Clarity and Insights into Educational Debates

In January 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal released its decision regarding the provision of Child and Family Services to First Nations living on reserves and the Yukon. The Tribunal found that the government of Canada had discriminated against First Nations children on the basis of their race. Many of the arguments made by the government of Canada to describe their actions in the provision of First Nations child and family services can be easily transferred to the provision of First Nations education programs and services to First Nations children throughout Canada. This article has replaced child and family services terms and phrases with education terms and phrases in the decision. Hopefully, the federal government of Canada will see the futility of fighting First Nations in education as they did in child and family services. It is time to provide First Nations students on reserves a comprehensive system of education. Abstract In this paper we conduct a deductive analysis, using Sutton-Smith's “rhetorics of play,” of the published kindergarten programs that have guided Ontario kindergarten teaching since 1944. Our analysis is used to gain an understanding of how we in Ontario have arrived at a point where play-based learning has been taken up by developers of the provincial kindergarten program and approved as a pedagogical focus by politicians. The predominant discourses appear to have changed from a romantic view of play as a natural, child-centered activity, to a discourse of play as progress, with an emphasis on the developmental benefits of play and learning outcomes of play. We believe that the use of the rhetoric of play as progress has been key to the continued prominence of play in Ontario kindergarten programs. It represents ideologies of schooling to which policy-makers seem to be attuned in this era of accountability. Abstract Research has shown that teachers’ beliefs and personal experiences play a significant role in their professional decision-making and practice, including their experiences as school children. This research study examined how the professional learning of Canadian beginning elementary teachers was influenced by their own early learning experiences in school. Six teachers were observed and interviewed in their classrooms 5 times over the first 3 years of their teaching career. Case studies were developed for each teacher and themes were explored across cases. The findings from this study suggest that pre-service and in-service teacher education programs need to provide teachers with opportunities to critically examine how their early learning experiences influence their professional learning experiences and priorities. the project Toys or Tools? Using Open-Ended Tablet Applications for Literacy Learning. development, and literacy Abstract What does it mean to be engaged, especially when it comes to literacy learning? It is this question that drove my doctoral research in 2007 when I became a participant observer in a grade two classroom with the goal of making the everyday visible while sharing a greater understanding of classroom life in relation to engagement. Six years later, I returned to the original school where the grade two students were in grade eight to revisit and expand student understandings of successful engagement in learning. In this paper, I revisit the narratives of Spike, Jasper and Avery (Scheffel, 2012) to consider themes of change and continuity, including ways in which initial success and struggle appeared to influence their journey over time. I also propose a revised Framework for Engagement that draws upon grade eight students' insights. Education Journal, Abstract Teacher candidates’ individual and collaborative inquiry occurs within multiple and layered contexts of learning. The layered contexts support a strong connection between the practicum and the university and the emergent teaching identities. Our understanding of teacher identity is as situated and socially constructed, yet fluid and agentic. This paper explores how agentic teaching identities emerge within the layered contexts of our teacher education program as examined in five narratives of teacher candidates’ experience. These narratives involve tension, inquiry, successes and risks, as teacher candidates negotiate what is means to learn how to teach, to teach and to critically reflect on knowledge needed to teach. We conclude that navigating teacher identity is a teacher candidate capacity that could be explicitly cultivated by teacher education programs.