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Purpose: Informed by social imaginary, Canadian exceptionalism, and social inclusion, this study explores how teacher candidates experience and interpret internationalization at home at one university in Canada. Design/Approach/Methods: Data were collected from three sources--(a) policy analyses of public documents related to internationalization in Canada and at the university; (b) a student survey on the internationalization of higher education; and (c) individual interviews with 12 teacher candidates. Eight interviewees were local, four White and four racialized minorities, and four were international. Findings: Findings indicate that most participants relate internationalization to student mobility. They present the Canadian society and themselves as open, tolerant, and accepting. Such an imaginary of Canadian exceptionalism does not necessarily coincide with everyday realities of international and racialized teacher candidates. They reported that they experienced Eurocentric curricula, different forms of exclusion, and racism. Some participants enacted agency to disrupt the dominance of White perspectives. Originality/Value: This research addresses knowledge gaps related to internationalization policy as teacher candidates' voices are not often heard in internationalization initiatives. The study suggests that the internationalization of teacher education requires decolonization of curriculum, bridging with anti-racism education, and the internationalization of teacher educators.

Different variants of the selected-response (SR) item type have been developed for various reasons (i.e., simulating realistic situations, examining critical-thinking and/or problem-solving skills). Generally, the variants of SR item format are more complex than the traditional multiple-choice (MC) items, which may be more challenging to test takers and thus may discourage their test engagement on low-stakes assessments. Low test-taking effort has been shown to distort test scores and thereby diminish score validity. We used data collected from a large-scale assessment to investigate how variants of the SR item format may impact test properties and test engagement. Results show that the studied variants of SR item format were generally harder and more time consuming compared to the traditional MC item format, but they did not show negative impact on test-taking effort. However, item position had a dominating influence on nonresponse rates and rapid-guessing rates in a cumulative fashion, even though the effect sizes were relatively small in the studied data.

This article explores the workplace learning of immigrant settlement workers (ISWs) at immigrant service agencies (ISAs) in Canada. Adopting a combination of governmentality and workplace subjectivity as its theoretical framework and institutional ethnography as its methodology, the study examines three forms of workplace subjectivity. First, constructive subjectivity is formed by incorporating racialized immigrants' prior professional and linguistic skills into service delivery. However, the initial hiring intention is grounded in institutional governance, which deliberately prepares these workers for the knowledge of outcome measurement evaluation. Second, organisational training naturalises ISWs' professional subjectivity to fulfil their apparatus role for the institutional regime. Lastly, cultural subjectivity manifests itself in two modes of paradoxes. The promotion of Eurocentric workplace knowledge assimilates ISWs' behaviour, communication, and bodily comportment to the practices of neoliberal workplace value. Outcome measurement adopts culture-blind criteria, emphasising programme quantification while ignoring ISWs' cultural identities in service delivery. In light of these findings, we argue that ISWs' workplace subjectivities are purposefully coordinated by translocal governance ruling power that upholds funders' requests for outcome measurement. The findings are significant in developing ways of understanding and exploring ISWs' learning agency in ISA workplaces by capturing and emphasising their voices.

The present study uses doubly latent models to estimate the effect of average mathematics achievement at the class level on students' subsequent mathematics achievement (the "Peer Spillover Effect") and mathematics self-concept (the "Big-Fish-Little-Pond-Effect; BFLPE"), controlling for individual differences in prior mathematics achievement. Our data, consisting of 13-year-old students from Canada, the USA, and New Zealand, come from a unique cross-national database with a longitudinal design at the student level: the Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS80). This historical survey was administered by IEA in the 1980s and highly influenced the development of educational policies in the following decades. We replicate a widely cited study based on SIMS80, interrogating the validity of its findings of a positive peer spillover effect. When we adjust for measurement error, using doubly latent models, we observe that originally positive peer spillover effects become less positive or disappear altogether. On the contrary, negative BFLPEs become more negative and remain statistically significant throughout. Our study is the only cross-national study to have evaluated both the BFLPE and the peer spillover effect with controls for a true measure of prior achievement -- and the only study to test the peer spillover effect cross-nationally using doubly latent models. Our findings question the empirical results of past and current research evaluating school- and class-level compositional effects based on sub-optimal models that fail to control for measurement error.

There is an increasing number of Chinese graduate students who study in Canada and have quite different educational backgrounds. Despite a large number of studies attending to the challenges and difficulties they encountered in life and study, not much research narratively explores Chinese international students' academic adjustment experiences in graduate programs in Canada. To fill the gap, this research makes a narrative inquiry into three Chinese international students' academic adjustment in the graduate and doctoral programs of two universities in Ontario, Canada. The three-dimensional framework (Clandinin, 2006) is employed to tell and retell their stories. Their narratives have revealed the importance of their native languages and how their past experiences before they came to Canada influenced their academic adjustment. The Eastern and Western cultures have had a lasting effect on their personal and professional development. In addition, they have played multiple roles as Chinese international students, novice researchers, and future educational practitioners.

