Education

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Open Access
Rebellious Creative Making: A Meme-Making Studio Pedagogy
(2025-04-10) Han, Yaqing; Brushwood Rose, Chloë
Rebellious Creative Making: A Meme-Making Studio Pedagogy explores the potential for meme-making to function as a heightened form of studio pedagogy in design education. It investigates how meme-making can effectively critique and challenge conventional design methods, inspiring students to be bold and take risks by considering non-conventional design processes and outputs. This dissertation begins with a brief introduction to the contemporary social and political impact of memes, linking them to art and design history to speculate on their potential in creative making. It then details a meme-themed workshop that was conducted to directly observe participants’ meme-making processes. Participants’ meme work, presentations, and interviews were closely analyzed to achieve an understanding of how their learning through meme-making differed from their previous experiences in design school. Participants’ meme works reflected a variety of design styles and topics pertaining to political, social, and personal issues. These works and the participants’ own responses suggest that the workshop functioned as a stress-free design-making process in which makers felt sufficiently relaxed to comfortably explore their desired topics and styles. As participants expressed themselves and their viewpoints through meme-making, they also felt healed from both their negative thoughts and experiences in life and, more specifically, their previous oppressed experiences with design education. The results of the meme workshop provide valuable insight into current issues of studio pedagogy in commercialized education institutions; these insights give way to potential improvements aimed at valuing the benefits of creative education beyond its practical purposes in pursuit of self-growth among learners.
Open Access
Black Girls Need Love Too: An intersectional analysis of the lived experiences of Black girls in French Immersion Programs
(2025-04-10) Brissett-Foster, Shayna Sherise; Prasad, Gail
Black girls in the French immersion program are silent scholars. They continue to remain under the radar, significantly under-researched and hidden behind the generalization of Black students without considerations for the intersectionality of race and gender. Using the narratives of four Black girls through semi-structured interviews, this thesis addresses this gap by exploring the lived experiences of four Black girls in Southern Ontario’s French immersion programs. By thematically analyzing their experiences using Black Canadian feminism, raciolinguistics, and intersectionality, we can critically assess their experiences and provide strategies to counter colonial institutions and policies. The findings reveal insights into their identities, sense of belonging, representation, and treatment, and how these themes impact their educational experiences. The experiences of these Black girls highlight several key areas for improvement and offer opportunities to enhance educational experiences for Black girls by informing more equitable policies and practices in the French immersion program.
Open Access
Love as a Remedy to the Malaise of the Soul in Modernity
(2025-04-10) Berezowski, Madelyn Helena; Di Paolantonio, Mario
The purpose of this thesis project is to both diagnose the current malaise of the soul, and offer a potential remedy to this malaise. By attending to Hannah Arendt’s notion of “worldlessness” drawn from her book The Human Condition, I will argue that the condition of worldlessness and subsequent feelings of loneliness result in a “malaise of the soul”. The remedy to this malaise may be found, I will argue, in the proper type of love. When viewed within the canon of literature on philosophy of education, this project addresses a significant lack of philosophical depth when considering love as central to education and pedagogies of love. While numerous scholars have argued for the importance of love in education, these works fall short in offering a complete philosophical understanding of love itself. This project draws on ancient philosophy, specifically Socrates’ arguments as presented by Plato in Phaedrus and Symposium, to address this lacuna. By bringing a robust understanding of love to Arendt’s work, it aims to offer love as a remedy to the current malaise of the soul.
