Search

In the recent "National Youth White Paper on Global Citizenship" (2015), a selection of Canadian youth identified their vision for global citizenship education (GCE). The document articulates the Canadian youths' vision for global citizenship and outlines changes that need to be implemented in order for that vision to be achieved. Drawing on critiques of modernity and of liberal multiculturalism coming from postcolonial, decolonial, and feminist anti-racist scholarship, this article explores how young people imagine their positionalities as Canadian citizens and agents of change in the world. We aim to describe how the White Paper can be used both as a call for deepening critical engagements in education as well as a bridge for discussions of GCE in ways that move conversations into new realms. This paper is divided into four sections. In the first section, we analyse the 2015 White Paper, written collaboratively by Canadian students. It is the first document to focus exclusively on youth perceptions of what action is needed and what problems need to be addressed. We summarize the Canadian youths' articulation and understanding of GCE and identify the major themes addressed. The second section articulates the calls for action that the Canadian youth deem necessary for their vision of global citizenship. As they demand an emphasis on criticality in their formal education, we consider how we can listen to and respond to these calls. The third section presents a critical analysis of the document with a view to paving the way for collaborations to push discussions even further. The fourth section highlights how we can build on the White Paper to move discussions about GCE in new and different directions. We aim to address how the White Paper can be used to further the conversations in ways that explore how the youths' calls for actions can open up the possibilities for critical GCE.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not survey medium (electronic versus paper format) has a significant effect on the results achieved. To compare survey media, responses from elementary students to British Columbia's Satisfaction Survey were analyzed. Although this study was not experimental in design, the data set served as a rich source for which to investigate the research question. The methods included reliability, item mean, factor analysis, response rate and response completeness comparisons across survey media. From the analyses, the differences between electronic and paper media in this study appear to be minor, and do not seem to have a significant effect on overall results. In conclusion, the medium does not seem to overly affect response patterns and does not pose any threats to the validity or reliability of survey results. (Contains 5 endnotes, 16 tables and 2 figures.)

This essay examines a case study that investigated how students learned and how they applied their writing skills as they pursued publication in an undergraduate scientific journal at a Canadian university. As we conducted a genre analysis of student drafts submitted to the journal and interviewed students who published in the journal's inaugural year, we noted the desire and eagerness that students had to publish at the undergraduate level. We also noticed certain barriers to students fully participating in research for their discourse communities, including challenges accessing publication opportunities and revising their work for new audiences and contexts. Undergraduate journals offer a tremendous space for them to hone a variety of skills in a supportive environment while also taking the first steps to fully participating in scholarly practice.

Institutional practices related to providing academic accommodations and access have long been ableist and bureaucratic and remain that way. This paper will focus on these practices in the post-secondary education context. The central question of this paper is: What do meaningful access and reasonable accommodation mean to post-secondary students with disabilities? Proceeding from the premise that students with disabilities do not currently define meaningful access and reasonable accommodations, this paper will argue that accommodations and access as defined within policy are not adequately serving the needs of post-secondary students with disabilities. This paper then highlights the definitions of meaningful access and reasonable accommodations provided by eight students who participated in a recent study. Finally, this paper will highlight the negative and positive encounters with accommodations experienced by many post-secondary students in the province of Ontario who follow the Policy on Accessible Education for Students with Disabilities (2018) as a policy that guides educational practices.

The current structure of formal education makes it difficult for teachers and students to hold meaningful conversations to support high-school youth's meaning-making of critical social-justice issues. This paper presents data on three high-school youth's knowledge and experiences with social justice issues during the pandemic. Specifically, the paper aims to explore how youth construct knowledge and counter dominant discourses through utilizing informal learning spaces, such as social media platforms, peer and family conversations, as well as personal encounters. In addition, and more importantly, an exploration of how formal education can incorporate social-justice issues into the curriculum is considered. The analysis of these high school youth's interview conversations presents their diverging needs to learn about social-justice topics in both formal and informal learning contexts. The data also illustrates the power of their voices in a way that could inform future curriculum development. Discussions and implications highlight the possibility of creating such ethical spaces in formal education to engage in social-justice topics.