Integrating community-based learning (CBL) into graduate education has gained attention in higher education during the past decade because CBL allows students to inculcate professional values and ethics, situate academic knowledge and understanding in contexts, and practice academic citizenship through serving communities with disciplinary knowledge and skills. In a North American higher education context, about half of the graduate student population are international students, who have needs in several areas. However, their experiences in CBL are under-investigated and scarcely documented in existing literature and scholarship in either community-based learning or international education. Drawing on international students' experiences in a graduate program infused with CBL components in Canadian higher education, this mixed methods case study examined the impact of CBL on international students' developments in five areas: academic, sociocultural, personal, professional, and global citizenship. Through discussions on the benefit, barriers, and implications of providing CBL to international graduate students, this article offers recommendations for improved higher education policy, programs, and praxis to make CBL more inclusive and responsive to international graduate students.

With the increased restrictions on physical distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, remote proctoring has emerged as an alternative to traditional onsite proctoring to ensure the continuity of essential assessments, such as computer-based medical licensing exams. Recent literature has highlighted the significant impact of different proctoring modalities on examinees' test experience, including factors like response-time data. However, the potential influence of these differences on test performance has remained unclear. One limitation in the current literature is the lack of a rigorous learning analytics framework to evaluate the comparability of computer-based exams delivered using various proctoring settings. To address this gap, the current study aims to introduce a machine-learning-based framework that analyzes computer-generated response-time data to investigate the association between proctoring modalities in high-stakes assessments. We demonstrated the effectiveness of this framework using empirical data collected from a large-scale high-stakes medical licensing exam conducted in Canada. By applying the machine-learning-based framework, we were able to extract examinee-specific response-time data for each proctoring modality and identify distinct time-use patterns among examinees based on their proctoring modality.

Schools with dramatically increased immigrant and refugee student populations need a systematic approach and inclusive process to ensure newcomer students, who differ in their backgrounds, languages, identities, frames of reference, prior educational experiences, abilities, interests, and belief systems, have equal opportunities and resources to thrive and succeed in schools. Based on a two-year qualitative study examining the key actors and strategies in building welcoming and inclusive schools for newcomer students, this article introduces a conceptual framework with key dimensions and strategies for guiding culturally responsive and socially just school leadership praxis.

The number of internationally educated nurses (IENs) who have joined the Canadian healthcare workforce has steadily increased since the mid-twentieth century. In the literature, IENs are often perceived as lacking "soft skills". This study explored IENs' interpretations of soft skills, and how they resist the soft skills discourse in their nursing practice. Data were collected from interviews with IENs from India, Pakistan and the Philippines who work as registered nurses (RNs) in Canada and analysed through the lens of "governmentality" and "technologies of the self." Findings show that IENs perceive nursing procedures ("hard skills") as inseparable from soft skills. Confronting the soft skills discourse, IENs provide holistic patient-centred care. Contrary to the deficit perspective, they demonstrate sophisticated communication and interaction skills. IENs use their transcultural knowledge and multilingual abilities to challenge the English-only policy in healthcare settings and meet the needs of patients from diverse backgrounds. This study suggests that there is a need to recognise, value and utilise IENs' skills, knowledge and experience in Canadian healthcare.

In the context of Canada's reliance on immigration for social and economic development, an effective language policy for migrant students is essential for educational systems. However, existing language policy research puts little emphasis on parental agency, particularly immigrant parents. The qualitative study presented here therefore explored how immigrant parents advocated for more equitable English as an Additional Language (EAL) policies and practices in Alberta, Canada. Through document analysis, interviews with 35 immigrant parents and community members as well as two focus group discussions involving parents and policymakers, this study found that many immigrant parents engaged in intentional informal learning (e.g. workshops, role playing) to acquire knowledge of the EAL system and develop advocacy strategies. Exercising parental agency on behalf of their children, they undertook various collaborative as well as individualised strategies to influence EAL policies. This study challenges the deficit perspective and suggests there is a need to recognise immigrant parents as informed policymakers and engage them as collaborators in decision-making to transform schools and educational systems towards educational equity and justice.