Open Access
BIINDGOOSHNAME SHKODE TEMGOOG (We Are Coming to Where the Fire is) Orienting a Secular School to Humanity's Original Instructions
(2025-04-10) Anderson, Douglas Mark; Alsop, Steve
This dissertation is an account of my journey as an Indigenous educator, woven with teachers into a web of Gikendassowin (Indigenous Knowledge). Together we move through the veils cast over such Knowledge arising from a pervasive civilizational mentality, finding hope for transcending these veils in the children we work with, who inspire a potential pedagogy in which non-indigenous educators might work ethically with Indigenous people and Knowledge in a Covenant with all Creation. My story emerges from a traumatic subjection of Gikendaassowin to modern learning systems, which generally only ‘include’ it superficially. Introducing Gikendassowin in schools holds great potential, but also risks re-colonizing Indigenous cultures. I see this risk arising from a reduction of Gikendassowin -which has a spiritual origin- to humanist terms. My research looks at how a non-indigenous school is affected by Indigenous spiritual influences. The conceptual framework rests on Gikendaasowin, alongside what has been called “perennial philosophy”, which explains shared principles of diverse spiritual traditions, and might support the introduction of Gikendaassowin on its own terms into non-indigenous, multicultural schools. My method involves three ‘dimensions’: my story (inner world), spun with teachers and all beings in our place (external world), both woven into a third, spiritual ‘dimension’, which includes principles in my conceptual framework along with manifestations of Anishinaabe spirituality -a Bundle of objects used in ceremony and other influences that have appeared in the school through Indigenous guests. The spiritual ‘dimension’ is the hub of this research. We follow my story with teachers into the Gikendaasowin flowing around us, aiming at the central, spiritual ‘dimension.’ We explore how we might orient learning to spiritual principles and meet Gikendaasowin in a secular school while supporting Indigenous resurgence (rather than only benefitting from superficial access to Indigenous cultures). The emergent web of Knowledge indicates how educators might ethically help lead diverse children to the original, spiritual instructions for all humans, represented in universal sacred symbols of Fire and the Heart, while deepening reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities and Gikendaasowin. Recommendations for teacher education, practice and further research are made on this basis.
Open Access
Lady Game Club: The Popular Feminist Politics of Women-in-Games Organizations
(2024-11-07) Fisher, Stephanie Judith; Coulter, Natalie
‘Feminism in games’ is a large, dispersed, and networked movement that is happening in online and offline spaces. This research seeks to illuminate how inequities can be reproduced within a feminist community through a close examination of Lady Game Club (LGC), a non-profit organization that teaches women how to make digital games. Drawing on the feminist theories of ‘platform feminism’ (Singh, 2021) and ‘popular feminism’ (Banet-Weiser, 2018), I theorize LGC as a platform for popular feminism in games. This study employs community-engaged ethnographic methods, specifically participant-observation and interviews, to analyse the feminist logics that are built into the structure of LGC and practiced by the women game-makers who are a part of this community. By examining the feminist politics of LGC, this study demonstrates the limits of popular feminism in creating an inclusive and equitable games industry and challenging systems of oppression. LGC takes a direct representation approach to feminist activism. It is designed to get more (white and middle-class) women into the games industry, but not to change it. As a platform, LGC elevates and amplifies popular feminism’s normative modes of feminist resistance (i.e., ‘women’s individual empowerment’) while obscuring other forms of feminist resistance, such and those based in survival, care, and refusal. The organization structures feminist politics as an individual politics rather than a collective one, foreclosing the possibility for feminist resistances that are based on collective action or thinking about oppression as systemic or 'built in' (Benjamin, 2019). Although LGC is enmeshed in and reinforces the hegemonic systems of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy, it also creates an opening in the public’s imagination for a more equitable game industry.
