Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (JCACS)
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Gender Equity in Physics Education: Modeling a Future for Canadian Physics Education Research
Get PDFThe purpose of this early-stage study is to determine if and how Canada’s physics education researchers are working to solve the problem of women’s underrepresentation in physics education, and to develop an expert opinion-based model for institutions to address gender equity issues in physics education (at all levels). The study will: 1) identify physics education practices that physics education research (PER) experts have found to be supportive of gender equity; 2) identify Canada’s PER experts and their research focuses; (3) conduct a Delphi study with Canada’s PER experts to gain consensus on how PER can inform and support gender equity
in physics education; and (4) develop a model to guide ongoing PER in Canada to support the achievement of gender equity in physics education. Results of preliminary phases of the study include emergent themes from interviews with international PER experts on gender-equitable physics education practices and initial descriptions of the landscape of PER in Canada. These are based on content analysis of online biographies for all individuals working in Physics or Education departments across all Canadian universities. The presentation aims to generate discussion on these results and the proceeding phases of the study
Migrant Adult Language Learning in a Transnational Context
Get PDFThis presentation reports on the preliminary stages of a multi-year adult literacy project. The
project is motivated by the intensity of contemporary global migration, where unprecedented
numbers of adult migrants are forced into linguistically alien terrains and are often isolated and
disadvantaged by language barriers preventing full participation in host societies. The project
responds to this challenge with a comparative analysis of the formal and informal language
learning experiences of adult migrants in three transit or destination countries characterized by
an influx of newcomers: York Region, Ontario, Canada; Erie County, Pennsylvania, United
States; and Agrigento, Sicily, Italy. Using a hybrid theoretical framework linking transnationalism (Glick Schiller, Basch & Szanton Blanc, 1995) and translanguaging (Otheguy, García & Reid, 2015), the project undertakes a fluid and multidirectional study of migration and conducts an analysis directed at the first-person experiences of language use in linguistically diverse contexts. Drawing on surveys and interviews, the project assesses migrants’ priorities for language learning, their agency in choosing language-learning opportunities and how language learning serves their needs. Supplementary perspectives from adult education providers and academics in migration-related fields inform evidence-based pedagogical and policy recommendations for how language-learning opportunities can support the social integration of adult migrants
Productive Disciplinary Engagement in a Remote Laboratory Activity With an Eighth-Grade Science Class
Get PDFRemote laboratories offer students an opportunity to use analytical laboratory instruments through the Internet, in real time, from their classroom. Although remote laboratory activities offer great potential for engaging students’ interest and student learning, little work has been done on using them with middle school students. This study focused on middle school students’ engagement during a remote laboratory activity. With the help of facilitators, 18 eighth-grade students worked in six groups of three to remotely operate a Shimadzu TOC/TN Analyzer in a university chemistry laboratory, in real time, to measure the total nitrogen content in their river water samples. We video- and audio-recorded the students’ discourse with each other and with facilitators during the activity. Following transcription, discourse was coded for types of engagement as defined by the Productive Disciplinary Engagement framework, which posits three types of engagement: general engagement—students make active contributions; disciplinary engagement—students’ contributions are connected to the discipline of science; and productive disciplinary engagement—students make intellectual progress. All six groups demonstrated general engagement and disciplinary engagement. Students talked about both the technology, such as the video camera that allowed them to view inside the university laboratory, as well as the science, such as how the machine was actually doing the measuring. Two groups showed evidence of moving towards productive disciplinary engagement when they discussed the meaning of their results. Our results suggest that remote laboratory activities can engage middle school students and can be a site for their learning
Self-Reflective, Contextual, Multi-Modal Auto-Ethnographic Work: An Approach to Teaching Visual Art Inquiry
