Despite the long history of the idea of democratic education, the articulation of how teacher educators enact democratic practices remains elusive. The purpose of this research was to examine how we understand and enact democratic principles in our physical education teacher education (PETE) practices. Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices…

The overarching objective of this study is to become more closely attuned to the politics of curriculum by identifying the discursive practices employed by governments to position curricular reform. In particular, this analysis aims to show how the twinning of neoliberalism and neoconservatism has served to justify shifts in curriculum at three…

Within political philosophy and particularly in the work of Chantal Mouffe and Hannah Arendt, "agonism" has been described as representing the notion of being able to challenge and dissent in a productive way. However, little is known about how agonism is used in the educational literature, other than some applications relevant to…

This article presents a qualitative practitioner research study designed to understand how a morally complex Israel curriculum impacts the nature of secondary school students' relationships with Israel. The research was conducted with 31 students enrolled in an elective about Israeli society at a Jewish high school in Canada. At both the start and…

In this arts-based research study, the creative concept of a co-constructed, learner-centered, and democratic syllabus (Marino, 1997; Matusov & Marjanovic-Shane, 2017; Ricci, 2012; Richmond, 2016; Shor, 1996) is creatively and critically examined through a poetic inquiry that focuses on its pedagogical significance in one of the Canadian…

In this 25-minute conversation café, participants synthesized the findings of Braun, Kaipainen & Usman's (2018) environmental scan of experiential learning (EL) at the University of Calgary with their conference learning to create an experience and evidence-informed hypothesis of the next strengths, challenges, and required supports on the EL…

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…

Over the course of the 2015-2016 academic year, 12th-grade students at a Jewish high school in Canada participated in a research study that assessed how they integrated morally complex narratives in Israel's past into their own relationship with the country. This article presents material based on how students reacted to learning that some Jewish…

Purpose: This article focuses on the role of school and district leadership in the development and implementation of reform aimed at increasing racial and religious tolerance. It chronicles the rise of intercultural and democratic citizenship curriculum in three North American sites--Springfield, Massachusetts, Kirkland Lake, Ontario, and San…

This research shows how two teacher educators, one from Canada and one from the United States, have attempted to imbue their preservice and graduate education practices with a sense of social justice, despite the downgrading of the importance of social justice by accreditation agencies such as National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher…

In the era of globalisation, competition has also become global. In higher education, countries worldwide are attaching increasing importance to international ranking exercises and subscribing to the "world-class universities" paradigm, complemented by various strategies to benchmark with leading universities in order to enhance the…

In this paper we explored conceptual ambiguities of character education within the present Ontario Ministry of Education initiative. Through the critical lens of moral development theories and theories of mind, social and cognitive domains and their affect on character development were examined. Based on these findings three shortcomings in…

There is a propensity, when considering the meaning(s) of citizenship, to think in terms of universality and equality rather than difference and inequity. In a North American context, citizenship often operates as a taken for granted status with the requisite rights and responsibilities associated with membership in a nation. In education, how…

The author proposes that a wide range of value issues be taught in teacher education programs, thus contributing significantly to the teacher trainees' general value development and to their capacity in turn to teach values as an integral part of subjects in the schools. (Author/JR)

Examines the state of peace education in the school curriculum and its relation to values education. Presents paradigm to examine values analytically. Suggests administrators, policy makers, and values educators consider what indoctrination is occurring, what ought to be happening, and what progress can be made toward instituting authentic ethical…