Open Access
Teachers' Perspectives and Pedagogical Documentation in Early Years Mathematics: Tensions and Possibilities
(2024-11-07) Bourrie, Heather Dawn; Rapke, Tina
In this dissertation, I endeavour to explore the transformative potential of pedagogical documentation in early years mathematics education with a focus on the implementation challenges and divergent perspectives within the context of the Ontario Kindergarten Program (2016). Pedagogical documentation offers teachers an opportunity to explore the possibilities of children’s theories, while challenging discourses that underscore neoliberalist practices. Pedagogical documentation includes collecting materials (e.g., photos, videos, written transcriptions, etc.) to be revisited and considered by students and educators together, to create pedagogical trajectories that are emergent and responsive. This study examines the perspectives of 12 Ontario Kindergarten teachers regarding pedagogical documentation in their kindergarten math classrooms, revealing tensions and inconsistencies with the literature and practices as outlined in the Ontario Kindergarten Program (2016) document. The teachers convened for ten weeks where video and audio recordings of every meeting were kept. Teachers examined two specific examples of pedagogical documentation of learning events. ‘The Price of Apples’ documentation portrayed three children engaged in a learning event about selling apples (Appendix A). ‘The Columns of the Municipal Theatre’ documentation portrayed a class visiting the columns outside a municipal building in their town (Appendix C). Through phenomenography-inspired analysis, the data demonstrated how the participants thought about pedagogical documentation as a way to collect evidence of student ideas. Interestingly, an analysis of high-frequency words uncovered key terms such as ‘centres’, ‘grades’, and ‘values’ that stand out in contrast to existing literature on pedagogical documentation. The results of this study indicate that participants used pedagogical documentation to capture evidence of student ideas, however, they did not speak of pedagogical documentation as a “way of being” with children, as a practice that nourishes emergent curriculum making, or as a method to build upon students’ mathematical ideas. This research not only exposes the tensions and inconsistencies in the use of pedagogical documentation within the Ontario Kindergarten program, but also contributes to the discourse by highlighting nuanced perspectives of the participants. In turn this paves the way for a more comprehensive understanding of the transformative potential of pedagogical documentation in early years mathematics education.
Open Access
The Ontario Language, Social Studies, and Environmental Curriculum and Perceptions of the Relationship Between Human and Nonhuman Animals: A Collaborative Action Research Study
(2024-11-07) Racco, Alyssa; Schecter, Sandra R.
This dissertation investigates the dynamics of human-animal relationships within Ontario’s language, social studies, and environmental curricula. Using a qualitative approach, this collaborative action research (CAR) case study involves interviews with students and teachers who recount personal experiences with animals, inside and outside of the classroom, comment on pedagogy related to the treatment of animals, and attempt to create animal-centred lessons. Drawing from my background as an educator and animal enthusiast, this analysis is informed by a critical discourse analysis of both policy documents and case study interview data. The primary objective of the research was to identify effective pedagogical strategies that promote an intrinsic appreciation for nonhuman life. To support my research agenda, I use two primary conceptual frameworks—critical animal studies (Matsuoka & Sorenson, 2018; Nibert, 2014; Nocella, 2011; Taylor & Twine, 2014) and an engaged policy and practices perspective (Davis, 2014; Davis & Phyak, 2017; Ricento & Hornberger, 1996; Schecter et al., 2014)—and critical discourse analysis as an analytic tool. The findings reveal differing degrees of consciousness and moral responsibility towards animal welfare and highlight the need to revise educational policies and approaches. Citizenship education is identified as a portal through which the development of a higher moral consciousness with regard to the appreciation of nonhuman animals can be fostered. As well, policy revisions should be implemented within the Ontario curriculum and teacher training programs to ensure that educators possess the knowledge and skills to effectively teach the importance of nonhuman animal life.
Open Access
Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA): A Transformative Mixed Methods Analysis of Experiences and Perspectives from Autistic People, Parents, and ABA Providers
(2024-11-07) Marshall, Nancy Sharon; Parekh, Gillian
The following mixed methods dissertation examines experiences of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) from the perspective of autistic people, parents, and ABA providers in Canada. Using survey and interview analysis, this study explores a growing divide in standpoints regarding ABA as a method of treating and supporting autistic young people. Autistic people across the globe have shared their lived experiences of the ways ABA has caused them harm, and often trauma, due to the rigidly applied reward and punishment strategies that were used to make them appear less autistic and more neurotypical. Yet, ABA remains the most recommended autism intervention in Ontario. To understand this problem more in-depth, the methodology adopts a Critical Autism Studies (CAS) framework, and transformative explanatory sequential mixed methods design, to seek autistic justice. The four-staged methodology (surveys – interviews – analysis – participatory dissemination with co-authorship of policy and practice directions with autistic participants) responds to Damian Milton’s (2014) call for “interactional expertise” between non-autistic researchers and autistic people to improve autism practice and policies through a strength-based understanding of autism. Eight participants with either positive or negative experiences with ABA (4 autistic people, 2 parents, and 2 ABA providers) were purposively sampled for interviews from a total of 100 survey respondents. Using a mix of quantitative analyses followed by open text box responses and eight “Stories Behind the Statistics”, the research aimed to explore the questions: What are the impacts of ABA services on autistic people’s well-being and quality of life (QoL)? Are ABA services meeting the needs of autistic people? As the research progressed, two new research questions emerged: In what ways do power and stigma influence experiences with ABA interventions? How can diverse autistic expertise transform autism intervention practices and policy? Findings did not reveal compelling evidence that ABA is an approach that improves the quality of life or wellbeing of autistic people. While some respondents shared positive experiences of ABA, findings revealed evidence of harm, which raises ethical concerns about the services received by autistic people in capitalist colonial societies. The dissertation concludes with recommendations co-authored with four autistic recipients of ABA.