Get PDFVisual auto-ethnography offers a way to engage students in self-directed arts-based inquiries focusing on material culture constructs (Garber, 2019). It facilitates creative work and meaningful connections to visual culture (Bolin & Blandy, 2018; Freedman, 2003). Situated in Bourdieusian (1984) habitus lenses, Pink’s (2013) visual ethnography, and drawing on material and visual culture sources in students’ lives, ideas and making practices are explored and expressed. As a multi-modal student-centered pedagogical approach, drawing on the idea of a cabinet of curiosities (Mauries, 2011), and Adam’s (2015) non-linear process, autoethnography involves orienting to a personally relevant inquiry question, examining personally curated art and/or material culture artefacts, engaging in focused journaling, gathering relevant multi-modal artifacts and visual art as copies or originals, and finally, creating multi-modal artworks and accompanying texts that inform and complement one another. A student might examine, for example, lived experiences of spaces and places, situated alongside aesthetic experiences of spaces and places in visual art and culture. Contextual, multimodal and personally relevant, this approach is suitable for pedagogical settings ranging from middle school to higher education via arts education courses, advancing possibilities for situated focused creative work through reflective praxis. The work of Calle (2003) is helpful in locating forms of documentary work in contemporary art, and the work of Eldridge (2012) locates autoethnography in art education scholarship. It is clear that auto-ethnographers’ voices and visions represent unique, situated worldviews, facilitating individual and collective understandings and respect for diverse cultures and perspectives
Leveraging Multimodal Literacies: Design of a Multimodal Research Journal
No full textThis presentation explores the interplay between the researcher’s understandings of multimodal literacies (Walsh, 2011) and the design of a digital, multimodal, research journal using the Google Keep application (Google, 2018). The examples come from a year-long action research study (Pine, 2009) designed to inform the pedagogies of a novice educator. The research journal design was built upon understandings of multimodal literacy that recognize that meanings can be shaped through the researcher-digital interface (Kuby & Rowsell, 2017), and it was extended from uses of Google Keep for pedagogical documentation in kindergarten classrooms (Vaillancourt, 2017). The presentation highlights the ways that the researcher created the journal using text and publicly useable images and analyzed the data through hashtag labels. Through this discussion, the researcher considers the ways meaning was shaped through the affordances and constraints of the journal. The presentation contributes to knowledge related to the ways that multimodal literacy, and digital tools designed for teaching practice, can be used within research designs
Facteurs environnementaux et intérêt situationnel : quels rôles sur le changement conceptuel en sciences?
Get PDFL’intérêt des élèves pour les sciences continue de décliner (Potvin & Hasni, 2014). Parmi les deux types d’intérêts, à savoir l’intérêt individuel et l’intérêt situationnel (IS), ce dernier présente l’avantage de pouvoir être déclenché et maintenu grâce à des activités et matériels stimulants. Par ailleurs, l’IS se révèle un facteur motivationnel important dans la promotion du changement conceptuel. Le but principal de cette étude était d’évaluer un modèle dans lequel les facteurs environnementaux (travail d’équipe, présence d’expert et choix) influençaient l’IS et qui à son tour, prédisait le changement conceptuel en thermodynamique. Quarante-deux élèves de la 7e année ont participé à l’étude. D’une part, les résultats de l’approche bayésienne de l’analyse factorielle confirmatoire du Situational Interest Survey (Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2010) indiquaient l’existence de l’IS déclenché et de l’IS maintenu différencié en composantes sentiment et valeur. D’autre part, l’approche bayésienne de l’analyse de parcours montrait un effet de la présence d’un expert sur la composante valeur de l’IS maintenu. Cependant, aucune des trois composantes de l’IS ne prédisait le changement conceptuel. Sur le plan scientifique, cette étude est la première à notre connaissance à mener une recherche cumulative sur le changement conceptuel grâce aux statistiques bayésiennes. Sur le plan social, cette recherche s’avère pertinente, car elle dote les enseignants d’une stratégie pour influencer l’IS en sciences et leur informe de sa limite à promouvoir le changement conceptuel
Hands-On: Curricular Bridging Concepts from Maker Spaces Re-Turning to Hand-Made and Many Hands Making Together
Get PDFPoet, author and activist Maya Angelou once told Oprah Winfrey, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better" (Winfrey, 2011, 2:08). This is practical advice for anyone, including curriculum developers. Angelou was, of course, speaking of forgiveness, fortitude, perseverance and learning. What is interesting for me as an educator is how Angelou went about teaching Winfrey this lesson. Recognizing the power differential between her and the then young Winfrey, she did not begin their relationship by giving advice. She began it by making Winfrey food—a making gesture signifying Winfrey’s equality with the maker. After their meal, Angelou encouraged further communion by sharing poetry made by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The making of things, physical things as in a meal, and/or artistic things as with poetry, is not featured in most Canadian curriculums. Where it does appear, it is framed as optional or vocational; making is something for those with less cognitive aptitude or for artists with marginal value to community commerce. This orientation in curriculums has perhaps led to the under-valuation of “making” as a strategy for relationship building, for reconciliation and for bridging social power divides. My presentation describes a critical discourse analysis I conducted of this popular Angelou quotation and its historical context. I use it to explore insights related to how divides might be bridged through a curriculum that assigns greater value to “making” (Fairclough et al., 2014; van Dijk, 2001; Wodak, 2011; Wodak & Meyer, 2008; Wodak & Reisigl, 2006)