Educators within post-secondary institutions receive input in the form of course evaluations from their students. The aim of receiving student input is to improve the teaching and learning experience for all. There are, however, inherent problems with the current methods of obtaining students' views through course evaluations. In this pilot study, the researchers focused on two problems: universally low response rates of 20% or less of student input in formal course evaluations and the problematic bias associated with anonymous course evaluations. Implementing practices that encourage students to provide course feedback, thus moving away from the term course evaluation was a first step to address these problems. A process was piloted in this study with 16 domestic undergraduate Bachelor of Science students whereby the researchers encouraged reflection, dialogue, and accountability in the new model and compared the differences against the problematic original model of receiving course evaluation input from students. [Articles in this journal were presented at the University of Calgary Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching.]

This article examines the processes of youth engagement in an "invited space" for Canadian secondary school students. The organizers created a participatory citizenship education space in which Canadian students discussed their views and visions and developed their policy position on global citizenship and global citizenship education. The content and process of "The National Youth White Paper on Global Citizenship" (2015) demonstrated that youth have important policy knowledge and understand they live in a globalized world that includes unacceptable inequalities and oppressions. They also understand that, through acts of citizenship, these conditions can be changed. The article discusses how students were engaged in developing public opinion and working in the public sphere while developing the policy paper on the topic of global citizenship.

Developing as a scholar is a critical aspect of graduate school. In this article, we use an autoethnographic approach to explore our experiences in a newly redeveloped interdisciplinary graduate course. The course was designed to emphasize interdisciplinary scholarship and to encourage students' awareness of their own developing epistemological, ontological, and axiological commitments. In this paper, we identify themes that arose from the final class paper, in which the students/researchers reflected on our development as emerging scholars. Through this course we developed an understanding of the value of interdisciplinarity, the cultural embeddedness of knowledge, and our own responsibilities as researchers in relation to social structures of power and marginalization. Our analyses of our experiences suggests that reflections on our own positionality and axiology are important for developing our identities as emerging scholars and that becoming a scholar may be more about the process than an end goal. We conclude with a discussion of how our learning in this course may be relevant for other instructors and emerging scholars.

This paper aims to study the effects that asynchronous and synchronous instructional methods have on student perceptions and attitudes towards online education. We analyze both qualitative and quantitative survey responses from 496 students in three large (greater than 200 enrolled students) first-year calculus classes at the University of Guelph. The survey results show significant differences among the three online instructional formats in students' attitudes toward asking questions, the similarity of each instructional modality to face-to-face delivery, technology issues encountered, students' perceived ability to keep up with course content, how collaborative the course felt, and student preferences for mode of delivery. There were no significant differences reported in relation to time-management skills or communication with instructors. Qualitative analysis of student comments also revealed perceived strengths and weaknesses of each mode of instruction. The results are used to make suggestions for improving student experience in online, post-secondary mathematical teaching.

This paper reflects my journey, as a racialized settler and K-12 practitioner in British Columbia, Canada, towards developing a pedagogical understanding of how to transform the experience of inherited colonial shame among settler children in my classroom. Canada has a shameful history of colonialism, the progressive revelations of which provoke an iterative cycle of shame among many of the children in our schools. This cycle prevents these children from emerging as responsible agents of reconciliation. I examine the hidden pedagogical potential of shame to function as an ethical catalyst for reconciliatory change. I posit that Aristotle's conception of shame (aidos), when paired with Freire's (1970) critical pedagogy, can provide the means to energize my pedagogical efforts to address the shame of settler students and enable them to pursue respectful mutual relationships with Indigenous Peoples in Canada. By fusing the philosophical horizons of Aristotelian shame with Freire's critical pedagogy, I argue that the future for settler children need not appear as a fait accompli, in which the "sins of father" will be visited upon the children of another generation.