Open Access
Discourses of Intercultural Understanding in Ontario French as a Second Language Curricula
(2024-11-07) Lofthouse, Tessa Marie; Dlamini, Nombuso
This study examines the discursive underpinnings of the 2013/2014 Ontario French as a Second Language (FSL) curriculum and associated documents. The primary aim of the study was to understand the orientation of the curriculum text to culture through the lens of an anti-racist and anti-colonial critical framework. This study employed critical discourse analysis that balanced structural and poststructural approaches to analysis to examine the sociopolitical and historical contexts of the documents, the material construction of discourses, and the ordering of discourses. The key findings of the study include the tendency of the FSL documents to perpetuate myths that glorify Canadian nationalism, reinforce established racial hierarchies that treat Indigenous nations as inferior to Francophones, encourage cultural generalizations and tokenism, and sanitize the violence of settler-colonialism. These findings suggest the importance for educators to engage with critical stances like culturally sustaining pedagogies to critique and question dominant power structures in FSL programming.
Open Access
Breaking the Silence: The Process of Becoming Black in Schooling Through the Narratives of Expelled Black Males
(2024-11-07) Sandhu, Shameen; Norquay, Naomi
This study examined the nuanced process of becoming Black through the narratives of fifteen adult Black males, aged 23-29, who experienced expulsions from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). Employing Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the concepts of whiteness as property, the study revealed how schooling perpetuates anti-Blackness, leading to systemic barriers and exclusions akin to prison-like environments. School expulsions echo themes of limited agency, voice, and segregation. Reviewing TDSB expulsion policies and participant narratives revealed pervasive anti-Blackness and systemic barriers aggravating school exclusions. Classroom exclusions often began early, with data showing how ongoing disengagement and segregation led to absolute exclusion from schooling, with impacts resonating into adulthood. Affirmations of Blackness often occurred only post-schooling for the participants. Despite adversity of having experienced an expulsion, the participants' narratives also revealed moments of vibrancy and positive interactions, highlighting the richness of their lives beyond expulsion. Their stories compel education to intentionally address how staff actions and implementation of exclusion policy and procedures support the continual processes of anti-Blackness strengthening systemic anti-Black racism. This study calls to establish approaches that dismantle the privilege of whiteness in staff exclusionary actions towards Black students. Focusing on an anti-Black racism approach and Black Gaze approach in educational discourse, that includes staff learnings from Black student and parent voices, is immediately needed when reviewing, writing, and putting expulsion policies and procedures into action. Fostering collaborations with Black communities, and enhancing support services for expelled Black, particularly male, students is urgent. Refocusing narratives to celebrate Black brilliance that transcend anti-Black biases and stereotypes would result in more inclusive environments where all iterations of Blackness are embraced. Transformative shifts in educational practices are necessary to counter whiteness, eliminate systemic anti-Black biases, dismantle white hegemony, and amplify the voices of Black students. This ensures that all Black students, particularly Black males, can affirm their Blackness in school, rather than staff practices perpetuating processes of continually becoming Black through the lens of anti-Blackness.
