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Objective: To explore the barriers associated with the adoption of the Alberta Nutrition Guidelines for Children and Youth in schools according to characteristics of the innovation (guidelines) and the organization (schools). Design: Cross-sectional telephone survey. Setting and Participants: Schools in Alberta, Canada. Principals from 357 schools. Main Outcome Measure: Barriers to adopting the nutrition guidelines. Analysis: A 19-question telephone survey, including open- and closed-ended questions, was used to obtain information regarding schools' characteristics and barriers to adopting the guidelines. Qualitative data were coded according to common themes a priori, based on constructs from the Diffusion of Innovations framework. Results: Schools reported many barriers related to the relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity of adopting the guidelines. Parents' resistance to change and cost were the key reported barriers. Lack of knowledge, student preferences, the physical location of the school, and barriers related to the provision of healthful food were also reported. Conclusions and Implications: Disseminating guidelines without providing adequate support for their implementation may not promote change within the school setting. School nutrition initiatives need to involve the parents and have access to sufficient financial and human resource support. (Contains 4 tables.)

The article investigates the feasibility of district heating in a small town adjacent to a Kraft pulp mill in eastern Canada. A detailed heat demand analysis is performed for all buildings using a geographical information system and archived data provided by the municipality. The study shows that the entire space heating requirement of the town can be supplied by steam from the mill, even during exceptional peak demands. A screening test based on load density indicators, however, reveals that a district heating serving the entire town would probably not be economically viable. An economic analysis of partial districts show that a district covering about half of the town can be economically viable with a proper balance between the price of the steam sold by the mill to the district operator and the cost of the energy sold to customers. (Contains 10 tables, 6 figures, and 1 note.)

Examining legislative change between 1997 and 2013, and analyzing the governance of Manitoba's post-secondary system using military concepts of strategy, operations, and tactics, this article argues that there has been a trend since 2006 of a general loss of university autonomy in the province. The article finds that changes in public policy in Manitoba's post-secondary system, and how that policy is implemented, have led to a progressive movement towards greater government intrusion in what heretofore have been internal matters at the province's universities.

This in-progress study presents aspects of using educational technology in teaching mathematics education. More exactly, it explores ways in which educational technology might be used in order to improve teachers' cultural awareness and social activism. A rationale for a qualitative research study is presented by using multiple methods combining action research and multiple case studies. Three high school mathematics teachers from Greater Toronto Area are selected to participate in this research. Actor Network Theory (ANT) was considered as research paradigm for this study.

Many institutions of higher education have committed to the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). This collective move signifies an effort to identify and confront systemic issues of marginalisation and exclusion of minoritised groups in contexts of higher education. Nevertheless, international students are not always considered an equity-seeking group, despite the structural barriers international students face. As a result, international students' experiences of EDI remain underexplored and are typically examined from a perspective of internationalisation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of five international students from the broader perspective of EDI at a Canadian university through a case study design. The findings demonstrate that, in spite of the university's long-standing commitment to aspects of EDI, international students felt excluded and othered in the community. Their experiences pointed to a lack of intercultural awareness and sensitivity on the part of the superficially multicultural community, a lack of institution-led initiatives to include the students through socialisation with peers, and the limited internationalisation of the curriculum. This paper is concluded with a call for universities to recognise international students as a marginalised group in their EDI efforts and, potentially, address structural issues that internationalisation frameworks have neglected.