Interest in international student identity has grown considerably over the last few years. In the context of international education, the emphasis on identity and the individual student may also be seen as an emerging response to the tendency of discussing international students and their identity-related experiences in homogenising ways. While there is considerable discussion about how international students' sense of self is affected by cultural differences in higher education, a theory of identity is not always in place. The purpose of this paper is to bring together three theoretical perspectives on identity that are designed to account for specific cultural, social, and linguistic influences on identity construction. These perspectives are examined with examples from data-based case studies. This paper identifies the unique affordances of each perspective while also highlighting their mutual role in challenging broad discourses that have unfavourably defined international student identity.

This paper adds to writing to learn research by reporting on empirical and conceptual studies on the subject matter but also by speculating on the learning virtues that writing offers besides its function as an assessment tool, namely that it can provide students with an adequate avenue to reflect on their learning. For this purpose, I reviewed 17 studies spanning a 17-year period (2004-2020) and representing both the L1 and L2 contexts. Reviewed studies examined writing to learn in different disciplines and grade levels across countries, including the US, Canada, Turkey, Norway, Spain etc. Later in this paper, I set out to elaborate on thematic patterns if these existed and identify areas where further research may be warranted. Findings indicated that writing to learn is an effective instructional strategy across different grade-levels and disciplines both in the L1 and L2 teaching and learning contexts. Finally, this paper overviews relevant pedagogical implications and future research directions.

Employing a multiliteracies framework, this paper explores the ways in which literacy pedagogy might respond to the emergent challenges that the new information environment poses. We contextualize literacy as a socially constructed endeavor of meaning-making that ranges across multimodal texts and has implications for identity, society, and political engagement. This paper highlights findings from an in-depth qualitative case study, examining how senior high school students and their teachers contend with the new information environment--including information abundance, misinformation, and disinformation. Drawing on in-class observations, student surveys and interviews, and teacher interviews, we offer a window into the complexities of how students and teachers grapple with information at school and, in the case of students, their personal lives. Finally, we discuss some of the opportunities for future literacy pedagogy. We contend that, in order to be responsive and authentic, literacy pedagogy should seek to address: the changing ways students engage with information; the complexity of ideas of safety and risk; the potential for socially-situated multiliteracies pedagogy; and, finally, the possibilities for future research and development.

As Canadian post-secondary institutions emerge from the pandemic restrictions, they are in a historically unique position to assess how online education has both facilitated and hindered learning, and how the effects might be greater for some. In this study, open-ended comments from the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association 2022 Spring National Survey were analyzed to understand how online and/or hybrid learning both supported equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and presented EDI-related challenges. The findings were that: (a) online and hybrid learning presents challenges of access for students marginalized by "race," class, and location; (b) online and hybrid learning supports EDI by increasing access and flexibility; (c) pedagogy and course design are central to ensuring that online and/or hybrid learning supports EDI; and (d) student experiences and expectations around online learning indicate a need for support and flexibility. These findings highlight some of the promises of online and hybrid learning, but they also bring to light some of the challenges. This paper discusses three challenges, access, pedagogy, and technology, as well as flexibility, and recommendations that might begin to address EDI.

Self-regulated learning (SRL) and culturally responsive teaching (CRT) research, although from different viewpoints, both show instructional practices that enhance student engagement. This study examined the integration of self-regulated learning promoting practices (SRLPPs) and culturally responsive pedagogical practices (CRPPs) in the classroom context especially during a complex task. Using mixed-methods case study design, it explored how an elementary classroom teacher at a multicultural public school in the West Coast of Canada combined SRLPPs and CRPPs to support culturally diverse students' engagement. Data were collected through: (a) classroom observations, (b) practice records and documents, (c) students' work samples, (d) teacher interview, (e) student interviews, and (f) student surveys. Findings indicated that the teacher enacted integrated practices categorized as: (a) "classroom foundational practices"; (b) "designed instructional practices"; and (c) "dynamic support practices." Also, students' engagements related to their perceptions of teacher practices. Culturally diverse students were highly engaged in contexts with rich combinations of SRLPPs and CRPPs. Finally, this paper discussed the implications for theory (e.g., CRT, SRL), practice (e.g., an integrated pedagogy), and research (e.g., how to support culturally diverse learners' engagement in contexts).

