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Outdoor education and sport sociology researchers have associated participation in outdoor recreation with physical and mental health wellbeing, reduced anxiety, increased social participation, and increased cultural exchange. The outdoor environment can benefit both the recruitment and wellbeing of students, yet international student expectations and experiences of Canadian outdoor recreation remain largely unexplored in research. An understanding of international student expectations and experiences is important, as unmet expectations and negative initial experiences can lead to poor student integration and attrition. This paper draws on interdisciplinary fields to investigate the unique benefits of outdoor recreation in facilitating international student transitions to new study environments. Drawing on their findings, the researchers offer recommendations to universities to promote, adapt, and enhance the use of outdoor recreation to support international students on their campuses.

Teaching young students requires more than just learning about child development -- it requires understanding children and their experiences. Teacher educators have seen a lack of such authentic understanding among future and current early childhood educators. The authors set out to change that in a bachelor of education degree program in northern Ontario, Canada. After co-teaching the first offering of a six-week elective course premised on an asset-oriented view of young children as capable learners, the authors found ourselves deep in conversation about teacher candidates' understandings of teaching and learning in the early years. The authors noticed teacher candidates naming shifts in their personal and professional thinking as they reflected on and revisited key pedagogical understandings. The inquiry led the authors to uncover four key shifts, which they continue to see each time they teach this course. They find these shifts to be particularly pronounced for those who have little experience with young children and are coming to understand them in new and powerful ways. These shifts offer pedagogical leaders a starting place to encourage educators of all levels and settings to explore their own mindsets about young children. In this article, the authors share key quotes from teacher candidates that explain these shifts, drawing on data collected during a collaborative inquiry with nine teacher candidates (five preparing to work in K-6 and four preparing to work in grades 7-12).

What does it mean to be engaged, especially when it comes to literacy learning? It is this question that drove my doctoral research in 2007 when I became a participant observer in a grade two classroom with the goal of making the everyday visible while sharing a greater understanding of classroom life in relation to engagement. Six years later, I returned to the original school where the grade two students were in grade eight to revisit and expand student understandings of successful engagement in learning. In this paper, I revisit the narratives of Spike, Jasper and Avery (Scheffel, 2012) to consider themes of change and continuity, including ways in which initial success and struggle appeared to influence their journey over time. I also propose a revised Framework for Engagement that draws upon grade eight students' insights.

This paper highlights the two-year journey of an extra-curricular book club for teacher candidates as they explored children's literature in order to further their teaching practice. Initial themes were confirmed and refined as the journey of the book club concluded after two years. A sociocultural theoretical framework guided this work and considered Cambourne's (1988) conditions of learning, specifically immersion in texts, as well as the important role of social contexts in developing shared text meanings. A qualitative methodology, drawing on participatory action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005) and taking a case study approach to sharing the "case" of this collaborative children's literature book club, was used.

This article discusses what constitutes engagement in learning from the perspective of Grade 8 students. While a mixed methods approach was employed to gather quantitative and qualitative data, the focus of this article is the qualitative data collected from an interactive, participatory workshop. As part of this workshop, Grade 8 students were asked to capture moments of engagement by taking digital pictures of spaces, places, items, and activities that represented their engagement in learning. Analysis of the digital pictures revealed themes related to: interest, collaboration, inspiration/motivation, nourishment, enjoyment, discovery, and a future purpose. Each theme is discussed with supporting pictures and quotes to prompt reflection and raise critical questions from the viewpoint of learners.

With increased attention focused on the economic cache afforded through literacy and numeracy skills, governments around the world have turned their attention to developing the expertise of their teachers. Improving teachers' levels of competency leads to improvement in student achievement. In this qualitative case study, we focus on the Educational Foundations Program, in Ontario, Canada, established in part to develop competencies in the area of literacy instruction by addressing teachers' content knowledge. Serious questions about the ways in which the notion of "expertise" is understood and developed arose as the programme was implemented. We examine notions of expertise and the experiences of teachers, administrators and curriculum leaders charged with orchestrating expertise in reading and writing in their respective districts. (Contains 2 notes.)

With increased attention focused on the economic cache afforded through literacy and numeracy skills, governments around the world have turned their attention to developing the expertise of their teachers. Improving teachers' levels of competency leads to improvement in student achievement. In this qualitative case study, we focus on the Educational Foundations Program, in Ontario, Canada, established in part to develop competencies in the area of literacy instruction by addressing teachers' content knowledge. Serious questions about the ways in which the notion of ‘expertise’ is understood and developed arose as the programme was implemented. We examine notions of expertise and the experiences of teachers, administrators and curriculum leaders charged with orchestrating expertise in reading and writing in their respective districts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]