Open Access
Organizing remembrance: Publicness, commemoration, and counter-archival practices at the Toronto Homeless Memorial
(2024-11-07) Martin, Timothy John; Di Paolantonio, Mario
This project responds to the related problematic of neoliberal dehousing and the decline of the public realm. As citizens, our capacity for action and speech is curtailed by neoliberal rationality and the loss of public sites of/for educational exchange. Meanwhile, the commodification of housing and gutting of social assistance has created crisis levels of people living without housing in Canada. These are joint concerns as 1) neoliberal rationality has cemented the idea of the citizen as self-sufficient consumer, rather than collectively responsible political actor, and 2) the phenomenon of dehousing is an attempt to remove from public discourse (and public space) the very citizens subjected to the violence of neoliberal policies. In addition, the very existence of a public realm for citizens to appear in together is being traded for sites of economic consumption and social conformity. This dissertation takes as its point of departure an event known as the Toronto Homeless Memorial. For almost 25 years, the Toronto Homeless Memorial has cultivated an environment that invites the public expression of grief for those who have died without housing. The monthly memorial event declares that this is not okay and demands that citizens act together to contest the ongoing violence of preventable death. Drawing on public pedagogy scholarship, political theory, and memory studies, this project asks, how does commemoration generate and reinvigorate the public realm? The account of the Toronto Homeless Memorial here is compiled through an analysis of comprehensive archival data, testimonies from past and present memorial volunteers, and ethnographic observation at the monthly memorial event. It is an attempt to map the historical context, conceptual vocabulary, and pedagogical practices of the Toronto Homeless Memorial. By doing so, this project offers insight into the relationship between commemorative pedagogy and “publicness,” the role of the archive in the public pedagogy of housing activists, and the aesthetic practices used to cultivate wonder, care, and action amidst conditions of trauma, mass privatization, and media spectacle in neoliberal times.
Open Access
Professional Learning for Educators: Enhancing Practice and Parent-Teacher Relationships in Early Childhood Programs in the Cayman Islands
(2024-10-28) Williams, Nicola Sian; Mishra Tarc, Aparna
Many countries around the world including the Cayman Islands are drawing upon the principles of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) to develop curriculum frameworks for early childhood programs in response to the convergence of multidisciplinary research indicating the importance of high-quality care and learning experiences in the early years. This study investigated how teachers and parents in the Cayman Islands are responding to the Cayman Islands Early Years Curriculum Framework. Specifically, this mixed methods study investigated the effectiveness of a three-month long multi-dimensional professional learning (PL) intervention designed to: 1) enhance teacher and parent understandings of DAP, and 2) empower and support teachers in the design and implementation of two Early Childhood (EC) Parent Open Houses to discuss and share DAP with parents. Four preschools were randomly assigned to either the PL intervention or comparison groups. Prior to the PL intervention, surveys were used to understand parent and teacher views of DAP and parent-teacher relationships (PTRs) finding that teachers and parents have similar views of DAP and that while both parents and teachers rated their PTRs very favorably, parent ratings were significantly higher. Pre-intervention focus groups with PL teachers revealed three themes: dichotomies and uncertainties; more communication needed and barriers to PTRs. The quantitative data analysis found that PL teachers had more positive views of DAP and PTRs after the intervention, a change not found for the comparison teachers. Both the qualitative and quantitative data analyses provided evidence that the PL intervention enhanced teacher understandings and implementation of DAP; empowered teachers, promoted more collegiality and reflexive practice; and improved teacher views of PTRs. Parent focus groups revealed that parents also had positive views of the EC Parent Open Houses. This study can inform ECCE policy and practice in the Cayman Islands.
Open Access
Sculpting in Time. Between Meaning and Information
(2024-07-18) Ivanova, Veronika Mikhailovskaya; Mishra Tarc, Aparna
Employing an auto-ethnographic perspective and non-linear notions of time, "Sculpting in Time" identifies erosions of meaning and agency under techno-capitalism and explores the implications of their disappearance for the democratic ideal. The theoretical framework of this research-creation dissertation problematizes linear conception of time and posits that the rethinking of time can be emancipatory; when time is seen instead as the unfolding of relations, with others and with oneself, sensitivities can be honed toward other ways of embodying the present and conceptualizing notions of progress.