Universities traverse epistemic, sectoral and geopolitical boundaries with increasing frequency, but along the way encounter challenges in mitigating unequal capacities, soaring costs and proprietary concerns. The bridging of disparate stakeholder interests requires an enormous effort, as research policies, institutional norms and organizational cultures in global science often remain irreconcilable. In seeking to identify strategic leverages for optimal balance in cross-border partnerships, this paper considers the case study of the Structural Genomics Consortium, which represents a synergy of resources, interests and commitments by research universities, governments and industries in Canada, Sweden and the UK. By triangulating data derived from content analysis of institutional materials, interviews and participant observations in Toronto, the study zeros in on the Canadian equilibration of symbolic, cultural and organizational forces aimed at securing long-term stakeholder support across institutional, sectoral and geopolitical domains.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how a Canadian intervention based on a professional development (PD) model did or did not influence schools' capacities to absorb a Healthy School (HS) approach into their operations. This study is the second part of a research project: previously published results regarding this research provided a detailed description of the PD model and highlighted the relevance and effectiveness of PD in improving actors' HS-related knowledge and practices. The present paper focuses on the organizational impact of such PD intervention. Design/Methodology/Approach: The design was based on a realist evaluation approach, which helps to elicit a theory explaining how an intervention leads to particular outcomes. A multi-site case study of three schools with pre-(T[subscript 0]) and post-(T[subscript 1]) intervention comparison was adopted. Multiple qualitative methods were used to capture how the changes were achieved by collecting data from various stakeholders involved in the intervention. Findings: The PD model tested reinforced the schools' capacities to absorb this type of initiative. For one of the capacities examined, "exploitation", i.e., the ability to incorporate and maintain the initiative into schools operation, the evidence was less apparent. In congruence with the realist evaluation, the results are rendered in the form of a contextualized intervention theory identifying the links between the PD and the mechanisms that were likely necessary to explain what led to the changes in "absorptive" capacities (which refers to the capabilities of schools to acquire and assimilate HS knowledge, and also to transform and exploit them, in the context). Originality/Value: The refined theory, based on empirical findings, can enable facilitators and practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of the action mechanisms shown to be determining in the success of HS implementation.

Objective: Health-promoting schools (HPS) constitute an internationally recognised approach that connects health and education in a planned, integrated and holistic way. There is considerable variability, however, in how HPS is implemented and recent research has attempted to clarify the key functions of implementation. A provincial HPS strategy in Nova Scotia (NS) (Canada) provided a unique research opportunity to examine implementation related to emerging theory. The purpose of this exploratory study was to describe a provincial case study of HPS implementation using theoretical components identified in the literature. Design: Collective case study approach using qualitative research methods. Setting: The study was situated within a larger province-wide school-based research project examining the relationships between health, nutrition, physical activity, mental health and school performance of children in NS. As a follow-up to the provincial study, nine schools (n = 9) that varied in their HPS implementation strategies and characteristics (i.e. size and region) were invited to take part as case study schools. Method: Data collection included observations, interviews and documents from nine schools (n = 9). Data were analysed for emerging themes and using the a priori theoretical components. Results: The results revealed that schools assembled into three sequential categories based on the functioning of theoretical components. Higher level visioning and school-level leadership were critical in sustaining the adoption and implementation of HPS across schools and appeared to enable and integrate organisational processes, such as distributed leadership and a collaborative school culture, to enhance HPS implementation at school level. Conclusion: This study confirmed other reports that it is imperative to integrate HPS work with educational values so as to enable partnerships in both the health and education sectors, thereby promoting both health and prosperity among students.

This qualitative case study investigates the transformative power of a leadership course designed for immigrant secondary school students learning English as an additional language with a social justice orientation. Course projects allowed the students to get involved in tutoring, present at a conference on intercultural education, deliver equity presentations and role model presentation skills for their peers by discussing topics such as Canadian culture, showcase their talents from their L1 cultures and give advice on how to integrate into the school and to lead activities to create school spirit by sharing music from their culture, running a "thank your teacher" campaign, or taking the lead with an international humanitarian cause. The teacher's plans and notes, course assignments, video footage of students presenting a conference workshop and monthly feedback forms were the data that allowed us to understand how transformative pedagogy was enacted by the teacher and experienced by the students in one Canadian secondary school with a very diverse student population.

Interest in international student identity has grown considerably over the last few years. In the context of international education, the emphasis on identity and the individual student may also be seen as an emerging response to the tendency of discussing international students and their identity-related experiences in homogenising ways. While there is considerable discussion about how international students' sense of self is affected by cultural differences in higher education, a theory of identity is not always in place. The purpose of this paper is to bring together three theoretical perspectives on identity that are designed to account for specific cultural, social, and linguistic influences on identity construction. These perspectives are examined with examples from data-based case studies. This paper identifies the unique affordances of each perspective while also highlighting their mutual role in challenging broad discourses that have unfavourably defined international student identity.

Based on a study of the digital literacy practices of immigrant Filipino students in Vancouver, this paper focuses on how learners with unequal access to resources engage with different tools to locate information and find opportunities for language learning online. Data was collected through interviews and observations of participants as they used YouTube, Google Search, and Google Translate to decode unfamiliar words and find resources for learning. Framed through a materialist semiotic lens, this study examined how the students negotiated their resources on these platforms to achieve different intentions. Findings show that the way learners navigate these spaces can vary based on the devices they use (laptop vs. mobile phone), the user interface (browser vs. app), and the orientation they choose (landscape vs. portrait). The material dimensions of the screen determine the arrangement of semiotic forms, and varying configurations of devices, interfaces, and orientations shape the information made available to the learner and the digital literacy practices of scrolling, clicking, and shifting tabs. Recognizing how the online environment of a platform can shift across these layers of mediation, this paper conceptualizes the linguistic and semiotic forms that constitute design as sociotechnical structures which provide various learning affordances and constraints.