One of the top priorities of immigrants upon their arrival in their host country is access to the labour market. However, many find themselves facing intersecting obstacles as they struggle to secure a job. Based on interviews with 18 immigrant settlement workers (16 female, 2 male) who themselves migrated to Canada from 10 different countries, this article investigates how these immigrants navigated the complex path of transition to work. Adopting intersectionality as its theoretical framework and institutional ethnography as its methodology, the qualitative study presented here focused on how race, gender and class intersect in shaping immigrants' experiences of transition to work as a lifelong learning process. The findings reveal that newly arrived immigrants encounter multifaceted structural barriers in their struggle to secure a foothold in the Canadian labour market. These barriers include delays or even refusal in accepting immigrants' prior qualifications, and they are shaped by the intersections of race, gender and class. The study also reveals how immigrants' experiences of employability-oriented lifelong learning unveil institutional complexes and reflect colonising practices among governmental organisations, qualifications assessment agencies, employment institutions and immigrant service agencies. Instead, a decolonising and inclusive strategy is proposed to provide lifelong learning opportunities for all, acknowledge and affirm cultural difference and diversity as desirable assets, and challenge the current ideological moorings of lifelong learning theories, policies and practices in the age of transnational migration.

This article takes stock of research on immigration and adult education in Canada from 1981 to 2020. Through summative content analysis, we analyze the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education's annual conference proceedings to examine how Canadian adult educators have taken up these topics in their research over the past 40 years. Drawing on intersectionality theory, the analysis focuses on how race, gender, class, and sexual orientation intersect to shape the experiences of adult immigrant learners in producing social inequality. The findings reveal that although Canadian adult educators have progressively adopted an intersectional approach to the study of immigrant experiences in Canada, this shift is insufficient for building inclusive learning spaces that are capable of assisting marginalized immigrants in overcoming multifaceted challenges in the host society. In light of this, we propose an integrative intersectional framework that goes beyond the existing triple analysis embracing racialized immigrants as actors and agents of change with reference to the specifics of everyday reality through the struggle for identity and social equality. This approach also allows adult educators to examine the internal and external layers of complexity between social categories and structural power, constructing a more integrative landscape to capture social and power relations.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative contribution of socioeconomic status (SES) on three grammatical measures--finite verb morphology composite (FVMC), percent grammatical utterances (PGU), and clausal density--in children between the ages of 4 and 9 years. Method: Data for this study were from the normative sample in the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument. For 359 children, hierarchical linear regression was performed to evaluate the amount of variance in FVMC, PGU, and clausal density that was uniquely explained by SES after accounting for child chronological age and language status (typical, impaired). Results: After child age and language status were controlled, SES was a significant predictor of PGU and clausal density scores, but not of FVMC scores. SES uniquely accounted for 0.5% of variance in PGU scores and 0.8% of variance in clausal density scores. Conclusions: Consistent with maturational accounts of children's development of tense markers, results of this study offer evidence that, among grammatical measures, FVMC is uniquely robust to variation in SES. Although significant, the variance of PGU and clausal density scores uniquely accounted for by SES was close to minimum. Clinicians can therefore include these three grammatical measures for assessing children of different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Language policy research puts little emphasis on parental agency in language policy decision-making for English as an Additional Language (EAL) students. This study investigates how migrant parents and community members interpreted and experienced the effects and outcomes of EAL policies. Through qualitative interviews with 35 migrant parents and community members as well as two focus groups, this study shows that from the parents' perspectives, there were systemic inequities of the EAL policies that disadvantage EAL students. In light of the existing inequities and discrimination toward EAL, parents made several recommendations to policymakers at the school, district, and provincial levels. This study contributes to both migrant parental engagement and language-in-education policy. The paper underscores parental agency in language policy decision-making for EAL students; the voices are needed for the development of equitable EAL policies. Results of this research will provide directions for EAL policies, programs, and services, as well as new insights into the effectiveness of advocacy and capacity building of EAL parents.

As massification of higher education developed, employment challenges in changing labour markets aroused the attention of scholars globally. An interdisciplinary approach called world-system theory is applied by scholars from the social sciences, history, anthropology and cultural studies. This study applied the theory in a bibliometric analysis of graduate employment research using R and CiteSpace. It identified the main characteristics (e.g. authors and countries) of relevant research, investigated the social and economic context of certain milestone publications and visualised research hot spots. World-system theory, as a macrosociological approach to describing the world economy and social system, is innovatively applied in illustrating the findings of the current work. Results indicate that core countries not only are economically influential but also dominating the academic research. Scholars in semi-peripheral and peripheral countries are encouraged to establish transnational networks and foster academic collaborations.

This study explores the use of the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), a neuro-fuzzy approach, to analyze the log data of technology-based assessments to extract relevant features of student problem-solving processes, and develop and refine a set of fuzzy logic rules that could be used to interpret student performance. The log data that record student response processes while solving a science simulation task were analyzed with ANFIS. Results indicate the ANFIS analysis could generate and refine a set of fuzzy rules that shed lights on the process of how students solve the simulation task. We conclude the article by discussing the advantages of combining human judgments with the learning capacity of ANFIS for log data analysis and outlining the limitations of the current study and areas of future research.

