ERIC Number: EJ1444670
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Nov
Pages: 37
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0895-9048
EISSN: EISSN-1552-3896
Available Date: N/A
E-Learning for the Public Good? The Policy Trajectory of Online Education in Ontario, Canada
Educational Policy, v38 n7 p1676-1712 2024
Our critical historiography of e-learning policy in Ontario, Canada, traces the policy's trajectory through three settlements (2006-2022) and shows how successive governments have mobilized neoliberal discourses of personalization, access, and choice to justify new arrangements with private actors, within a broader sociopolitical context that includes increased privatization and commodification of public institutions, cuts to public spending, and imagines individuals as rational subjects driven to maximize their economic potential. This context exacerbates challenges students marginalized by schooling already face. Findings from our critical discourse analyses of government documents and news media reports also demonstrate that online learning in Ontario is neither personalized nor customizable but instead is centralized, standardized and, by design, operates independent of rather than interdependent with community. Further, our findings highlight the interdependence of schools -- online and in-person -- with social processes that create and perpetuate inequality, including gendered and racialized poverty, locally and abroad.
Descriptors: Electronic Learning, Educational Policy, Foreign Countries, Historiography, Educational History, Government Role, News Media, Neoliberalism, Educational Change, Online Courses, Discourse Analysis
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Information Analyses
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A