This paper presents case studies of teacher union-government relationships in three Canadian provinces -- British Columbia, Ontario, and Alberta -- where teacher organizations have undertaken divergent strategic positions relative to educational reform. It identifies critical factors that may lead teacher unions to challenge government reforms, how and when a teacher organization might instead accommodate governmental reform, and under what circumstances union renewal drives an organization to establish reform strategies of its own. The paper demonstrates the results of these varied strategies and suggests that teacher unions' stances, including when they are resistant, are rational and, arguably, necessary.

This paper addresses one of the major confusions in the study and practice of problem-based learning today, namely the use of the term "problem-based learning" to refer to both the small-group tutorial method pioneered by McMaster University and Maastricht University in medical education, and the problem-oriented project-work method developed in Denmark at the universities of Roskilde and Aalborg, which has gained prominence in recent years in the field of engineering education. This paper offers a comparison of the models using a thematic analysis of key elements of PBL, namely the nature of problems, the role of teachers, the nature of the educational process, and the underlying principles of the method, to conclude on a discussion of the causes of the confusion taking place today, and its potential ramifications for the study and practice of PBL in the future.

This paper explores Ontario's international education policy landscape through illuminating the discursive struggles to define international student funding policies, in particular the international doctoral students' Trillium Scholarship. Adopting Hajer's (1993, 2006) Discourse Coalition Framework, the study engages with three research questions: What paved the way to this funding policy? Who were the actors engaged in this policy landscape? How has the argumentation over this policy influenced the international education policy context in Ontario? Argumentative discourse analysis was used to analyze three data sources: news articles, policy documents, and interviews. Two storylines were identified: international student funding is desirable and beneficial to Ontario versus Ontario first. Whereas the first storyline achieved hegemony, the second succeeded in bringing discourses of protectionism to the forefront influencing the government's future engagement with international student funding. The paper ends with three observations on Ontario's international education policy landscape. This study contributes to our understanding of how international student funding can be highly political and influenced by non-education policy spaces and discourses.

Leaders of university continuing education units frequently dedicate significant energy to managing relationships between their units and senior university administrators. Many CJUCE readers know of cases where a particularly sympathetic (or unsympathetic) university president or provost has substantially changed the trajectory of a continuing education unit. Using historical documents from the University of British Columbia, the author of this article constructs a case study of the influence of presidential support on the philosophy and practice of university extension and continuing education. In short, UBC's Extension department emerged and flourished under the leadership of two long-serving presidents who expressed significant support for its function as a primary role of the university. In the 1960s, following the appointment of a president who considered research and degree credit teaching to be the university's distinctive mission, the department experienced a crisis. However, the period following 1975 brought renewed executive support when a new president with an expansive vision of the contribution that the university should make to society was appointed. This article not only presents an interesting historical case study but also provokes reflection on how contemporary leaders in continuing education can nurture support from senior administrators.

This article is a study of private school mission/vision statements using content analysis. Statements from private schools in British Columbia, Canada, that provided instruction to Grade 12 students were analyzed to explore the diversity that lies within the private school sector. The concepts that emerged from the analysis were grouped into five categories: concepts that declared the school's distinctive beliefs, concepts that presented the school's goals and objectives, and concepts outlining the environment, services offered, and parental involvement. It was found that there is considerable diversity between private school groups in the school distinctives and in the goals and objectives pursued by the schools.

The world, influenced by 21st century technologies and ecological challenges, has rapidly changed with more ability to "connect" locally and globally and more opportunities to learn from a range of sources. As a result, our learners and their needs have changed. With such rapid changes, conceptions of educational leadership need to reflect these changes utilizing the complexities of the role in society. As a group of educators who work in a School District, Ministry of Education and University teacher education programs, we ask how educational leaders in school districts and teacher education programs can design spaces that engage everyone, recognize everyone's expertise and share responsibility for growth and development, and how in teacher education we can begin to move away from the hierarchical, industrialized model of management to one where everyone feels engaged, valued, and heard. In this paper, we draw on sustainable and distributed leadership ideas, termed by Wheatley (2010) as the "new sciences," informed by tenets from complexity theory. Using a case study approach and narrative insights, this paper elucidates how an ongoing Professional Learning Network (PLN) called Link-to-Practice (L2P) offers an alternative conception of educational leadership.