Langara College, as one of the leading undergraduate institutions in the province of British Columbia (BC), offers the "Applied Science for Engineering" two-year diploma program as well as the "Engineering Transfer" two-semester certificate program. Three project-based courses are offered as part of the two-year diploma program in Applied Science (APSC) and Computer Science (CPSC) departments: "APSC 1010--Engineering and Technology in Society", "CPSC 1090--Engineering Graphics", and "CPSC 1490--Applications of Microcontrollers", with CPSC 1090 and CPSC 1490 also part of the Engineering Transfer curriculum. Although the goals, scopes, objectives, and evaluation criteria of these courses are different, the main component of all three courses is a group-based technical project. Engineering students have access to Langara College's Makerspace for the hands-on component of their project. Makerspaces expand experiential learning opportunities and allows students to gain a skillset outside the traditional classroom. This paper begins with a detailed review of the maker movement and the impact of makerspace in higher education. Different forms of makerspace and the benefits of incorporating them on first-year students' creativity, sense of community, self-confidence, and entrepreneurial skills are discussed. This paper introduces Langara's engineering program and its project-based design courses. Langara's interdisciplinary makerspace, its goals and objectives, equipment, and some sample projects are introduced in this paper in detail. We then explain how the group-project component of APSC 1010, CPSC 1090, and CPSC 1490 are managed and how using makerspace improves students' performance in such projects. In conclusion, the paper describes the evaluation of learning outcomes via an anonymous student survey.

This paper describes the development of a three-phase approach our team of educational developers finds useful in curriculum projects in our Teaching and Learning Centre. Informed by the literature on the importance of flexibility and iteration (Knight, 2001; Wolf, 2007) and an orientation towards Appreciative Inquiry (Srivastra & Cooperrider, 1990), we contextualize our work in relation to others in the Canadian educational development landscape. Additionally, we highlight the importance of recognizing micro, meso, and macro levels of influence in institutions of higher education (Poole & Simmons, 2013). We describe our Inquire, Imagine, and Innovate, or 3-I, model for curriculum consultation, positioned by fictionalized vignettes demonstrating how each phase is applied. We conclude the paper by indicating where we are continuing to develop this work.

Contemplating my graduate student experience overseas, I constantly viewed myself as an isolate, one who did not belong in the new community of practice. I encountered numerous lingua-cultural, academic and social challenges which led to my lack of community and belonging. This paper is a reflection of my experiences as an international graduate student in a Canadian university. Through this reflection, I explore some of my most potent experiences and how these influenced me as I sojourned through the not-so-easy road of study overseas. This paper also describes the processes I used that enabled me to successfully maneuver and negotiate my journey on the not-so easy-road of studying in a post-secondary institution overseas.

In this paper, we critically evaluate the use of a weekly "rapid responses (RR) to learning" process in the context of teaching a graduate course on research methods over a three-year period. The RR process involved use of a short set of open-ended questions about key moments in learning that students complete, in writing, during the last five minutes of each class. The questions asked students to identify salient take-away messages, note when they felt the most and least engaged, name actions taken by anyone that were affirming or confusing, and consider specific "aha" moments. Our specific aim was to assess the following questions: What was the pedagogic value of the RR process? How did it inform our teaching and to what extent were there direct benefits of the process for students as well as for us as teachers? We found that the systematic feedback we obtained in this way supported weekly monitoring of student learning, facilitated response to trouble spots, and assisted in assessment of student engagement and classroom climate. It also provided insight into the efficacy of pedagogic strategies, such as student engagement in metacognitive learning, and models a process of instructors receiving feedback and being flexible to change. For instructors, the process enhanced motivation and professional development; plus, we found benefits in documenting instructor leadership and development. Finally, it facilitated deeper appreciation of the need to better integrate student self-assessment and the development of metacognitive skills as core components of the course.