Comparing group is one of the key uses of large-scale assessment results, which are used to gain insights to inform policy and practice and to examine the comparability of scores and score meaning. Such comparisons typically focus on examinees' final answers and responses to test questions, ignoring response process differences groups may engage in. This paper discusses and demonstrates the use of response process data in enhancing group comparison and fairness research methodologies. We propose two statistical approaches for identifying differential response processes which extend the differential item functioning (DIF) detection methods and demonstrate the complementary use of process data in comparing groups in two case studies. Our findings demonstrate the use of response process data in gaining insights about students' test-taking behaviors from different populations that go beyond what may be identified using response data only.

Rapid response behaviour, a type of test disengagement, cannot be interpreted as a true indicator of the targeted constructs and may compromise score accuracy as well as score validity for interpretation. Rapid responding may be due to multiple factors for diverse populations. In this study, using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 Science data, we examined the comparability of rapid response behaviours for nine different language and cultural groups. Statistical methods were developed to flag rapid responses on different item types and to test differential rapid responding rates between groups. Results showed that rapid response rates and their association with performance were different among the studied groups. However, regardless of students' group membership, a rapid response led to a chance correct rate, and it had a negative impact on performance. The results also indicated limited impact of different test engagement on performance ranking for the studied groups.

Contribution: This paper employs the automatic scoring of short essays as a novel way to determine pre-service teachers' knowledge of and attitudes toward computational thinking (CT) from their written reflections. Implications about designing CT courses for pre-service teachers are discussed. Background: CT is an essential 21st-century competency that supports the development of problem-solving skills. Inspired by computing science problem-solving practices, CT should transcend disciplines, but few universities or colleges include CT courses or CT content in their core courses. It is also difficult to know what pre-service teachers think about CT and their role in promoting it. Research Questions: Do pre-service teachers' coding reflections reveal any important information about their knowledge of, skills in, and attitudes toward CT? Methodology: Traditional qualitative techniques based on human raters are impractical in analyzing hundreds of essays. Topic modeling, an unsupervised machine learning modeling technique, was employed to extract topical features from participants' reflections. In one section of an undergraduate Introduction to Educational Technology course offered at a large university in Western Canada, n = 139 pre-service teachers wrote a short reflection on their experience following a 20 h Accelerated Intro to Computer Science Code.org course. Topics were identified by analyzing contextual trends in participants' written reflections. Findings: Results showed that pre-service teachers' reflections included CT concepts, practices, and perspectives. Specifically, participants connected the coding activity to prior knowledge and experiences.

In the age of transnational migration, the practices and policies of lifelong learning in many immigrant-receiving countries continue to be impacted by the cultural and discursive politics of colonial legacies. Drawing on a wide range of anti-colonial and anti-racist scholarship, we argue for an approach to lifelong learning that aims to decolonise the ideological underpinnings of colonial relations of rule, especially in terms of its racialised privileging of 'whiteness' and Eurocentrism. In the context of lifelong learning, decolonisation would achieve four important purposes. First, it would illustrate the nexus between knowledge, power, and colonial narratives by interrogating how knowledge-making is a fundamental aspect of 'coloniality'. Second, decolonisation would entail challenging the hegemony of western knowledge, education, and credentials and upholding a 'multiculturalism of knowledge' that is inclusive and responsive to the cultural needs and values of transnational migrants. Third, decolonisation would lead to the need for planning and designing learning curricula as well as institutionalised pedagogy based on non-western knowledge systems and epistemic diversity. The final emphasis is on the urgency to decolonise our minds as lifelong learners, practitioners and policy-makers in order to challenge the passivity, colonisation, and marginalisation of learners both in classrooms and workplaces.

The internationalization of higher education in Canada is happening at a rapid pace. One manifestation of internationalization is the increasing enrolment of international students in Canadian institutions. There is little research on international undergraduate students' experiences from their own perspectives as they adapt to a new educational system in Canada. This research examines how internationalization policies at a university in Western Canada were interpreted and experienced by international undergraduates. Based on interviews with 26 such students from 9 countries, this study shows that students have multiple understandings of internationalization and view internationalization as a positive experience for academic and personal growth. Findings also indicated several persistent problems, including a neoliberal approach that treats internationalization as a marketing strategy, limited internationalization of the curriculum, and gaps between the internationalization policy and the experience of international students. The findings have important implications for providing appropriate support for international students and for internationalization policy in higher education.

Immigration is now the primary source of population growth in Canada. For the year 2006, the Canadian Census reported that almost 20 percent of the population was born outside of Canada (Statistics Canada, 2007). Between the years 1991 and 2001 specifically, the number of non-Christians, such as Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Hindus, had more than doubled in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2003). It is estimated that by the year 2017 more than 10 percent of Canadians will be non-Christians. These demographic changes have profound implications for Canadian public school systems. While Canada promotes many ways of recognizing diversity, it seems to demonstrate however an aversion to utilizing the word "religion." The Eurocentric nature of public schools in general means that religious minority parents need to constantly negotiate parameters for their children's involvement in school curricula and activities. This negotiation is particularly challenging for Muslim immigrant parents. Islam is often portrayed as an inherently violent religion and Muslims are seen as threatening the peace and security of Western nations. Yet little attention has been paid to how minority parents negotiate their religious practices within public schools. Given these concerns, data were collected through in-depth interviews with immigrant parents who had recently arrived in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria, Somalia, and Suriname. This study examines how these Muslim immigrant parents struggle within the public schools to negotiate the continuity of their Islamic practices and how they counteract their own marginality as immigrants, a marginality often connected with other sites of oppression such as race and gender. (Contains 3 notes.)