This paper explores the integration of Open Educational Practices (OEP) into an institutional strategy to develop distinctive excellence in teaching, learning and scholarship. The institution in the case study is a public polytechnic university serving a metropolitan area in Canada. If emerging Open Educational Practices are to flourish at our university, support for OEP must integrate with and contribute to our broader efforts to clarify and enhance our strategic position. We have identified three focal points where our institution can focus attention in order to ensure that our use of emerging Open Educational Practices will best align with, contribute to, and benefit from our institutional strategy for distinctive excellence in teaching and learning: (1) Opening up the pedagogy underlying exemplary OER, to enable a deeper faculty engagement in integrating and mobilizing diverse sources of knowledge in teaching; (2) Opening up that process by which individual faculty improve teaching and learning, as a model for our students' own engagements with knowledge; (3) Opening up our collective faculty work in innovation networks, as a model for students and as a signature institutional strength and outcome. We summarize the rationale and planned next steps for each of these focal points, which are intended to cumulatively build on each other as a value chain to support the development of distinctive graduate capabilities as signature outcomes of our teaching and learning. [This paper was presented at the Open Education Consortium Global Conference (Banff, Canada, April 22-24, 2015).]

Plurilingual approaches to pre-service teacher education hold promise for critical engagement with linguistic, cultural, and racial diversity in equity-supportive ways. Employing critical action research, we as teacher educators implemented an equity-oriented plurilingual approach across three literacy methods courses for pre-service elementary teachers at one Canadian university. Using case study methods and a poststructuralist theory of identity, this paper examines implications of the equity-oriented plurilingual approach for the evolving teacher identities and beliefs about plurilingual pedagogical possibilities of two pre-service teachers: one Chinese Canadian and one White Canadian. Findings from an analysis of field notes, teacher education artefacts, and interview transcripts demonstrate that pre-service teachers' linguistic and racial backgrounds shaped their learning and identity trajectories vis-à-vis plurilingualism, and that critical personal reflection and practicum experiences were key mediators of participants' orientations towards plurilingual pedagogies. Plurilingualism, in concert with multiliteracies, supported a Chinese Canadian pre-service teacher to develop a resource orientation to her own plurilingualism and racialized identity, while challenging a White English-dominant pre-service teacher to confront power inequities and her English-speaker privilege. Implications centre on the importance of greater critical engagement with systemic issues of race and Anglonormativity and the need for more systematic integration of equity-oriented plurilingual approaches throughout teacher education programs.

In response to Canada's growing ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity, educators in French immersion classrooms are increasingly responding with enhanced cross-linguistic initiatives, and dual language books are promising resources in the promotion of multilingualism (Zaidi, 2020; Zaidi & Dooley, 2021). This paper details a research project we completed in a 2019 classroom-based qualitative case study in a French immersion school experiencing an increasing enrollment of linguistically diverse students. The researchers sought to determine if "Storybooks Canada," a free digital platform with 40 dual language books in multiple languages, could help promote literacy engagement and strengthen home-school connections. Five teacher participants identified a range of features that make the platform a useful resource for promoting literacy engagement, text comprehension, learner autonomy, meaning-making, and instructional differentiation. These included (i) the multilingual features, (ii) the ability to project stories on a large screen, (iii) the audio component, (iv) the illustrations, and (v) the different levels of text difficulty. While teachers made almost exclusive use of the French language features of the site, for classroom purposes, they supported cross-linguistic uses of the platform in the home context, with a view of strengthening home-school connections.

The extant literature on student migration flows generally focus on the traditional push-pull factors of migration at the individual level. Such a tendency excludes the broader levels affecting international student mobility. This paper proposes a hybrid of three levels of push-pull dynamics (micro-individual decision-making, meso-academic marketing, and macro-national marketing) to paint a more accurate picture of student migration flows. A case study of 15 semi-structured interviews with Chinese international students at a Canadian university was conducted to illuminate the underresearched reality that universities and Canada as a nation offer additional incentives, in conjunction with individual/familial reasons, for study abroad. The paper concludes with recommendations for new research directions arising from the present study.

