A research panel asked to frame the discussion for a new Teaching Quality Standard in Alberta assumes this task requires a paradigm shift away from the status quo efficiency movement. As a member of the panel, the author provides an analysis of paradigm shifts in education and recounts important lessons to be learned. The author challenges the…

This article presents a model for continuing education that emanated from the author's involvement in the Participatory Action Research (PAR) component of Simon Fraser University's Adult Education for Economic Development (AEED) Project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The project's goal was to develop new centers…

Constructing a policy web of relationships is proposed as a useful way to identify and understand complex relationships between policies and their contexts. In Canada, the province of Ontario's "Character Development Initiative" (CDI) and its relationships to student achievement, citizenship education, and safe schools policies provide an…

The learning ministries in Ontario have made a concerted effort to underscore Aboriginal learners' needs and preferences in publicly-funded and assisted schools and training services throughout the province. Through a trilogy of policy documents, the Ontario Ministry of Education (OME) and the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU)…

This paper is intended for researchers considering using ethnography as a methodology to investigate home literacy experiences of children learning English as a Second Language (ESL). After briefly setting ethnographic study in the context of English language learners' home literacy practices, I identify five opportunities and five potential…

The key event around which this paper is built is the 2010 absolute discharge granted to Eric Tillman, a former (and current) Canadian Football League executive, who pleaded guilty to a sexual assault charge involving a teenage girl in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada (Pruden, 2010). Drawing on critical race theory as applied to pedagogical spaces…

In Canada, Aboriginal postsecondary enrollment and completion rates are significantly lower than those of non-Aboriginal students. This is most evident in studies involving science and mathematics. The investigation of this issue was informed by focus group discussions with eight participants representing a Blackfoot community. Themes emerging in…

The importance of critical reflection in higher education highlights the importance of creating rich learning opportunities for students. Expressive arts (e.g., poetry, drama) ignites such opportunity drawing from more than students' logical-cognitive understandings to include students' creative, multi-modal and experiential capacities. This paper…

Teachers are frequently involved in developing and evaluating treatments for problematic behaviors. Along with other members of the interdisciplinary team, they must determine the level of intrusiveness that a treatment may have on a student. Several factors that influence the intrusiveness of treatment procedures are described. These factors were…

In order to become effective teachers of language and literacy, it is critical for teacher candidates to have a sense of who they are as literate beings, how their literacy pasts have been lived, and how this might have an influence on the students in their classrooms. As teacher educators, we should not allow teacher candidates to rest simply…

Teacher education is critical to the development of Aboriginal teachers able to ensure success among Aboriginal learners and contribute to the preservation and renewal of Aboriginal communities. In a series of talking circles, six beginning Aboriginal teachers discussed their teacher preparation and their first years of practice. They expressed…

Global education is concerned with social justice and student empowerment. However, an understanding of the word global as merely international and/or intercultural may fail to challenge existing mechanistic and compartmentalized views of knowledge and curriculum. Such a global education limits students' agency and reproduces the very systems it…

Authority is an uncomfortable subject for early childhood educators. This article outlines some tensions between the theory and practice of an early childhood educator's authority and the implications of these tensions for educators themselves and the social changes they envisage. Drawing on a range of feminist educational philosophers and…

This article describes the beliefs and practices of three literacy teacher educators at one site of a longitudinal multisite case study of teacher education and literacy teaching that describes teacher candidates' experiences in literacy courses and their first two years of literacy teaching. One instructor held a social constructivist perspective…

The historical and actual marginalizations of African thought systems and knowledge constructions have been expansively responsible for the effectiveness of the dominant educational and governance systems imposed on Africa. The idea as well as the practice of these realities would conform to what Said (1993), Fanon (1967, 1968), and Memmi (1991)…