In local, diverse learning communities in Ontario, educators may have to look closely at how engagement can be established in meaningful and authentic ways that encourage and foster student agency and democracy. As students are critically engaged and grasp the relevance of their learning within the context of their daily lives, learning in a…

This paper argues that the Trump phenomenon is not an anomaly but rather a predictable stage of the waning of US power. The United States has enjoyed military and economic dominance of the world since the early twentieth century when it gained control of the massive Third World colonial regions of the world. We must regard education as the human…

The author deeply appreciates the four very thoughtful responses to his essay. In reading these responses, the author was struck by the importance of a distinction most of them had noted but not emphasized or developed. As teachers, they seek to construct certain kinds of educational experiences for their students. As people of sexual or gender…

Schools are uniquely placed in democracies. Among other things, they are sites of learning about things democratic, including learning "through" as one (important) way of learning "about." There are other sites in which to learn about and through democracies but schooling's uniqueness is that it is a site through which all must pass. So…

This article explores the practice of social inquiry in professional work, drawing from the democratic ethics of John Dewey. It explains how Dewey viewed inquiry as free, cooperative, and practical and concludes with a description of advisory work within the self-advocacy movement as an example of Deweyan democracy in action. (Contains…

This paper is intended as a broad, conceptual and theoretical treatise on the aims of teaching art in the age of global digital media. To contextualize a set of general recommendations for art education technology pedagogy, I first provide an overview of the meteoric rise of on-line social networks, and consider questions about the nature and…

This article examines the practices of tracking and detracking in the social studies classroom. I argue that the content goals and the pedagogical orientations of social studies classes lend themselves to detracking. First I describe some of the issues regarding tracking and detracking in general. Following that is a discussion of the match…

This article explores the issue of ethical impact of conversation in the classroom, arguing that the experience of critical inquiry conducted through classroom dialog can cultivate precisely those ethical characteristics required of participants in the public life of a deliberative democracy. (SM)

Examines the historical and theoretical foundations of the factory model of education and contrasts it to the more recently developed inquiry model. Argues that the factory model of education is no longer useful since democracy in the twenty-first century requires citizens who are able to think critically and use learning and language flexibly to…