An objective of the federal government's action plan for official languages is to double the number of high school graduates who have functional knowledge of the second official language. Yet without a clear definition of what constitutes bilingualism, or a consistent approach to assessing language proficiency, how will we know if that goal has…

This article reports on a multi-site global, ethnographic, and mixed methods study on student engagement. Our research has closely examined how engagement and disengagement operate subtly, simultaneously and relationally in the places and spaces where drama is made. Through years of qualitative time in high school classrooms and two different…

Intellectual engagement is an absorbing, creatively energized focus resulting in a deep personal commitment to exploration, investigation, problem-solving and inquiry over a sustained period of time. In this article, the authors argue that participatory learning environments with a focus on knowledge building offer clear learning benefits to…

Are students just "doing school" or are they engaged with their studies? How does a student's level of engagement influence learning, achievement, and teaching? The latest series of What did you do in school today? reports focus on academic outcomes, instructional challenge, and intellectual engagement. The reports reveal there is a suprisingly…

A conversation with a John Howard Society volunteer prompts the author to reflect on how to improve educational opportunities for his incarcerated Aboriginal peers. He relates his personal experience of completing an undergraduate degree while in prison, highlighting the ways in which the prison environment has shaped his learning process. After…

The new mission of schools should be to prepare children to work in jobs that do not exist, to solve problems that are not yet apparent, using technologies that are still to be invented. That means equipping them with the ability to apply and reapply knowledge in inventive ways. Yet today's schools, even schools with excellent "results," fail to…

The author got a bucket of water and a cloth and called her 3-year-old daughter, Gisella, to help her get things done. She had a "goal" in mind for her daughter; she wanted her to learn something simple like how to clean the table. But then she discovered that as Gisella dunked her little hand into the bucket, soapy water spilled over the edge. It…

New teachers require specific and targeted support, as witnessed by alarming rates of attrition in their first years in the profession. Research shows they often struggle to bridge the gap between their university study and effective practice, especially with issues such as assessment, classroom management and diversity. New teachers should have…

Play is important. Environmental educators Sobel and Louv write about the relationship between children and outside play and suggest that early transcendental experiences within nature allow children to develop empathetic orientations towards the natural world. Children who play out-of-doors develop an appreciation for the environment and…

How can students' forgetting be reduced? The spacing effect--a promising strategy from the field of cognitive psychology--might hold some of the answers. Research has demonstrated that information is remembered two to three times better if study sessions are spaced in time rather than massed together. The testing effect is another research-based…

Asking hard questions is just that--hard. But if we are truly committed to teaching for social justice, we need to encourage our children to find as many points of view as they can, and to ask questions we may never be able to answer, knowing that education for citizenship lies in the process of thinking critically about the many sides of a…

Stubborn societal prejudices persist that inhibit this enlargement of gender roles for boys and men. Portrayals of men in popular culture tend to be brutish, ignorant, and violent--often in sexual and predatory ways. Boys in school are subjected to homophobia, racism, classism, and shame, as a means of policing their burgeoning identities and…

The goal of all teaching should be to help students make neural connections--the basis for all learning. To do that, however, the student has to have engagement and cognition around the material to be learned. At its core, dramatic activities, even when they have nothing to do with performance, have a tremendous ability to foster these…

"realfriends" is a social action project created by Grade 12 English students in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Its purpose was to create a face-to-face social network that would help change the school climate into a more social space. Interest in socializing is nothing new for teenagers, but these students articulated a worry that people their age may be…

An emerging group of leaders in Canadian education has attracted thousands of followers. They've made Twitter an extension of their lives, delivering twenty or more tweets a day that can include, for example, links to media articles, research, new ideas from education bloggers, or to their own, or simply a personal thought. At their best,…