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Flattening the Facebook Curve: Exploring Intersections of Critical Mathematics Education With the Real, the Surreal, and the Virtual During a Global Pandemic
No full textIn March 2020, near the onset of the COVID-19 related lockdowns, quarantine, and isolation measures being taken worldwide, we noticed an increasing number of graphs, diagrams, images, and mathematical models relating to the pandemic posted on our Facebook walls. For the purposes of this paper, we selected a number of these Facebook posts to discuss and analyze, through the lens of questions based in critical mathematics education research. Our analyses draw attention to public discourse(s) around mathematics, as well as how numbers, graphs, diagrams, and images are used on Facebook. In our analyses, we first identify the mathematics topic/concept being depicted through the image and, second, how that Facebook post might serve as an artefact of critical mathematics education. In doing so, we challenge the usual separation of mathematics classrooms from the real world and highlight how, in this time of pandemic, life is less real than it is surreal; it is less real than it is virtual.
Keywords: mathematical modelling; real-world problems; images, critical mathematics education; mathematics and social media; virtual reality; Facebook; mathematics in society; mathematics teaching; mathematics teacher educatio
Communicating Elevated Academic Expectations: Positioning Students as Thinkers with Ideas to Share
No full textThe focus of this qualitative study is upon 15 Grade 12 students situated in an English Communications (ECM) classroom in rural Nova Scotia and the impact a daily classroom circle had upon their academic engagement. ECM is intended for students who may require further support to develop their skills as readers, writers, and language users as they enter the job market or community colleges. There is no formal curriculum for ECM, and often the demographics of such classrooms are comprised of some of the province’s most vulnerable populations. In this paper, we demonstrate the impact the daily classroom circle had upon late adolescents’ understanding of themselves as thinkers with ideas to share. Overall, we see this study as significant for teachers in high-poverty contexts, particularly the importance of using a classroom circle as a consistent space to communicate elevated expectations for students who have experienced academic struggles.
Keywords: adolescent literacy; circle routines; qualitative case study; restorative practice
Digital Citizenship in Ontario Education: A Concept Analysis
No full textDigital citizenship indicates one’s place in digitized society; however academics have not established a cohesive understanding about how digital citizenship is characterized. The Ontario Ministry of Education also does not provide a central conceptualization of digital citizenship and instead encourages Ontario school boards to construct and communicate ideas of digital citizenship. Accordingly, Ontario policymakers, educators, and students use differing understandings of digital citizenship, which ultimately impedes educational initiatives and hinders the overall development of the concept. For this paper, therefore, I inquired as to how Ontario public school boards portray digital citizenship. Using concept analysis, I examined digital citizenship documents from the 10 largest English Ontario public school boards. The results suggest that digital citizenship is predominately characterized by responsible and ethical technology use. I conclude with a discussion about how this representation relates to democratic citizenship more broadly and the implications this may have on youth civic engagement.
Keywords: digital citizenship; technologies and education; democracy and education; democratic citizenship; concept analysi
Unleashing the Learners: Teacher Self-Efficacy in Facilitating School-Based Makerspaces
No full textThis qualitative research project explored the key characteristics, attitudes, and experiences of makerspace facilitators in Saskatchewan. The aim was to gather knowledge and wisdom from early adopters of makerspace from a variety of contexts ranging from tinkerspaces to increasingly popular school-based spaces in order to inform early and career-educators of the skills and attitudes conducive to creating and leading dynamic activity spaces. The questions for the semi-structured interviews were based on Bandura’s (1977; 1997) self-efficacy expectations: performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and emotional arousal. The findings align with those of other studies in that they point towards key areas of experience: the value of productive failure, relinquishing control, and modes of support. We conclude that there is a need to help preservice and early career educators to become prepared and confident makerspace facilitators. To this end, we offer four suggestions for new makerspace facilitators: aim towards unleashing, allow others to be the experts and leaders, celebrate success and failure, and openly seek and offer support.