Research in home-school communication has incorporated little, to date, about participation by English as a second language (ESL) parents. This article examines the communication processes between recent Chinese immigrant parents and Canadian teachers at secondary school Parents' Nights. Drawing from observations of three annual Parents' Nights, interviews with teachers and bilingual assistants who acted as interpreters for parents, and focus groups, this study revealed that teachers and parents held conflicting expectations of Parents' Night. Such a mismatch of expectations could make their communications difficult even before meeting at Parents' Night. The organization and delivery of Parents' Nights made it clear that parent participation was strongly limited by a structure of power often faced by marginalized parents within the school space. The study suggested that it is important to move beyond cultural differences to understand actual ESL parent-teacher interactions and that using bilingual assistants or liaisons may help parents participate fully in Parents' Nights or similar school events. Implications for the future development of ESL parent-teacher communication are considered. (Contains 1 table and 6 endnotes.)

In this paper, we develop an information distortion model (IDM) of social class differences in self-beliefs and values. The IDM combines psychological biases on frame-of-reference effects with sociological foci on ability stratification. This combination is hypothesized to lead to working-class children having more positive math self-beliefs and values than equally able salariat children. We further suggest that the same conditions that give rise to the working-class benefit in self-beliefs and values are associated with signaling effects that suppress educational aspirations and attainment. These hypotheses are tested in 1 cross-sectional multinational and 1 longitudinal study. The results in favor of the IDM challenge cultural models of social class differences and have implications for rational action theory.

Based on the affirmation in the scholarship of teaching and learning that adding research component into early geography classes is mutually beneficial to both instructors and students, this paper presents a case study that quantitatively articulates the effects of adding a research project into a first-year physical geography class on students' academic performance. Pushing research into earlier stages of undergraduate students' academics, even in large classes, can be very beneficial yet challenging because most students at this level have no experience in research; plus, they may still be adjusting to university life. Part of the Undergraduate Research Initiative called First Year Research Experience (FYRE) at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada invited faculty to embed a research component into first year undergraduate classes to align research and teaching. A two-year endeavour in a first year physical geography class resulted in some interesting outcomes. (1) The most challenging part of research for students was the research question formation. (2) Students valued the opportunity to conduct a research project. (3) Doing in-class research actually improved student performance as seen in the higher overall average grades. (4) Students who attained the highest exam marks were not those who attained the highest research project marks.

The student population in Canada's higher education institutions is becoming increasingly racially and culturally diverse. Canadian higher education has the obligation to build inclusive teaching and learning environments where the needs and aspirations of students from diverse cultures and backgrounds can be addressed in an equitable manner. Using a Freirean approach, this paper aims to develop a process for deriving useful and practical strategies to meet the challenges of creating culturally and linguistically inclusive classroom environments.

Canadian universities and colleges are becoming increasingly ethnoculturally diverse. Two major social forces have contributed to this change: immigration and increasing enrolment of international students. Minority and international students bring their values, language, culture and educational background to our campuses, to add to and enrich our educational environments. To build an inclusive education, we have the ethical and educational responsibility to embrace such difference and diversity and to integrate it into all aspects of university life, including teaching and learning. However, in our daily encounter with cultural diversity we still confront many challenges, such as the colourblind and the "difference as deficit" perspectives, partially resulting from a lack of knowledge and readiness to approach diversity. The goal of this article is to bridge this gap by examining three selected models commonly used to nurture cultural diversity in higher education: the intercultural education model, the multicultural education model, and the anti-racist education model. It is hoped that this discussion will benefit the university community in Canada as well as in other countries where diversity prevails. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

When I visited Canadian elementary and secondary schools over the past 10 years, many teachers told me that it was difficult to get English-as-a-second language (ESL) parents involved in K-12 education. I was often asked by teachers, "Why don't they show up at school?" The absence of ESL parents from school is often misinterpreted as parents' lack of concern about their children's education. However, many ESL parents indicated that they care passionately. Instead of assuming that ESL parents do not care, educators need to understand the barriers that hinder some parents from participating in their children's education. This article explores the barriers affecting ESL parent-teacher communication based on relevant literature and the author's reflections. It goes on to identify parents' and teachers' varying perspectives on ESL learning, followed by an indication of successful strategies to improve ESL parents' participation. The article concludes that schools and teachers must take the initiative if the resource of ESL parent participation is to be fully utilized.

