Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (JCACS)
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Symposium: Emerging Perspectives on the Internationalization of Curriculum Studies
No full textThis symposium is concerned with understanding the forces that shape and influence curriculum in international contexts. The study of curriculum in international contexts reveals the insidious impacts of colonial, ideological and neoliberal influences on contemporary curriculum development in a variety of geo-cultural, political and economic contexts (Kumar, 2019). Four theoretical responses—Indigenous, critical, autobiographical and meditative—that provide thoughtful perspectives to challenge these negative influences will be explored in the symposium. The impact of intellectual movements such as Marxism and postmodernism on curriculum theory in varied political and economic settings will also be underscored. The symposium invites and initiates a complicated conversation around the internationalization of curriculum studies by inviting panelists from posthuman, Indigenous, black feminist, critical discursive and foundational perspectives to respond to the aforementioned colonial, ideological and neoliberal influences on curriculum development
Recycling Stories: Community Art and Deliberative Democracy Opening Spaces for Civic Engagement
Get PDFHow can we create meaningful spaces of engagement for citizens who work in the recycling industry in Brazil who suffer marginalization? What can we learn from the Brazilian experience of opening spaces of engagement? Seeking answers for these questions, we entered the journey of participatory action and arts–based research and developed a series of visual arts workshops and public exhibits in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. In this context, the objective of this study is to explore the diverse role of the arts in not just creating spaces for engagement that are inherently deliberatively democratic, but also holding the space for dialogue, knowledge construction and mobilization, and civic engagement
Effective or Not? Building Discussions on Dilemmas and Refusals Into Research Practices: Perspectives From Participants
Get PDFWithin the academy, pedagogical practice includes how we teach about, design and conduct research. Too often, research has been carried out, in extractive ways, “on” Black, Indigenous, racialized and marginalized communities, rather than alongside them. Much of the research conducted in these communities centers on damage (Tuck, 2009) and operates on a faulty theory of change that imagines policymakers will adjust their systems just because scholars report on damage (Tuck & Yang, 2014). Using results from my dissertation field research, which built questions about the research process itself into my 32 qualitative interviews, this paper presents the perspectives of community members living and working along the Thailand-Myanmar border. It spotlights the usefulness of research and its potential to make change. I propose that to approach research in a more ethical and transformative way, academic researchers must include questions about the research itself into their fieldwork. Also, researchers should approach the work with healthy skepticism about why they are doing it at all, whether it’s already been done, and whether it could be done better by someone else. Participants offered concrete steps for how to make research more useful, involving as many community members/organizations as possible from the outset. They discussed only doing research based on long-term trusting relationships formed with communities; understanding cultural context; making consent forms easy to read, culturally appropriate and clear; sharing and collaborating on results with communities; making sure that publications and writing would be accessible; and using the research as a tool for advocacy or political activism outside the academy
Modéliser un programme de formation en enseignement pour répondre aux nouvelles réalités sociales et culturelles en contexte francophone minoritaire
Get PDFLors de cette communication, nous présenterons un modèle de formation en enseignement adapté aux nouvelles réalités sociales et culturelles en contexte francophone minoritaire et le processus par lequel ce modèle a été construit et mis en œuvre. Nous ferons d’abord une mise en contexte sur les nouvelles réalités sociodémographiques, ministérielles et institutionnelles en Alberta, avant de présenter l’orientation théorique ancrée dans la notion de changement, telle que conceptualisée par Michael Fullan (1982) et ses collaborateurs (Fullan & Quinn, 2018). Ensuite, nous présenterons la démarche méthodologique collaborative et dynamique qui a conduit à l’élaboration du modèle. Finalement, nous présenterons les différentes composantes du modèle avant de conclure sur les conditions gagnantes pour favoriser le changement dans le cadre de la formation à l’enseignement
The Heartbeat of Na’a: Documenting One School’s Blackfoot Cultural Learning Journey
Get PDFIn June 2019, students at an elementary school presented a Blackfoot/English opera and also wrote, illustrated and published Blackfoot/English books to showcase their 18-month-long Blackfoot learning journey. This collaborative story cannot be told in isolation by the researcher/designer alone. Together with the Elder who guided the work and the school principal, we will share the heart of this journey and the impact that this has had on pedagogy, school culture and relationships. Findings from this ethnographic study (Lassiter, 2005; Rappaport, 2008) within an Indigenous research paradigm (Chilisa, 2012; Donald, 2016; Wilson, 2008) highlight how wisdom and stories that are part of the land and how intentional and nurtured relationships with an Elder, with each other and with the animals led to a deeper appreciation of local place. It also created a stronger sense of engagement and belonging within the school for teachers and students. Within the conventional, privileged space of an opera, we created an open, ethical space that invited all students to thrive and participate (Ermine, 2007). Findings point to increased engagement by marginalized students in the land-based experiences, in the preparations for the opera and the book writing, and also in the opera performance itself. With video clips of the opera and samples of the books to lift our stories, this presentation aims to inspire action in the collective work of education for reconciliation. We see this journey as a gift to share with the world so that educators and leaders can create their own meaningful action across different contexts
Biliteracy Learners’ Enacted Agency in Digital Storytelling: Creativity in a Cross-Border, Online, Emergent, Biliteracy Curriculum