Keywords: makerspace, self-efficacy, motivation, early career educators, productive failur
A Review of Residential Schools and Indigenous People: From Genocide via Education to the Possibilities for Processes of Truth, Restitution, Reconciliation, and Reclamation Edited by Stephen James Minton
No full textA Review of Residential Schools and Indigenous People: From Genocide via Education to the Possibilities for Processes of Truth, Restitution, Reconciliation, and Reclamation Edited by Stephen James Minto
A Vision Towards Indigenous Education Sovereignty in Northwestern Ontario
No full textTo support the calls for Indigenous education sovereignty by the National Indian Brotherhood (1972) and the Assembly of First Nations, (1988), in this paper we explore Indigenous education as envisioned by six educators and knowledge holders in northwestern Ontario. Educators from six different schools and programs who took part in a national project called the National Centre for Collaboration in Indigenous education shared their descriptions and visions of Indigenous education. Findings reveal Indigenous pedagogies that align with Lee and McCarty’s (2017) theoretical framework of culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogies to promote and support Indigenous education sovereignty. Their visions include pedagogies grounded in the need for equitable education; Indigenous-led instruction for land-based teachings, traditional practices and languages; and, community-based accountabilities. Their visions illustrate that a deeper understanding of the localized and nationhood contexts of Indigenous sovereignty over education is missing and needed in the ongoing movement towards educational sovereignty.
Keywords: Indigenous sovereignty; Indigenous education; culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogie
Understanding Meaningful Exchanges: Mathematics Discourse Analysis and Complexity Thinking
No full textThe focus in this paper is on the analysis of student-centered discourse through applying a discourse analysis tool that I developed to analyze data from an elementary mathematics classroom. The purpose of the analysis tool is to understand the impact of the complex learning system on the emerging classroom discourse. The minimum conditions for complexity created an invitational space for students that allowed interactions and meaningful exchanges to flourish through exploration of mathematical concepts and collective participation in classroom discourse. The analytic lens provides the teacher with a tool to understand more clearly the dynamics of meaningful exchanges identified as sharing, building, exploring and blocking.
Keywords: Classroom discourse; mathematics education; complexit
Unintentional Consequences: Facing the Risks of Being a Youth Activist
No full textStudents involved in social justice activist groups and activities encounter several potentially negative consequences in advocating for issues that are important to them. Through duoethnographic interviews with scholar-activists, former youth activists describe the barriers they experienced as socially engaged young people, including dealing with pushback from their cultural, school, and even activist communities. Without adult allies to help mentor them through these processes, the negative emotions associated with these encounters can lead youth to burn out and leave activism altogether. The findings of this study remind educators that they have an important role to play in providing meaningful activist training, apprenticeship opportunities, and supports for youth who are passionately engaged in progressive social and political action.
Keywords: social justice activism; youth; duoethnography; student movement
Early Career Teachers’ Experiences of Communicating with Families via Technology: Educatively Dwelling in Tension
No full textA variety of online programs, apps, and digital learning management systems currently “provide teachers with a means to more easily communicate and share information with students and parents through discussion forums, social media, videoconferencing, email, grade books, and announcements” (Howell & O’Donnell, 2017, p.28). While technology is often seen as shaping positive shifts in teachers’ and schools’ abilities to communicate with families, we, the five co-researchers in the study Understanding the Interactions Between Early Career Teachers and Families, wondered how early career teachers were experiencing the use of technology to interact with families. During semi-structured interviews with each of the 20 teacher participants, we were awakened, for example, to tensions experienced by many of the teachers when expectations to communicate with families electronically conflicted with their longings for more relational and reciprocal interactions. Yet, we also came to see that the teachers were learning to dwell in these tensions in ways that opened potential for educative (Dewey, 1938) growth and movement toward the kinds of interactions with families they were imagining. This paper takes up technology as one of the resonant threads drawn from and across the teachers’ storied experiences, and inquires narratively into the kinds of generative tensions that many of the teachers were experiencing and drawing on as they imagined increased relational and reciprocal ways of interacting with families, and then moves to wonder how dwelling in these tensions might shape preservice and in-service teacher education.Keywords: Early career teachers; families; technology; interactions; agenc