Studies have shown the ways in which non-Western middle- and upper-class families are seeking to educate their children in the West. The rationale for this kind of social reproduction strategy is the acquisition of 'valuable' cultural and symbolic capitals which can be advantageous in the graduate job market of both their home country and internationally. Presenting a case study of four middle-class Nigerian fathers, the paper reveals the rationale behind these fathers' decision to opt out of the Nigerian HE sectors. The paper focuses on three Western capitals -- specifically institutional (a Canadian degree), embodied (high proficiency in English language) and symbolic (Canadian citizenship) -- capitals which will position these parents' children advantageously in the future. The paper concludes by presenting an argument that in seeking these Western capitals for their children, these parents become implicated in the Western hegemonic discourse of 'West is best'.

The field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) is similar to other fields in that we must not take it for granted that novice teachers will survive their first year without some kind of support. This paper outlines how three novice ESL teachers in Canada survived their first year without any support from the school they were placed. Specifically, the paper outlines how they, with the aid of a facilitator, engaged in reflective practice by using a framework for reflecting on practice to help them navigate complex issues and challenges they faced during their first year of teaching. Had they not engaged in such structured reflection during their first year, they would have probably become another statistic of those who quit the profession and contribute to the growing perception that TESOL is a profession that eats its young. The paper suggests that language teacher educators and novice teachers should not just wait until their first year to learn the skills of reflective practice but should do so much earlier in their teacher education programs so that they can be better prepared for the transition from their teacher education programs to the first year of teaching.

The need to incorporate and develop Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within university programs is necessary for future leaders, managers and entrepreneurs. Within the framework of CSR and stakeholder theory the paper contributes a comparative case study that utilizes curriculum and in-depth interview analysis to illustrate not only the similarities and differences in the CSR programs, but how social responsibility is taught in a Mexican and Canadian University context. The main findings are: the CSR program in Mexico is perceived as a strategic management tool that adds value to the organization and does not pay any special attention to the globalization phenomena. Whereas in Canada, social responsibility is founded on ethics, attention to the different stakeholders in a globalized environment is emphasized and the strategic importance of CSR is widely accepted. The paper provides academics and researcher insight into exploring how universities can further facilitate students as stakeholders in considering social responsibility as important and necessary to ensure CSR sustainability in practice.

This paper, derived from a larger case study, presents new perspectives on arts-integrated elementary schools. It focusses on several issues including teacher understandings of arts-integrated pedagogy, willingness to collaborate, arts credentials, and teacher perceptions of those students enrolling from outside catchment area. Hence it raises the question as to whether school districts should consider new policies specific to arts-integrated schools for both students enrolling, and teaching staff. As a teacher-administrator at Mosaic for several years, the researcher became interested in the motivations for student enrollments from outside of Mosaic's catchment area. Through interviews with educators and parents, the case study investigates perceptions and motivations for student enrollments. This paper's focus is the analysis of interviews with Mosaic educators: their understandings and perspectives on arts-integrated pedagogy, student profiles, and their own valuing of the arts.

Universities and institutions of higher education are facing economic pressures to sustain large classes, while simultaneously maintaining the quality of the online learning environment (Deming et al., 2015). Digital learning environments require significant pedagogical shifts on the part of the teacher. This paper is a qualitative examination of the nature of teaching in the digital age, and the significant changes facing teachers in the 21st century. The authors describe key features of quality distance pedagogy that were exhibited during 12 weeks of a synchronous undergraduate course held in Adobe Connect. The central research questions are: (1) How can problem-based learning pedagogy enable instructors to form smaller cohesive groups of students that take greater responsibility for their own learning?; (2) What strategies can be used by teachers to develop communities of practice and inquiry?; (3) How can an instructor in a large virtual class co-create the level of social capital that is required to build and maintain the relationships that are a necessary condition for a high quality learning experience?; and (4) What are the perceptions of teachers about the challenges and benefits of facilitating a high quality problem based learning environment through invisible pedagogy? The research is grounded in literature through the work of Cousins and Bissar (2012), Kaufman (2013), Badge, Saunders and Cann (2012), Flavin (2012) and McNeill, Gosper and Xu (2012). These authors examine how teachers and learners adapt to the digital age. In addition, more recent work by Bowers and Kumar (2015), Hoadley (2016), Deming et al. (2015) and Gunduz et al. (2016) are examined. In these digital spaces, teachers become facilitators, guides, collaborators and learners themselves, thus making traditional pedagogy virtually invisible. Further, the paper uses qualitative semi-structured interviews of two assistant professors who instructed the two groups of undergraduate students. The teachers identify challenges and successes to using problem based learning as a tool for attaining 21st century learning outcomes in digital learning spaces.