This study explores adult education programmes under the auspices of multiculturalism at a Chinese cultural centre in Canada in helping immigrants with their cultural development and integration in Canadian society. The study employs an exploratory case study approach combining methods of document analysis and personal interviews. The findings reveal the paradox of multiculturalism as both an enabler and constrainer for adult and lifelong education of immigrant learners. On the one hand, the creation of the cultural centre as a learning space affords members of the community opportunities of adult and lifelong learning. On the other hand, their cultural and educational roles were hindered by lack of proper funding, support and recognition. The paradox of multiculturalism speaks to the co-existence of Canada's commitments to democratic principles of fairness, justice and equality with the negative attitudes and behaviours toward ethno-specific organisations. The findings of this study have significant implications for adult education in revisiting its practices and developing more inclusive and accessible programmes for adult immigrants.

Under the new mobilities paradigm, migration is conceptualized as circulatory and transnational, moving us beyond the framework of methodological nationalism. Transnational mobility has called into question dominant notions of migrant acculturation or assimilation. Migrants no longer feel obligated to remain tied to or locatable in a "given", unitary culture. Rather, they are becoming embedded within a shifting field of increasingly transcultural identities. While migrants are becoming more transnational and adopting fluid, transcultural identities, there is a lack of focus and engagement with transnationalism as well as transculturalism in the official Canadian public school curricula. As scholars contend, Canadian school curricula are still based on Eurocentric, homogenizing, nationalistic discourses that tend to normalize values, norms, and behaviours that are perceived as "different" from the dominant norm. In response to the limitations of Canadian official curricula, as noted by various scholars who have examined curriculum documents, this essay proposes a revision of Canadian curricula in the context of transnational mobility with the aim of developing an approach that would integrate transnational and transcultural perspectives into the existing system. The article thus proposes a transnational and transcultural framework as an alternative to build a more ethical and inclusive school curriculum in Canada.

The Jin (Jin refers to Shanxi Province) merchants have a very important position in the history of Chinese business. The Jin merchants is a business course that investigates Shanxi businessmen and their business activities. As a local characteristic of the business curriculum of China, this course is taught in a number of universities. Taking the development of the new Jin merchants in Toronto as a breakthrough point, this article expounds the necessity of teaching the internationalization of the Jin merchants and puts forward the corresponding development strategies from the aspects of teaching objectives, curriculum, and the building of an international cooperation platform of teaching and scientific research. This study can promote teaching the internationalization of the Jin merchants and provide a chance for more people to understand the teaching of the Jin merchants.

Chinese children of immigrant families are often perceived as good at memorization and rote learning or as polite, obedient, and passive students lacking creativity and criticality. Guided by Multiple Literacies Theory and translanguaging, this study explores how Chinese children in a Mandarin-English bilingual program skillfully navigate different languages in their literacy practices. Data collection included classroom observations of eight students, interviews with their parents and teachers, and artifacts of students' work. Results indicate that these children exceeded languages boundaries among English, Hanyu Pinyin, simplified and traditional scripts of Chinese in their literacy practices. They demonstrated creative uses of languages, such as inventing poems, playfully creating nicknames and homonyms. These children were critical of copying Chinese characters, a common literacy practice in Chinese learning, challenging both the authority of the teacher and of the text. Their creativity and criticality counter the traditional image of Chinese learners. The study suggests educators need to question the boundaries around languages, recognize students' creativity, and practise flexible bilingualism and flexible pedagogy.

This chapter examines current issues in English as Second Language (ESL) policies and programs for adult immigrants in Canada from a critical multiculturalism perspective.

Guided by post-structural perspectives of identities as processes of becoming and transculturation and transnationalism, this study explores how multilingual students in a Mandarin-English bilingual programme form their sense of identities in a dynamic process. Multiple forms of data are collected, including observations, interviews and documents. The findings indicate that multilingual students are mobile, namely, they move across linguistic, cultural and ethnic spaces of interaction. In addition, they challenge the dominant discourse of any fixed and hyphenated identity and take up transcultural and transnational identities that allow their comfortable circulation among different worlds. This study calls for a need to unfold children's multiple and mobile identities and explores new possibilities for life.

This article contests a racialised skills regime in Canada. Canadian studies of the labour market transitions of skilled immigrants are analysed through the lens of critical race theory. The analysis shows that knowledge and skills of recent immigrants in Canada are racialised and materialised on the basis of ethnic and national origins. Skin colour is a central basis of social marking. Through processes of de-skilling and re-skilling, a racialised regime of skill has become a social engineering project for manufacturing normative, white, docile corporate subjects who conform to Canadian norms and workplace cultures. The study demonstrates that skill is not colour-blind; it is coloured. Skill is not only gendered and classed, but it is also racialised. The findings move us beyond the traditional colour-blind, gender- and class-based analyses of skill that fail to account for racial differences in the social construction of skill.

