interests of their children. This paper presents a different perspective and argues that parents invest a mixture of rationalities when selecting schools. Based on the results of a survey of 1,500 parents of students in 11 private, eight public and 10 alter- native elementary schools in Alberta, Canada, this paper explores the logic, values, and concerns that inform parental decision making in the selection of an elementary school for their children and discusses implication for policy and educational reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy makers in a variety of sites are embracing initiatives that attempt to tighten the links between school and work. A reinvented human capital discourse argues that more highly skilled workers are required to meet the demands of the 'knowledge economy'. This paper explores the new vocationalism as it is promoted within the Framework for Enhancing Business Involvement, a policy report produced in 1996 in Alberta, Canada. Using a critical policy approach, this paper focuses on the process of developing this document with attention to the policy context, influences on the process, ideological assumptions and the impact of the document since its release. Analysis suggests that questions of representation in policy processes, accountability for outcomes and the role of public interests in multi-stakeholder consultation are critical in this era of new public management practices. Further, despite the impression of unity and consensus suggested by policy documents, there are tensions in vocational education and policy that must be addressed if they are also to promote equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the emergence of education as a marketable service with institutions now seeking to market themselves in a professional manner. A comparison is made between two samples- one of administrators within educational institutions in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and United States, the other of college and university students in Australia. Statistical analysis identified a series of key factors considered critical to the successful marketing of these institutions. A comparison of institutional and student views is made concluding that significant differences exist between the two groups. Managerial and research implications are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose: Canadian new immigrant families (also known as newcomers) encounter challenges navigating systems when trying to access programmes critical for their children's healthy development. The purpose of this study is to understand how newcomer families find and use early childhood programmes and services from the perspective of families and early childhood educators (ECEs) working within a settlement organization. Methods: Using photovoice methodology, newcomer family members (n = 8) with young children and ECEs (n = 6) participated in a series of virtual workshops to share photos and reflect on their experiences. Results: Participants discussed the systemic barriers that obstructed newcomer families' access to services for young newcomer children. Financial challenges due to unemployment/ underemployment, language and cultural differences were emphasized. Despite these barriers and challenges, participants shared how culturally responsive programmes enhanced their connections to programmes and services. Both groups of participants discussed the critical role of social networks in supporting newcomers to use programmes by helping families become aware of available services and assistance with various processes such as registration. Conclusions: This research illustrates the lived experiences of newcomer families and identifies opportunities to address inequities, improve early childhood programmes, and enhance families' access to programmes and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]