Open Access
Monologues from the margins: Voices and experiences of racially minoritized French immersion students
(2024-07-18) Kunnas, Rachel Marika; Prasad, Gail
This doctoral study investigated race and racism in French immersion (FI) programs in Ontario and Canada. Much research in the field of FI prioritizes efficacy of language learning and the studies that do consider equity speak to English language learners, immigrants, socioeconomic status, and special education needs. Meanwhile, racial identity is frequently overlooked entirely or simply not researched, despite long-standing evidence FI is dominated by White people. Despite the racial diversity of the French-speaking world, race has only recently started to be considered in FI. This study investigates racially minoritized students’ experiences in FI to find ways to improve their experiences. This exploratory sequential mixed method study aimed to better understand how racially minoritized students experience FI. Stage 1 engaged racially minoritized FI student participants (n=3) in modified Playbuilding (Norris, 2016) to create autoethnographic counter-stories and monologues about their experiences in FI. Participants in Stage 1 also created a list of suggestions and needs to improve FI. Stage 2 of the study employed a qualitative and quantitative online questionnaire. FI Stakeholders across Ontario and Canada (n=39) read and watched the stories and monologues, then reacted to them via the online questionnaire. Stakeholders rated and expanded on the suggestions from Stage 1. Stage 3 included one follow-up interview with a participant from Stage 1. Thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, content analysis, and descriptive statistics revealed three major findings: 1) there was very little cultural learning—let alone racially and culturally diverse learning— in FI; 2) participants experienced racism in FI and FI teachers and administrators needed to address antiracism; 3) participants in Stage 1 were more concerned about improving their French proficiency than addressing racism. Disturbingly, some participants accepted racism as a foregone conclusion, but could not accept that their French had not improved in years. Findings reveal that there is a pressing need for diverse, culturally responsive and sustaining intercultural teaching in FI as well as training on anticolonial and antiracist pedagogy for teachers. Given the small participant size, this study serves as a launching point for future research into diverse intercultural teaching and learning, and antiracism in FI.
Open Access
Rooted and Rising: A Pedagogical Narrative Inquiry into Re-Storying Education in the Era of Climate Change
(2024-07-18) Cohen, Roxanne Wendy Silverstein; Alsop, Steve
As my relationship with global climate change grows deeper, I find myself increasingly intrigued by how this era compels a fundamental re-storying of education. In pursuit of this inquiry, I co-created Rooted and Rising – a pedagogical experiment in supportive education with and for youth climate leaders – and took up research within and alongside it. Through this dissertation, I sought to better understand the foundational narratives of this experiment, and what they might offer into the re-storying of education at this very pivotal time in global history. I collected data through a Pedagogical Narrative Inquiry, which explores the storied experiences of students and educators in Rooted and Rising (R+R), including my own, using interviews, document analysis, field notes, and personal reflections. My inquiry contributes to re-storying and re-structuring education as prefigurative, understood as the deliberate and experimental implementation of desired futures in the here and now. I offer three sets of significant narratives towards this re-storying: Interconnecting and the opening practices of valuing, attending, and sustaining interconnecting; Social Action narratives including processual narratives of improvisation and tinkering, social narratives of collaboration, and planetary healing narratives that both framed and emerged in the experiment; and Desired Futures, reflecting with R+R’s pedagogical invitations into play, desire, and agency with futures, and the aesthetics, temporalities, and well beings students’ expressed desire for across three activities. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Open Access
In Their Own Words: The Voices of Disabled First-Person Protagonists in Children's and Young Adult Literature
(2024-07-18) Richmond, Aaron John; Parekh, Gillian