This paper revisits and revisions Education for All (EFA) in the age of global migration with the aim of developing more inclusive approaches towards social justice and equity in education. Drawing on cases of internal and international migration in China and Canada, this paper compares and contrasts policies and practices in the education of migrants and their children to discern common issues and challenges in both country contexts. The findings reveal that despite China's nine-year compulsory education law for all school-aged children, migrant children are often deprived of equitable learning opportunities, resulting in their being the most educationally marginalised in China. The case of Canada demonstrates some of the challenges facing immigrants in having their prior learning and work experience recognised. Lessons learned from this comparative analysis have important implications for the post-2015 EFA revisioning process in terms of developing a holistic, inclusive lifelong learning framework which ensures that the learning needs of both young and adult learners are met through access to equitable learning opportunities as well as recognition of their prior learning and experience.

Cognitive and psychometric variables have directed research on student test performance. However, student learning involves a substantial affective component. The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between two kinds of affective variables--interpersonal trust and attitudes towards standardised tests--likely to underlie student test performance. We also examined the effect of a print media report on students' trust and attitudes towards testing. Using structural equation modelling, we investigated the responses of 206 university students to a modified version of the Test Attitude Survey and Interpersonal Trust Scale. One notable result indicated that variation in students' attitudes about the effort expended on tests was explained by their interpersonal trust and their attitudes towards the value placed on tests. Viewed through the lens of expectancy theory, these results suggest that affective variables need to be more fully considered when considering practice and generating policy to improve student test performance.

The last few decades have witnessed both an expansion and a transformation of immigration flows, which pose significant challenges with respect to how people work with differences across culture and space. Against this background, this paper explores how some Chinese immigrant engineers respond to differences in the Canadian labour market. It not only examines some of the learning practices engaged by the immigrants as they negotiate professional niches and professional identities, but also demonstrates how their learning process is socially mediated. In particular, it shows that licensure processes and immigrant settlement services are instrumental in entering immigrants into the cultural and social order in the Canadian labour market. It pinpoints a lack of recognitive justice in the ways in which immigrants' learning processes are institutionally reshaped. Informed by the sociocultural approach, this paper treats learning as a social participatory process, through which individual identities are constituted and reconstituted.

Fuelled by globalisation, the internationalisation of higher education in Canada is happening at a rapid pace. One manifestation of internationalisation is the increasing enrolment of international graduate students in Canadian institutions. Many of these students face challenges and barriers in integrating into Canadian academic environments including isolation, alienation, marginalisation and low self-esteem. This case study investigates a programme at a large Canadian university intended to help international graduate students with their adaptation to an unfamiliar academic environment. The research shows that the programme was successful in creating a transnational learning space where international students developed a sense of belonging, increased cross-cultural understanding and raised awareness about global issues. More importantly, it helped international students with their integration into a Canadian learning community. The findings have important implications for the development of programmes to provide appropriate levels of support for international students and for building internationally inclusive campuses.

There is considerable evidence that overlearned symbols, especially arrows, can orient attention to peripheral locations. In 2003, Pratt and Hommel showed that when 1 arrow is selected from a set of arrows, based on an attentional control setting for a specific target color, the selected arrow determines the orientation of attention. Recently, Leblanc and Jolicoeur (2010) reexamined this finding, and concluded that spatial proximity of the arrow to the target, not the symbolic value of the arrow, determines the orienting of attention. Here, we manipulated both the symbolic value of the cue (direction arrows or directionless circles) and the proximity of the cue to the peripheral target location (near or far), and found that although proximity does play a role in the orienting of attention (larger cuing effects were found with far cues than near cues), the symbolic content of the cue also plays an important role (larger cuing effects were found with arrows than circles). Thus, both the symbolic value and the spatial proximity of cues affect the orienting of attention. (Contains 2 figures.)

As a result of globalization and transnational migration, many countries are becoming increasingly ethno-culturally diverse. Unfortunately, lifelong learning has failed to integrate cultural difference and diversity into educational environments. Rather than facilitating immigrants' adaptation, lifelong learning has become a vehicle for assimilating immigrants into the dominant norms and values of the host society. To build inclusive and socially just lifelong education, this article proposes "transnational lifelong learning for recognitive justice and inclusive citizenship" that offers a promising alternative to distributive and retributive approaches to lifelong learning. This framework questions the claim that a universality of citizenship transcends cultural difference and particularity. It suggests "pluralist citizenship" as an alternative form of citizenship that recognizes transnational flows of migration and concomitant diasporic allegiances and affiliations. In rejecting the deficit model of lifelong learning, this framework acknowledges and affirms cultural difference and diversity as positive and desirable assets. "Transnational lifelong learning" seeks to balance freedom of mobility with protection, recognition and membership. (Contains 1 note.)