Recent scientific studies demonstrate conclusively that our planet faces an ocean crisis and efforts to mitigate this crisis should be addressed urgently. As many species are lost to extinction, conservation steps need to be taken and are indicated by targets such as those outlined by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainability and Development. Similarly, a clear agenda for ocean education should be encouraged as the first step toward broader conservation goals. Recently, the concept of ocean literacy has been described as a way to help communities and individuals develop a more holistic understanding of their influences on the ocean and the ocean's influences on their lives. Still, ocean literacy has not yet been fully enacted in the K-12 curricula in Canada, and many environmental education programs are taking the lead to provide program participants with a broader understanding of the term. In this study, we provide a broad overview of ocean literacy initiatives as enacted by the Ocean Wise NGO. We examine how these have influenced the diffusion of ocean literacy in British Columbia. In our paper, we include a case study highlighting the diversity of Ocean Wise programs to provide a broad view on activities from the perspective of program participants. We selected a range of education programs for data collection, including school visits to the Vancouver Aquarium, off-site mobile programming (with AquaVan), and teacher professional development programs, both on-site and via an online learning platform. We explore what each initiative offers students with regard to connection to the ocean. Through an instrumental case study design, we combine qualitative approaches with observations, focus groups, and interviews to describe many currents of ocean literacy flowing from Ocean Wise and its broad and diverse ocean literacy programming.

Language documentation efforts are most often concerned with the adult language and usually do not include the language used by and with children. Essential parts of the natural linguistic behaviour of communities thus remain undocumented, and a growing body of literature explores what language documentation, language maintenance, and language revitalization have to gain by including child language and child-directed language. This paper adds a methodological perspective to the discussion, arguing that child language and child-directed language constitute data types that can inform our understanding of the adult language. For reasons of feasibility, the paper focuses on child-directed language only. Presenting data from two on-going language acquisition projects (Qaqet from Papua New Guinea and Dëne Suline´from Canada), we illustrate how this data type provides insights into the metalinguistic knowledge of adult speakers. After an introduction to child-directed language, three case studies on the topics of variation sets, clarification processes, and discourse context are exemplified from both languages and related to our understanding of the adult language. Focusing on the potential of this data type, this paper argues in favour of extending our documentation efforts to events involving children.

Taking Quebec's mandatory religious education curriculum, Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC), as a case study, this paper examines the question of whether it is legitimate to teach about the illiberal and discriminatory aspects of religious belief and practice--misogyny, homophobia, racial discrimination and the like--in a religious education class. This paper seeks an answer the question by considering the pedagogical choice to raise a critical lens to the religions studied in class in relation to the cultural approach to religious education that ERC teachers are required to adopt, the critical, democratic and intercultural aims of ERC, and the legal constraints imposed on ERC by the Canadian and Quebecois constitutional framework. The conclusion of our analysis is that while the cultural approach to RE clearly rules out the use of learning activities specifically designed to reveal illiberal and discriminatory aspects of religions. However, perceived points of conflict with prevailing social values constitute a legitimate opportunity for religious education teachers to invest their specialised knowledge of religious traditions in the service of increasing pupils' religious literacy.

