This article makes a contribution to the field of French immersion studies by examining the engagement realities of two groups of students in an Ottawa French immersion high school program: those with and without a parent who makes them eligible for minority French language instruction as outlined by Section 23 of the "Canadian Charter of…

In this study, I investigate how French immersion students in two junior high schools in Alberta see themselves in Canadian society. The data come from three years of ethnographic research that included classroom observations and 94 interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and parents. This study shows how French immersion students do…

In this article, I report a qualitative study that sheds light on how adult learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) are constructing new national identities in the context of the challenges associated with immigration. In particular, I trace how the common threads among their conceptions of citizenship compare with those embedded within…

Certainly in the past and even in the present day, the term "research" for Indigenous people has been fraught with strong, negative, emotional associations; however, despite the many remaining challenges there is a shifting within the landscape of academia to recognize that research on Indigenous issues must cultivate respectful and…

There is a crisis relevant to the publicly funded education of Aboriginal students in Ontario. This article, which presents the details of the crisis, analyzes recent policy statements released by the Ontario Ministry of Education designed to address that crisis. By defining the nature of this critical juncture, presenting how these policies may…

In this two-year ethnographic study, I critically examined the problematic nature of the construct French as a Second Language (FSL), drawing specifically from the lived experiences of Canadian youth of Italian origin, participating in a teacher education course to prepare teachers of French. Using discourse analysis of interviews, observations,…

In this article, I draw on an ethnographic case study of one Toronto elementary school, as part of a Canada-wide action research project: Multiliteracy Project (www.multiliteracies.ca). I have explored how Perminder, a grade-4 teacher, developed a multiliteracies pedagogy, drawing on her own and her students' identities and linguistic and cultural…

Because of the global status of the English language, and the cultural and linguistic qualities of English literature, English teachers are at the fulcrum of educational debate. As global curriculum expands and refocuses the challenges and possibilities of multicultural education, teachers, schools, and communities are challenged to reexamine the…

This study used qualitative research methods to investigate the experiences of students who returned to senior high school for a fourth year in order to graduate. By drawing on student voices, this collaborative research partnership with students revealed that a fourth year of high school led to stigmatization and alienation of students and often…

In this study, we have investigated, through interviews, conversations, questionnaires, and observations, perceptions of learning success of northern Qikiqtani (Baffin Island) of Nunavut Inuit middle years (grades 5-8) students and the classroom pedagogy influencing their success, in particular their learning in science. Most of the processes…

In this article, we invite readers into a conversation about ways of being in teaching. Through e-mails, telephone calls, and face-to-face meetings, we use our first conversations with each other as shared moments that we returned to, seeking to better understand how we made meaning in our individual school teaching careers, and how we continue to…

In this study, we examined the perceptions of Ontario elementary (primary K-3 and junior 4-6) literacy coaches to determine their roles, beliefs, and practices. We interviewed thirteen literacy coaches working in one Ontario school board about their literacy coaching. All coaches interviewed were teachers with specialized experience working in a…

Teachers' understanding of the elementary school mathematics curriculum forms part, but not all, of the newly emerged field of mathematics for teaching, a term that describes the specialised mathematics knowledge of teachers. Pre-service teachers from a one-year teacher preparation program were studied in each of three years, using a…

As the number of Allophone students attending public schools in Canada continues to increase (Statistics Canada, 2008), it is clear that a need exists in English-dominant areas to purposefully address the integration of these students into core French. I report the findings of a mixed-method study that was conducted to assess and compare the…

The contemporary university has grown to be a fairly complex institution sustained by many competing interests, not all of which are directly concerned with promoting the work of study, broadly conceived. My concern in the following is with the quality of the subjective experience of studying that universities are still meant to provide. By…