Language, Identity and Social Integration: Stories of Skilled Bangladeshi Immigrants in Canada
Get PDFThis emerging ethnographic study aims to explore the impact of English language and learning on the settlement and social integration of skilled Bangladeshi immigrants in Canada. Though language is a significant factor in immigrants’ settlement, few researchers have explored the relationship between language and immigrants’ social integration, and even fewer have researched the impact of language in skilled immigrants’ settlement (Han, 2007; Gimpapa & Canagarajah, 2017). Canada is a popular destination for Bangladeshi skilled immigrants; however, they have remained largely ignored in the academic research and in the ethno-social milieu of Canada. Therefore, this study aims to explore how Bangladeshi skilled immigrants learn the English language, how they socialize using the language and what struggles they face in learning the language. The conceptual framework of the research is drawn from a poststructural understanding of language (Bourdieu, 1977, 1986) and sociocultural theory of learning (Block, 2013; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Ochs, 1991), and the research methodology is informed by critical theory and critical ethnographic sociolinguistic research (Heller et al., 2017). The significance of this research lies in exploring the role of language, access and participation in the settlement of the underrepresented Bangladeshi skilled immigrants in Canada and in reconceptualizing migrants’ language learning needs and scopes
Recension : La vision du monde indigène et le déhypnose de l’Ouest
Get PDFR. Michael Fisher’s Fearless Engagement of Four Arrows: The True Story of an Indigenous-Based Social Transformer recounts the life stories and praxis of Indigenous elder and scholar Four Arrows in order to elucidate how fear management can help us to achieve personal and planetary balance. To this end, the process of subliminal “normalized” fear induction is likened to mass hypnosis, and fear management is understood as a process of dehypnosis whereby we are able to use our entrancement by fear to access intuitive and primal knowledge, thus turning fear into a bridge to personal and planetary transformation. Four Arrows’ systematic approach to fear management is framed in terms of a fear vaccine that he calls CAT-FAWN, which refers to making constructive use of fear-induced “concentration activated transformation” (CAT) by consciously orienting ourselves to the holistic interdependence of “fear, authority, words and nature” (FAWN).Fearless Engagement of Four Arrows: The True Story of an Indigenous-Based Social Transformer de R. Michael Fisher raconte les histoires de vie et pratique d’ancien et savant indigène Four Arrows (Quatre Flèches) afin d’élucider comment la gestion de la peur peut nous aider à réaliser l’équilibre personnel et planétaire. Dans ce but, le processus de l’induction de la peur subliminale et “normalisée” est comparé à l’hypnose de masse, et la gestion de peur est comprise comme un processus de la déhypnose selon lequel nous pouvons utiliser notre enchantement par la peur à accéder à la connaissance intuitive et primitive, ainsi transformant la peur en pont à la transformation personnelle et planétaire. L’approche systématique de Four Arrows face à la gestion de la peur est encadrée en termes d’un vaccin de la peur qu’il s’appelle CAT-FAWN, qui fait référence à l’usage constructive de “la transformation activée par la concentration” provoqué par la peur, par s’orienter constamment vers l’interdépendance holistique de “la peur, l’autorité, les mots et la nature”
Anti-Blackness and Orientalism in Quebec and Manitoba Ancient History Curricula
Get PDFAlthough Canada is often portrayed as a multicultural, benevolent, liberal society, the experiences of Black peoples, Indigenous peoples and Peoples of Colour living in Canada point to the problematic of ongoing anti-Black racism, Indigenous erasures and anti-immigrant sentiments, while perpetuating White Eurocentric dominance. Research demonstrates that schools and school curricula play an important role in perpetuating these problems (e.g., Abdou, 2017; Calderon, 2014; Poole, 2012). But how might curricula and available teaching resources specifically be contributing to Canada’s underlying narratives of White Eurocentric dominance? There is a growing body of literature that demonstrates problematic discourses in the curriculum for Indigenous peoples (e.g., Battiste, 2013; Calderon, 2014; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013). In this paper, we specifically interrogate anti-Blackness and Orientalism. We outline the various findings of critical discourse analyses that we conducted on secondary school textbooks used in Quebec and Manitoba to teach world history and ancient civilizations. By comparing these two contexts, we offer new perspectives on the ways that Canadian curricula are constructed as dominant White-centric narratives by depending on the logics of Orientalism and anti-Blackness. Building on previous textbook analyses, we attempt to bring critical perspectives to problematize dominant norms that contribute to the oppressions of Black peoples and Peoples of Colour in the Canadian context and to provide insights on a potential way forward for more inclusive and balanced representations. While our textual analyses do not directly address representations of Indigenous peoples in curricula, we hope this contribution will help draw attention to some common exclusionary approaches and representations that need to be questioned and challenged