Purpose: In this paper, the authors engage with embodied critical literacies through an exploration of the possibilities provided by the use of improvisational comedy (improv) in the classroom. The purpose of this paper is to extend understandings of critical literacy to consider how embodied critical literacy may be transformative for both individual students and classroom assemblages. The research question asks: how might improv, as an embodied literacy practice, open up spaces for critical literacy as embodied critical encounter in classroom assemblages? Design/methodology/approach: The authors used case study methodology informed by post-qualitative research methods, and in particular, posthuman assemblage theory. Assemblage theory views the world as taking shape through the ever-shifting associations among human and more-than-human members of an assemblage. The case study took place in a sixth-grade classroom with 28 11-year-olds over a four-month period of time. Audio and video recordings provided the empirical materials for analysis. Using Bruno Latour's three stages for rhizomatic analysis of an assemblage, the authors mapped the movements of participants in an assemblage; noted associations among those participants; and asked questions about the larger meanings of those associations. Findings: In the sixth-grade classroom, the dynamic and emerging relations of the scene work and post-scene discussion animate some of the ways in which the practice of classroom improv can serve as a pedagogy that involves students in embodied critical literacy. In this paper, the authors are working with an understanding of critical literacy as embodied. In embodied critical literacy, the body becomes a resource for that attunes students to matters of critical importance through encounter. With this embodied attunement, transformation through critical literacy becomes a possibility. Research limitations/implications: The case study methodology used for this study allowed for a fine-grained analysis of a particular moment in one classroom. Because of this particularity, the findings of this study are not considered to be universally generalizable. However, educators may take the findings of this study and consider their application in their own contexts, whether that be the pedagogical context of a classroom or the context of the empirical study of language and literacy education. The concept of embodied literacies, while advocated in current literacy research, may not be easy to imagine, in terms of classroom practice. This paper provides an example of how embodied critical literacies might look, sound and unfold in a classroom setting. It also provides ideas for classroom teachers considering working with improv in their language arts classrooms. Practical implications: The concept of embodied literacies, while advocated in current literacy research, may not be easy to imagine, in terms of classroom practice. This paper provides an example of how embodied critical literacies might look, sound and unfold in a classroom setting. It also provides ideas for classroom teachers considering working with improv in their language arts classrooms. Social implications: The authors argue that providing students with critical encounters is an important enterprise for 21st-century classrooms and improv is one means for doing so. As an embodied literacy practice, improv in the classroom teaches students to listen to/with other players in the improv scene, become attuned to their movements and move responsively with those players and the audience. It opens up spaces for critically reflecting on ways of being and doing, which, in turn, may inform students' movements in further associations with each other both in class and outside the walls of their school. Originality/value: In this paper, building on work conducted by Author 1, the authors extend traditional notions of critical literacy. The authors advocate for developing critical learning opportunities, such as classroom improv, which can actively engages students in critical encounter. In this vein, rather than viewing critical literacy as critical framing that requires distancing between the learner and the topic, the posthuman critical literacy the authors put forward engages the learner in connecting with others, reflecting on those relations, and in doing so, being transformed. That is, through critical encounter, rather than only enacting transformation on texts and/or material contexts, learners themselves are transformed.

This paper presents a case narrative of a university dean who is charged with instituting change within her faculty in order to resolve the faculty's financial issues. The case narrative explores academic conceptualizations of entrepreneurship and describes the dean's context in terms of: her executive leadership team, the financial issues she was facing, the financial contentions in instituting change, legal complexities, programmatic and marketing dimensions, poor academic cultures, and work intensification implications. The teaching notes present five leadership development activities that span these issues and encourage students to engage in a brainstorming, a mind-mapping, a placemat, a jigsaw, and a leadership reflection activities.

Prison education is often cited as the only redeeming experience in an otherwise cruel environment. While educational programs are found in prisons across Canada, they are often guided by philosophies of punishment, risk, and security rather than more transformative frameworks. In addition to prison staff and management who struggle to find value in education for education's sake, the physical spaces in which learning takes place in prison also interfere with efforts at promoting agency and autonomy amongst incarcerated students. In this paper, we conceptualize the prison classroom as a performative space and demonstrate ways in which prison classrooms can become critical public spheres. We review theoretical literature on performative space, specifically in relation to prison education classrooms. We then examine the dynamics of: (1) navigating institutional policies and practices when teaching inside carceral spaces; and (2) the constraints that structure the carceral classroom. Finally, we take up the program Walls to Bridges as a case study example to demonstrate these findings and the transformative power of prison education.

What is social justice-informed co-teaching? Why is it important? How can social justice pedagogy deepen co-teaching practices? What are the key challenges and possibilities open to teachers and learners involved in a social-justice informed co-teaching experience? These questions are useful to ask as they begin to address new pedagogical approaches in teacher education, which engage with the current diverse student population. Each of these questions is discussed in this qualitative research paper. This narrative inquiry adds to the literature on social justice-informed co-teaching in an innovative way. It also critically examines the purposeful endeavor of two professors who used a social justice framework to guide their co-teaching practice and pedagogy. At once, this paper is a lived experience, a story, and a research study. In deconstructing two narratives, the authors articulate outcomes and implications of social justice informed co-teaching practice and pedagogy. Further implications for research and practice in teacher education programs, teaching practices and field experiences, and co-teachers themselves are shared in the closing segment of the paper.