Despite claims that prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) can act as a transformative social mechanism and a means of social inclusion, this study reports that PLAR has become a serious barrier to adult learning rather than a facilitator. Drawing from Foucault's concept of governmentality, the study examines the difficulties that immigrant professionals have experienced in having their foreign credentials and work experience recognized in the contexts of Canada and Sweden. Using document analysis and interviews, the study analyses how PLAR has created a system of governing through technologies of power and technologies of the self which work as dividing practices in discounting and devaluating immigrants' prior learning and work experience. The study concludes that PLAR has become a technical exercise and a governing tool rather than a form of social transformation.

This article compares teacher education in China with Canada, with the aim of fostering a cross-cultural dialogue between the two systems. Using case studies the article attempts to address the following questions: What can the two countries learn from each other? Can Canadian teacher education be a possible alternative model for China? Can Canada's teacher education curriculum be used to enhance greater pedagogical preparation and more pre-service teaching practice for China? Is Canada's move towards strengthening professionalism in teaching of value to China?

This article examines the intersection of age and ICT (information and communication technology) competency and critiques the "digital natives versus digital immigrants" argument proposed by Prensky (2001a, 2001b). Quantitative analysis was applied to a statistical data set collected in the context of a study with over 2,000 pre-service teachers conducted at the University of British Columbia, Canada, between 2001 and 2004. Findings from this study show that there was not a statistically significant difference with respect to ICT competence among different age groups for either pre-program or post-program surveys. Classroom observations since 2003 in different educational settings in Canada and the United States support this finding. This study implies that the digital divide thought to exist between "native" and "immigrant" users may be misleading, distracting education researchers from more careful consideration of the diversity of ICT users and the nuances of their ICT competencies. (Contains 7 tables and 3 figures.)

Interest in home-school communication has paid little attention, to date, to the experiences of English as a second language (ESL) parents. This article examines recent Chinese immigrant parents' and Canadian teachers' perspectives of ESL learning presented at Parents' Night. On the basis of observations of three annual Parents' Nights, interviews of teachers and bilingual assistants who served as interpreters for parents and focus groups, the study reveals a deep division between the two on both what and how students should learn. Teachers believed that the ESL classes help socialize students into Canadian school and social cultures and develop language and study skills and appropriate attitudes to help prepare them for entry into mainstream classes. In contrast, in the parents' views, the current ESL program has many problems, such as the lengthy time students stayed in the program, the lack of exams, mixed grades, the low level of content, and the lack of grammar instruction. (Contains 3 footnotes and 2 tables.)

This study examines the role of adult education in bringing about social change through community development initiatives at a grassroots organisation called SUCCESS (United Chinese Community Enrichment Services Society), an immigrant community organisation in Vancouver, Canada. It adopts a case study approach. The study focuses on the historical development of SUCCESS, the provision of programmes and services, major changes in SUCCESS, and the social forces behind the changes. The study reveals that SUCCESS was founded in 1973 in response to the failure of government agencies and mainstream organisations to provide accessible social services and adult education programmes for newly arrived Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong. During its first 25 years of existence, SUCCESS helped build a community for adult immigrants where they felt they belonged. It played multiple roles with a three-pronged focus: providing professional services and adult education programmes, advocating on behalf of immigrants, and facilitating citizenship education and community development. This study exemplifies the role of adult education for social change. It demonstrates that grassroots organisations are important sites for emancipatory learning and social action. (Contains 1 note.)

Peer evaluation has been criticized as a threat to academic freedom and has been used, usually erroneously, as a justification for academic reappointment, tenure promotion, and merit pay. In recent years, scholars have recommended that peer consultation, which is primarily designed to improve teaching, be honored, but apart from evaluation. In this study, peer consultation consists of three components: in-class peer observation, peer-to-peer discussion, and student input. This study explores how teachers and teaching assistants perceived their experience with peer consultation. Methods of data collection reflected a qualitative case study approach and included participant observations, audio-recorded interviews, student questionnaires, and focus groups. Data showed that peer consultation provided an opportunity for teachers to learn teaching strategies from each other, build upon each other's teaching, reflect on their own teaching experience, and augment their understanding of their teaching beliefs. Despite these benefits, teachers reported feeling uncomfortable because of the power relationship between the observer and the observed, and new teachers were apprehensive about their perceived lack of experience. Non-native English speaking teachers also felt anxious when they were observed by native English speaking teachers. Analysis shed useful light on implementation of peer consultation as a powerful professional development force for academic staff in universities.

This study examined Canadian and Chinese first, fourth, and seventh graders to determine sex-related, culture-related, and age-related differences in writing topics. Children were asked to pretend they were animals and write stories about the animals' adventures. Both countries showed gender and age differences in choice of animals which reflected sex role stereotypes. (SM)