With a point of departure in the concept of democracy, this article aims to show how Swedish Popular Adult Education influenced the content of the established school system in Sweden. The Popular Adult Education and established school systems are studied through their relation to democracy, based on curricula, as well as on visionary and political…

This paper addresses ethical issues in educational research with a focus on the interplay between research ethics and both internal and external quality of research. Research ethics is divided into three domains: (1) ethics "within" the research community; (2) ethics concerning relationships with "individuals and groups directly…

The Province of Quebec subsidizes nearly 50% of private education, and at the same time heavily regulates private schools. To date, no studies have been done to determine the effect of the unique nature of competition from K-12 private schools on public school education of the sort found in Quebec. The authors used multiple regression to determine…

This paper explains and illustrates a method of argumentative reconstruction that may be used in the teaching of stories. Without maintaining that argument is superior to narrative or that all narratives should be cast as arguments, I illustrate the benefits of this approach for critical thinking and the discussion that ensues when one seeks to…

According to the Simple View of Reading, reading ability can be divided into decoding and language comprehension. In the present study, decoding and comprehension's contribution to reading ability was studied both in children with reading difficulties and in children with typical reading ability. Decoding and comprehension was further divided…

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…

Educational researchers frequently study the impact of treatments or interventions on educational outcomes. However, when observational or quasiexperimental data are used for such investigations, selection bias can adversely impact researchers' abilities to make causal inferences about treatment effects. One way to deal with selection bias is to…

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…

Quite diverse in their foci and specific themes, the seven articles collected in this special issue are unified by their common conceptual framework. Grounded in the premise that thinking can be usefully defined as self-communicating and that mathematics can thus be viewed as a discourse, the communicational framework provides a unified set of…

One purpose of the present paper is to elaborate 4 general advantages of the mixed methods approach. Another purpose is to propose a 5-phase evaluation design, and to demonstrate its usefulness for mixed methods research. The account is limited to research on groups in need of treatment, i.e., vulnerable groups, and the advantages of mixed methods…

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)…

There is a widespread idea that in grounded theory (GT) research, the researcher has to delay the literature review until the end of the analysis to avoid contamination--a dictum that might turn educational researchers away from GT. Nevertheless, in this article the author (a) problematizes the dictum of delaying a literature review in classic…

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…