Get PDFThis research investigated potentials of bilingual digital story-making for engaging creativity in Canadian biliteracy learners (i.e., learners in Canada who speak their heritage language of Mandarin but are more fluent in English) and Chinese biliteracy learners (i.e., learners in China who are fluent in Mandarin and learning English as a foreign language). Informed by asset-oriented multiliteracies, new media literacies and new materialism, this research adopted an ethnography methodology to explore the communal and socio-material practices embedded in the intra-actions of human, matter and virtual spaces of Seesaw and Skype. Drawing on various data about six focal students, findings show how the intra-actions among researchers, teachers, students, materials and spaces shaped the participants’ creative acts. This research adds to the literature about developing and applying pedagogies that attend to the enacted agency among teachers, students, materials and spaces in processes of creative meaning making
The Fecundity of Silence in Dialogue: Students’ Experiences of Classroom Discussions
Get PDFScholars have noted that literary studies ought to be marked by opportunities for students to engage with difficult topics. Arguably, class discussions are a signature pedagogy of literary studies that support engagement with difficult topics. However, silences can disrupt the anticipated insight of such discussions. How do students in higher education literary studies experience silence in such discussions? Can student silence be understood as a generative aspect of difficult conversations about literary texts? This research sought to disrupt established beliefs about the idea of silence as non-participation and to determine whether there is evidence that speaks to the fecundity of silence in discussions. Silence has not been studied nearly as much as dialogic pedagogy, but scholars recognize its value for literacy. My research is based on the conceptual frameworks of dialogic pedagogy and hermeneutics and methodologically uses hermeneutic interviewing to develop thick descriptions of students’ experiences. This presentation focuses on my preliminary findings with reference to the academic literature on student silence in dialogic teaching and learning contexts. I address confirmations and disconfirmations of prevailing academic perspectives and instructors’ assumptions that consider student silence as fecund. This research is relevant for instructors in literary studies but may have implications for other disciplines using dialogic pedagogy
Korean-Canadian Children’s Bilingualism: Language Positions and Supporting Factors Within and Beyond a Multi-Generational Ethnic Church
Get PDFAdopting Bourdieu’s (1991) theoretical and analytic tools of field, habitus and capital, this year-long ethnographic case study examines the positions of the Korean and English languages at various levels within a multi-generational ethnic church. The research also identifies multiple levels of supporting factors of Korean-Canadian children’s bilingual development within and beyond this church. Data sources include classroom observations, interviews, curriculum materials, children’s artifacts, Korean government documents, as well as records of school meetings. In this study, the positions of Korean and English within the church are unveiled in the Korean and English ministries, which are closely linked to immigrant generations, and in the language use and socialization of children in the Grades 3 and 4 focus class. The positions of the languages within the church are influenced by the status of those languages beyond the church, demonstrating the close relationship between language and identity. This study also finds that the Korean language school in this church is a field in which the aims of the Korean government and Korean-Canadian immigrants intersect vis-à-vis heritage language education. For the Korean government, it is ultimately a field for strengthening national resources. For the church congregants, it is essentially for their heritage language and culture maintenance
Histories, Poetry, Haunting
Get PDFHow do histories of this land inform, whisper in the ear and trouble its curricular landscapes? This presentation explores some accounts of pasts, histories and their lingering effects and affects, both in their failures and their unique re-arrivals. What would be some implications of imagining the past, not as a presumably singular, monolithic, universality anchored to a relationship with a presumably static, temporalized subjectivity? What of curricular re-imaginings toward, not Past, but pasts; moreover, pasts that dwell in the footprints laid there, but also refuse to remain there--that keep returning, as revenant? Work informed by Munslow (2010) might suggest that the stories one tells of pasts may be as important as the content of those narratives. The present work moves within a space of considering text, especially creative and poetic work, as offering a modality uniquely attuned to resonances of pasts that are both grounded and fluid. The work imagines a space with enough room for both particularities and their otherwise. It imagines them holding hands in a spectral partnership--conjuring ghosts, if ever unwelcome, nonetheless returning as figures of reminding, offerers of histories, characters of reckoning
La Direction d'école en milieu francophone minoritaire : bâtir des ponts avec les communautés culturelles
Get PDFDans un contexte de diversité ethnoculturelle, linguistique et religieuse, plusieurs recherches mentionnent que les directions d’établissement scolaire doivent posséder une compétence interculturelle de même que promouvoir l’équité et la justice sociale pour assurer la réussite éducative des élèves (Potvin, 2014; Shields, 2018). Or, comment les directions d’établissement scolaire peuvent-elles évaluer le plus objectivement possible le développement de leur compétence interculturelle? Pour répondre à cette question, une première étude a présenté un modèle de compétence interculturelle pour les directions d’établissement scolaire (Gélinas-Proulx, Labelle & Jacquin, 2017). Bien que cette étude ait offert un cadre théorique et conceptuel exhaustif, la présente recherche vise à aller plus loin et valide un questionnaire d’autoévaluation de la compétence interculturelle spécifiquement conçu pour les directions d’établissement scolaire. Cette validation fut effectuée auprès des directions d’établissements scolaires de langue française du Québec et du Nouveau-Brunswick. Le processus de validation du questionnaire a comporté les étapes suivantes : 1) la recension de questionnaires portant sur la compétence interculturelle, 2) la rédaction d’une banque d’items, 3) la validation de contenu, 4) l’élaboration du questionnaire, 5) le prétest et 6) la validation de construit. Au final, un questionnaire d’autoévaluation de 20 items est proposé afin que les directions d’établissement scolaire puissent mieux évaluer leurs connaissances, leurs attitudes et leurs habiletés en matière de compétence interculturelle