Drawing on semi-structured interview data, this paper examines one man's multimodal engagement with the emotionally difficult aspects of his Chilean heritage. It builds on recent work (e.g., Marshall & Toohey, 2010) that has begun to unearth the intersection between funds of knowledge (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), difficult knowledge (Britzman, 1998, 2000), multiliteracies (New London Group, 2000), and multimodality (Kress, 1997) in an attempt to call attention to the shifting nature of what is considered "difficult" about difficult knowledge, and to the role of multimodality in both accessing and making sense of the difficult in one's funds of knowledge. The analysis reveals that young people might be purposefully kept away from punctuations on their community's semiotic chain that are deemed difficult (e.g., images, documentaries) not only by schools, but also by family members for whom such punctuations invoke painful memories. The paper concludes with a call to teachers to be ever mindful of reproducing knowledge hierarchies in their classrooms, which may be partly mitigated by discussing the affordances and challenges of drawing on students' funds of (difficult) knowledge with families and communities.

This paper highlights the importance of integrating indigenous perspectives on environmental sustainability into mainstream education as a way of bridging the gap in the understanding of indigenous knowledge systems into Western science explanations of sustainable development (SD) in education, at the same time ensuring traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) continuity for future generations as well as taking a steady stand in the global debates on SD. The first part of the paper will attempt to explore the issue of SD through Western and indigenous perspectives and will emphasise on the model of strong sustainability (in theory). Secondly, the importance of TEK will be examined and justified through case studies on Aboriginal peoples of British Colombia and Roviana people of Solomon Islands in achieving goals of sustainability. Thirdly, challenges for TEK will be investigated and some possibilities of protecting the rapid disappearance of indigenous knowledge will be dealt with. Lastly, a pedagogical approach to sustainability will be provided that postulates the relevance of indigenous pedagogy to formal and informal education, attempting to integrate Tilbury's (1995) characteristics of environmental education for sustainability.

This paper provides insight into the use of curriculum analytics to enhance learning-centred curricula in diverse higher education contexts. Engagement in evidence-based practice to evaluate and monitor curricula is vital to the success and sustainability of efforts to reform undergraduate and graduate programs. Emerging technology-enabled inquiry methods have enormous potential to inform evidence-based practice in complex curriculum settings. For example, curriculum analytics, including data from student learning outcomes, graduate qualities, course selection and assessment activities, can be mined from various student learning systems and analysed to inform curriculum renewal strategies and demonstrate impact at both the program and course level. Curriculum analytics can serve to foster a culture of inquiry and scholarship regarding program improvements that is characterised by information sharing within and across disciplinary borders. This paper presents an innovative technology that draws on social network methodologies for assessing and visualising the integration and linkages across individual courses that ultimately form a student's complete program of study. Insights are grounded in the literature and curriculum leadership experiences in a Canadian research-intensive university setting.

Engineering education has traditionally focused on the development of technical skills and knowledge. Nowadays, the need for educating engineers in non-technical skills, such as reflective thinking, is being recognised internationally. This paper proposes that socio-cultural impacts of technology be studied together with the technology itself through the integration of social awareness modules into advanced technical courses, providing a venue for students to exercise their reflective thinking skills in the context of technologies that are of interest to them. The paper presents an exploratory study of the essays of senior year engineering students on the socio-cultural impacts of computer vision technologies. It provides insights on the themes that are of interest to the students and on the students' strengths and weaknesses relating to their reflective thinking abilities. Similar modules would apply well to other advanced courses in the engineering curriculum, to help contextualise technology and enhance the reflective abilities of engineering graduates.

Canadian institutions of higher education are grappling with decolonization, particularly with how to move beyond decolonial and settler colonial theory and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's Calls to Action to practical and specific strategies for meaningful change in the classroom. To that end, this paper offers a case study of a settler instructor's process of decolonization in a popular music analysis course and describes a variety of methods for decolonizing course design and classroom activities. A discussion of how to apply and adapt the author's methods for different courses, programs, and local contexts leads to critical reflection on the impact of these changes on student learning and their efficacy in terms of decolonization itself.

Technological innovations and the prevalence of the computer as a means of producing and engaging with texts have dramatically transformed how literacy is defined and developed in modern society. This rise in digital writing practices has led to a growing number of tools and methods that can be used to explore second language (L2) writing development. This paper provides an overview of one such technique: the contributions of screen capture technology as a means of analyzing writers' composition processes. This paper emphasizes the unique advantages of being able to unobtrusively gather, store and replay what have traditionally remained hidden sequences of events at the heart of L2 writers' text production. Drawing on research data from case studies of university L2 writers, findings underscore the contribution screen capture technology can make to writing theory's understanding of the complex series of behaviours and strategies at the heart of L2 writers' interactions.