This study examines pre-service teacher candidates' (TCs) stances and use of translanguaging and multimodality to support K-12 multilingual learners' writing. Data were drawn from a course on supporting multilingual learners in a teacher education program in Ontario. Data sources were responses to the Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Language-Inclusive Teaching (PeCK-LIT) Test, and TCs' unit plans and lesson plans. Analytical codes were derived from the literature on translanguaging: monolingual and translanguaging stance, translanguaging as a scaffold and resource, teacher-directed and student-directed, intentional and spontaneous translanguaging, and supporting monomodality and multimodality. Findings demonstrate the use of translanguaging strategies such as multilingual word walls and online translation tools. However, there were constraints to TCs' stances, such as allowing translanguaging as a temporary scaffold towards English-only instruction and approaching writing as a discrete rather than multimodal skill. The paper recommends ways TCs can be supported in developing a holistic understanding of translanguaging and multimodality.

Introduction: A series of 19 unfunded knowledge transfer hands-on workshops were implemented (2017-2019) and delivered by 22 facilitators from disciplines of nursing, business, communication, plastic arts, engineering, and community studies. The purpose of this paper is to report on the post-appraisal of the workshops' implementation; uncovering the attendees' new ideas and reflections on the content; and the process of expanding knowledge for practice. Methods: The qualitative program evaluation approach, using the standards of utility, feasibility, accuracy, and propriety of a given program, inspired the design of the immediate appraisal of the workshops delivered within a Canadian school of nursing located in a major urban center. Workshop participants (n = 267) included undergraduate and graduate nursing students, contract instructors, and nurses holding administrative positions. Results: Workshops with high attendance included: (a) Structuring Effective Teaching-Learning Encounters in Healthcare Education and Practice; (b) Cancer Pain; (c) Fetal Health Surveillance; and (d) Nurses as Educators in the Clinical Setting. Concerns were raised by the attendees' low attendance to the following workshops: (a) Mindfulness for Students; (b) Horizontal Violence; and (d) Self-Care for Nursing Students: Alleviating Anxiety. Workshops offered opportunities for attendees to reflect on content and process as related to their future incorporation of learned knowledge in their own education and practice. Conclusions: High engagement in hands-on exercises, spontaneous construction of context, and relaxed moments shared by the attendees indicate a promising culture of sharing and receiving knowledge. A culture of collective, pleasurable learning among attendees was effective in mobilizing powerful forms of nursing knowledge.

This paper focuses on eight conditions that kept international master's students (IMS) in a Southern Ontario university happy and engaged in their studies during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the first phase of the Appreciative Inquiry's (AI) 4-D cycle--i.e., discovery--this doctoral study conducted 14 individual interviews and three focus group discussions to identify conditions that made the IMS students happier and more engaged despite pandemic-related challenges. The study is crucial in advancing positive experiences of IMS because existing literature has focused primarily on their challenges and problems. The study's use of AI, a strength-based theoretical and methodological approach, suggests the need to highlight the quality experiences of this minoritized group. Data revealed specific factors that brought about happiness and boosted IMS engagement in their studies, namely: financial and emotional support from family; responsive instructors; employment opportunities during the pandemic; and learning and engaging in extracurricular activities with colleagues and friends. Other conditions also proved crucial to participants' happiness and engagement in their studies, including: professionalism of non-teaching staff; the institution's learning management system and supporting online platforms; virtual access to campus software and other learning resources; and reduced travel time. Study findings aim to inform international student policy and enrich the international student experience literature.

