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The history of Canada's educational offerings for Indigenous students was based in colonial and assimilative practice. As such culturally responsive pre-service teacher education needs to respond not only by moving away from historical practice but with a moral and social imperative through programming that aids reconciliation. Current literature outlines the challenges that both Indigenous and mainstream teacher candidates have in developing efficacy towards transcultural skills development. In an effort to respond to both types of students, during the design and development of a 16-month community-based Bachelor of Education program, that was offered in parallel to a campus based program, a model of blended-education for cultural understanding was developed. Using the "elementary science methods" course as design case, this paper will outline the development of the blended model which paired campus- and community-based students. The challenges and successes of the design were determined through a thematic analysis of instructor observations of the pilot during the 2014-15 academic year. Four key themes emerged as important in fostering transcultural understandings within blended learning practice: student efficacy, relationship building, recognition of cultural bias, and legitimizing traditional ecological knowledge. Each of these will be discussed in the context of the course as well as transformative post-secondary educational experiences.

In the winter term of 2016, Cape Breton University launched a revised version of a second year Mi'kmaw Studies course entitled Learning from the Knowledge Keepers of Mi'kmaki (MIKM 2701). This course was designed to be led by local Elders and Knowledge Keepers with facilitation support from university faculty. It was designed by course facilitators as a dual-mode course, with the opportunity for students to participate face-to-face and online, and the excitement it generated quickly went "viral." In this paper, we describe the experiences of the participants in the course through an analysis of their own reflections on the 13 weeks of instruction. The aim of this analysis is to share course design considerations for post-secondary institutions attempting to "Indigenize the academy" at a course level, but also to evaluate the process of co-learning as it was evidenced in the course as a means to address educational complexity and decolonization efforts in the classroom.

Sustainable pre-service teacher education is needed to encourage academic success for under-represented populations, through both culturally responsive and alternative programming options (Carr-Stewart, Balzer, & Cottrell, 2013). In 2013, the Western Canadian University that served as the basis for this case study, implemented a blended learning pilot course in multicultural education for its existing cohort of pre-service teachers, within their Indigenous Focus Teacher Education Program (IFTEP). The aim of the blended pilot was to increase flexibility in participation for the IFTEP students, who were all employed full time as teacher assistants within a local school board. The author examined the design model through qualitative analysis of student interview data, contrasted against observations of activities on the learning management system (LMS). Five themes emerged as important in effective and culturally responsive practice for blended learning design, in this case related to: institutional challenges, student autonomy and the complexity of commitments. This research presents a critical review of the feasibility of adopting blended learning for Indigenous students.

The Periodic Table of the Elements (PTE) is arguably one of the most central topics in chemistry. This article provides a critical review of current teaching practices of the PTE to high-school students and undergraduate university students. It also provides a new teaching model, the "periodic universe", for understanding of the PTE through building on its foundational periodicity. Students learn through a guided re-creation of the PTE from simple periodic simulations and interdisciplinary processes. The periodic-universe teaching model directs students to conceptualize, rather than memorize, relationships between the elements by predicting patterns in progressively challenging simulated worlds. This mixed-method research project consists of both quantitative (n = 58) and qualitative (n = 15) responses from university undergraduate students, demonstrating the utility of inquiry-based learning of the PTE for novice chemistry students. Herein, we position the periodic-universe teaching model in the current educational literature of inquiry and interdisciplinary studies by outlining the function of the model and illustrating its effectiveness on the basis of empirical analysis with undergraduate students in a postsecondary-education setting. The results indicate that knowledge of the PTE increases after instruction with the model, and that nonchemistry-major students have increased engagement, understanding, and appreciation of the importance of periodicity to chemistry when presented with the periodic-universe teaching model.

This paper presents a discussion around the question of data protection, privacy, liability and the resultant policy that has developed both in public K-12 education and post secondary education in Canada. With no central regulation of online protection in Canada educators in some provinces face a digital divide caused by more restrictive policy of one province in contrast to another. To set the stage for the discussion I address the nature of social media and it's use, institutional response to social media in schools with specific reference to the Canadian context. I then propose a potential solution in the form of a social media field trip and analyze three different types field trips I have conducted with graduate students against Moor's (1999) just consequence theoretical framework. Finally, I present implications for practice and possibilities this model could offer K-12 educators to work within current policy, stay safe but still open the doors to social networking and the world.