Both school and district administrators use the results of standardized, large-scale tests to inform decisions about the need for, or success of, educational programs and interventions. However, test results at the school level are subject to random fluctuations due to changes in cohort, test items, and other factors outside of the school's…

Despite the potential instructional benefits of integrating devices such as cell phones into schools and classrooms, research reveals that their improper use can negatively impact student behaviour, learning, and well-being. This paper reviews the literature and litigation on cell phone use in schools due to controversies over cheating,…

Among the challenges that many recently-resettled refugee parents face is the possibility that their children may fail academically in their new home country. Ostensibly, in order to decrease this possibility, provincial education ministries offer policy guidance regarding expectations related to parental involvement with school to all parents,…

In this article, an argument is advanced with the intention of establishing the central principles and premises upon which democratic leadership in school contexts are based. These principles are derived from the findings of a study on the professional leadership culture of one school conducted by this author. The initial research was a…

The participants in this study were teachers and students of a large school district located on the east coast of Canada. We distributed surveys to 1,514 teachers across 84 schools and received 1,423 usable surveys for a return rate of 94%. At the time of the second data collection, three years later, 1574 teachers from 78 schools agreed to…

Given the longstanding role of grades in education, and their increased use for high-stakes decisions including student mobility, admission, selection, and accountability, this paper presents a systematic review of grading policies across all 10 Canadian provinces and 3 territories. In total, 23 policies were inductively analyzed for their…

Collaborative inquiry (CI) has emerged as a dominant structure for educators' professional learning in the 21st century. The purpose of this paper is to analyze publicly available documents and policies related to CI in Ontario in order to better understand the documentary scope and spread of this professional learning model in the province. We…

This study presents a pedagogical framework to inform culturally responsive teaching in a Yukon First Nations community. The paper describes the community-based processes used to develop the framework, and presents accounts from teachers who have used the framework to inform their teaching. Preliminary indications of the adjusted teaching…

The role of the school leader (principal) in supporting educational reform is explored through a case study of one high school implementing the Three Block Model of UDL (Katz, 2012a) in an effort to meet the needs of a diverse student population. This case study is a part of a much larger study exploring outcomes for students and teachers of…

School accreditation is one process currently mandated in Nova Scotia schools to facilitate school improvement efforts. This mixed methods study sought to discover and describe the impact of the Nova Scotia School Accreditation Program (NSSAP) specifically on teaching and student learning in three secondary schools in one school board. Surveys,…

The academic performance of many international students admitted to Canadian universities is undermined by the students' English language proficiency. The goal of this study was to improve English language proficiency of post-secondary second-language learners (SLLs) through the use of literacy-based assistive technology. Fifty-four participants…

This article reviews federal language policies and provincial curriculum documents as they relate to Allophones and their access to French as a Second Official Language (FSOL) programs across Canada. Results of a detailed document analysis reveal that policies provide obstacles to access for allophone immigrants to Canada who seek to learn both…

On national and international assessments, students attending French-language schools in Ontario usually perform worse than students attending English-language schools. Interpreting these results is challenging because the French- and English-language schools differ both in prescribed curriculum and in how the curriculum is taught. In addition,…

In recent years, an increase in the number of large-scale assessment programs in Canada has been observed. However, due to the provincial/territorial control of education throughout Canada, the format and purposes of these assessment programs vary. The central purpose of this study was to document the format and explicit purposes of the current…

The Ontario Ministry of Education has made a recent commitment to address the achievement gap between Aboriginal and non-aboriginal students with the release of various policy documents. Yet, there appears to be a disconnect between the policy principles and the standardized means of reconciling these differences in achievement, teacher education,…