Located in the field of education, my dissertation examines the representations of disability in 12 popular children’s and young adult novels that are commonly being taught in Ontario schools. Throughout my study, I have used autocritical disability studies, autoethnography, and critical inquiry-based research methods to answer the central research questions of my dissertation within a critical disability studies informed social constructivist theoretical frame. 1. How are disabled first-person protagonists depicted in the contemporary realistic children’s and young adult literature that is being taught in grades 7 through 12 in Ontario schools? 2. How can “asset-based pedagogies” (Waitoller & King Thorius, 2023, p. xv) be used by teachers in the language arts classroom to teach disability-themed children’s and young adult literature in a disability “culturally authentic” (Brown, 2020, p. 141) manner? Based on Bates’ (2017) survey of the texts being taught in grades 7-12 in Ontario schools, I initially located 39 disability-themed children’s and young adult novels which I reduced to the 12 texts containing 12 disabled first-person protagonists that I have analysed in this study, using a comprehensive inclusion and exclusion criteria. I thereafter applied criteria informed by critical disability studies, education, and English literature scholars to critique disability representation in cultural texts. By deconstructing the portrayals of disability in 12 popular novels through a critical disability studies lens, I have exposed the systemic ableism that is present in many of the stories containing disabled characters which negatively impacts students’ beliefs about disability and disabled people. In response to my second research question, I have developed a new application regarding culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy (CRRP) by demonstrating how CRRP can be used to teach disability-themed literature in a culturally affirming manner in the language arts classroom by using the middle-grade novel A Kind of Spark (McNicoll, 2020) as an illustration. My thesis concludes by making recommendations for teacher preparation programs and in-service teachers for future research in literary disability studies, and disability studies in education regarding the selection, analysis, and teaching of disability-themed children’s and young adult literature.
Open Access
Accessing Privilege: Teachers’ Experiences in Elite Private Schools
(2024-07-18) De Santis, Stephanie Amelia; Barrett, Sarah
Schools serve as a site of investigation for social reproduction, often with a lens on marginalized communities to elucidate how inequity and class disparities are actualized. Comparatively, there has been less access to private schools for researchers, and therefore, fewer studies that focus on the role of upper-class communities in maintaining these structures. This study explores the elite private school environment to come to an awareness of how privileged self-understandings are created in these institutions via educators’ perspectives. Privileged dispositions can be a barrier to building an equitable world as they are oriented toward self-fulfillment, often with little regard for one’s impact on others. Focusing on the experiences of teachers broadens existing research and creates space to think about the implicit and explicit ways educators relate to privilege for the purpose of critical reflection and change. Two questions frame this endeavour: How do teachers working in elite private schools perceive and negotiate privilege in various spaces? Secondly, how might teachers’ experiences engender privilege or how might they challenge it in their everyday practices? This study explored these questions through a series of three in-depth interviews with eight middle and secondary educators in southern Ontario with varying degrees of experience in elite private schools. Using an iterative, thematic, and intersectional approach to data analysis, this study arrives at patterns of how privileged self-conceptions are formed, reinforced, and areas in which there are attempts to challenge them. Ultimately, this study finds that despite teachers’ attempts to confront privilege, they take part in reinforcing privileged self-understandings of their students. Educators feel they can teach about the topic but are limited in the extent they can challenge the privilege that pertains to students or parents. As well, teachers adopt their own privileged self-understanding and perpetuate exclusion based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and linguistic differences. These factors shape how they conceive of their responsibility and work as teachers in relation to students and colleagues. In making these distinctions, it becomes clearer what hidden discourses shape teachers’ experiences, who is most implicated by these narratives, and the power dynamics that exist in elite spaces.