Plurilingual approaches to pre-service teacher education hold promise for critical engagement with linguistic, cultural, and racial diversity in equity-supportive ways. Employing critical action research, we as teacher educators implemented an equity-oriented plurilingual approach across three literacy methods courses for pre-service elementary teachers at one Canadian university. Using case study methods and a poststructuralist theory of identity, this paper examines implications of the equity-oriented plurilingual approach for the evolving teacher identities and beliefs about plurilingual pedagogical possibilities of two pre-service teachers: one Chinese Canadian and one White Canadian. Findings from an analysis of field notes, teacher education artefacts, and interview transcripts demonstrate that pre-service teachers' linguistic and racial backgrounds shaped their learning and identity trajectories vis-à-vis plurilingualism, and that critical personal reflection and practicum experiences were key mediators of participants' orientations towards plurilingual pedagogies. Plurilingualism, in concert with multiliteracies, supported a Chinese Canadian pre-service teacher to develop a resource orientation to her own plurilingualism and racialized identity, while challenging a White English-dominant pre-service teacher to confront power inequities and her English-speaker privilege. Implications centre on the importance of greater critical engagement with systemic issues of race and Anglonormativity and the need for more systematic integration of equity-oriented plurilingual approaches throughout teacher education programs.

Six pre-service teachers participated in a component of narrative inquiry that took place the week before their teacher education program began. The component offered the teachers a variety of multimodal activities, such as body biographies, teaching museums, and paper tearing representations, all making use of repurposed materials, to critically consider their recurring narratives in relation to their recurring pedagogical beliefs and practices. Handmade journals and resolution scrapbooks acted as places to reflect and record their responses (Author). For this paper, I turned to narrative inquiry supported by found poetry and focus on the part of the component that contains the written contents of the teachers' resolution scrapbooks. More specifically, I asked, "What are the effects of the application of the resolution scrapbook on the recurring narratives of six pre-service teachers?"

This paper examines practices of teaching and learning in the era of digitalization. More specifically, it addresses practices of teaching and learning for students with professional experience who work alongside their studies. Based on the assumption that digitalization is a means of allowing more open and flexible pathways for teaching and learning in higher education, the paper focuses on the perspectives and perceptions of both students and teachers in digital supported teaching and learning environments as forms of blended learning. It brings together findings from two qualitative empirical studies: one focused on students' perspectives of their development over the course of their studies; the second addressed teachers' perspectives and their teaching strategies and activities. Based on the findings of these two research studies, the paper outlines future perspectives for teaching and learning and the role of digitalization, with a particular emphasis on programs of lifelong learning at universities.

This paper describes the results of two research projects, which were focused upon female students' historical understanding of feminism. In both cases the researchers found that the student participants harbored ambivalent or negative attitudes towards feminism and saw little connection between the present and feminist struggles in the past. While this attitude could be attributed to a wide range of variables, the authors illustrate that a focus upon the students' form of historical consciousness and theories of agency can explain the tendency to see a "gap" between past and present. This paper concludes with a call for further research into the interaction between historical thinking, historical consciousness, and theories of agency.

How should educators teach about one of the most complex and pressing issues of our times? This paper presents an empirically-grounded framework to help educators understand the opportunities and challenges of engaging youth around the topic of migration, including migration involving refugees. It stresses the importance of inviting youth to dialogue in ways that involve "slowing down, sharing stories, and making connections." The framework emerged from a design-based research study involving an experimental online learning community and curriculum on the topic of human migration. Posts and comments involving 140 teens from seven countries were closely analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach that incorporated constructivist principles. 14 interviews with participating educators also informed the analysis. The framework proposes that youth be supported to develop (1) curiosity and engagement about individual migration stories and migration in general, (2) nuanced understanding of the complex and diverse factors that help shape historical and contemporary migration experiences, and (3) critical awareness of their own and others' perspectives on migration and migrants. A visual representation is provided. Specific examples of student dialogue are unpacked to illustrate the framework, with discussion of the following cognitive and affective challenges: "the Three O's" of overgeneralization, overconfidence, and othering. The paper argues that youth of all backgrounds need opportunities to learn about migration in ways that allow them to leverage their various experiences and perspectives and engage with one another in meaningful, authentic ways.