Open Access
Productive Struggle in Developmental Mathematics
(2024-03-16) Cheung, Matthew; Rapke, Tina
This dissertation highlights the potential of productive struggle in addressing the issues of teaching and learning in developmental mathematics. This research presents a course designed to support productive struggle, empirical findings on students’ experiences and conceptions, and my own experience supporting students’ struggles. The design of the course is oriented towards supporting productive struggle by engaging students with tasks that elicit uncertainty. Instruction was delayed, providing an opportunity to promote self-explanation as students explained and questioned their thinking with a partner. As the course instructor, I asked purposeful questions during students’ engagement with the tasks to show students that struggle is a necessary part of learning. This environment is in stark contrast to skill-and-drill instruction often found in developmental mathematics classrooms. Empirical findings suggest that students experienced and conceptualized struggle and productive struggle in various ways. Significant to the findings was the connection to deep approaches to learning, persevering, positive affective structures, and habits of mind. Through phenomenography, semi-structured interviews were conducted, data was collected, and students’ experiences and conceptions were analyzed. The findings bring focus to the affective nature of learning, a facet infrequently explored in developmental mathematics. More importantly, these findings starkly contrast with students’ reliance on rote memorization often reported in developmental mathematics classrooms. I engaged in the Discipline of Noticing to investigate my experience of supporting productive struggle. The methodology presented in this study acts as a form of professional development that simultaneously produces research for others to test in their own practice. This systematic inquiry into my practice contributes to the underrepresented area of self-based methodologies to understand instructors’ learning in mathematics teacher professional development. Deliberately honing my skill of noticing enhances the choices that can come to mind in my future practice of supporting productive struggle.
Open Access
Policy Making in Times of Crisis: The Case of Immigration and International Students in Canada During the COVID-19 Pandemic
(2024-03-16) Garcia-Sitton, Isaac; Trilokekar, Roopa
This research explores policy making in time of crisis, by examining immigration policy measures introduced in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on international student recruitment and retention in postsecondary education institutions. The study adopts a qualitative research design with policy analysis as a research method, and used elements of Kingdon’s multiple streams approach (MSA) (1984) and Keeler’s macro-window-opening process (MWOP) (1993) to develop its theoretical framework. Data for this study was gathered through published policy documents as well as semi-structured interviews with diverse policy actors, including civil servants, senior leaders in educational institutions, national and provincial associations, immigration consultants and education agents. Findings of this study suggest that the immigration measures introduced by the Canadian government during the pandemic can be classified into four main types: travel regulations, online learning provisions, work-related measures, and immigration policies (including pathways to permanent residency and immigration level plans). In alignment with the theoretical framework, the study finds that the COVID-19 pandemic served as a crisis that, in combination with the government’s pro-immigration policy mandate, helped create a macro-window of opportunity that allowed for major reforms supporting continued international student recruitment and retention, most notably through online learning provisions and work-related policies. Interview participants noted that the government’s approach to policy making evolved over time with a noticeable shift from reactive to proactive strategies, that involved increased consultation and collaboration with relevant stakeholders. The focus of the policy measures also shifted from public health to economic recovery as the immediate threats of the pandemic were contained. The findings identify chaos and uncertainty in the environment, communication gaps, and tensions between federal and provincial government as the main limitations that impacted policy outcomes and their scope of achievement. Moreover, the findings emphasize the key role of policy entrepreneurs, including government actors and national associations, in shaping policy decisions. The research highlights gaps in the existing framework and identifies the need for considering variables such as institutional constrains, net impact assessment, geopolitical factors, and policy alignment, especially when studying policy making in an international context. Findings of this study are particularly relevant to inform high-impact and rapid-response policy changes to support the international education sector in Canada.
Open Access
Eco-Somatic Educational Journey: Physical, Emotional and Planetary Lives of My Body
(2024-03-16) Anilkumar, Prerna; Alsop, Steven John
This study offers itself as an educational journey oriented by ecosomatics and earth democracy. It deepens these ways of knowing by locating them in ways of sensing, feeling, relating, being and living in a brown woman’s somatic body, experiencing her physical, emotional, and earthly entanglements, participating in the alive-ness of her earth family. Through the educational journey, this study carves possibilities and openings of a somatically textured environmental education by revolving around the question of what it means to do this work with the body in relationship with the planet, in this time and place. Bodywork in this study takes the form of exploring the researcher’s three bodily processes of digesting, breathing and menstrual bleeding framed through the physical, emotional, and planetary lives of the gut, breath, and menstrual blood. These explorations shed light on the various physiological and ancestral somatic entanglements, the enmeshed medicines of various emotions and the intertwined planetary kin relationships held within the gut, breath and menstrual blood. This study finds that all of these corporeal entanglements make and shape the living ways of digestion, breathing and bleeding which throb, simmer, swirl and flow in a somatic web of relationships.