Faculty of Education

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Open Access
Mental Imagery and Affect in English/French Bilingual Readers: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective
(Canadian Modern Language Review, University of Toronto, Mar-08) Krasny, Karen; Sadoski, Mark
We investigated the evocation of mental imagery and affect in English/French bilinguals to determine whether the linguistic demands of reading in a second language (L2) limit readers’ ability to form non-verbal text representations of literary stories. The participants were 26 Grade 11 French immersion students enrolled in a Canadian high school. Each student read two literary stories, one in English and another in French. Next they rated story paragraphs for the degree of either mental imagery or emotional response evoked. Later, students reread the same texts and completed a writing task in which they reported their imagery or emotions in response to the two highest-rated paragraphs. Moderate to high correlations were found between ratings of imagery and emotional response for each story, for two French stories combined, for two English stories combined, and for all stories in both languages combined. Reading times were somewhat longer for the French versions. The patterns of response for both the ratings and the written reports replicate and extend earlier research and suggest that as bilingual readers progress in their ability to read in their L2, reports of imagery and affect become closer in kind and number to those reported in response to reading the same text in their first language.
Open Access
(Un)Confident Coders: What Gender Dynamics Appear When Canadian Children Learn How to Code
(Sep-15) Ali, Michelle; Jenson, Jennifer, Dr.
This paper reports on a mixed-methods study that examined the gender dynamics that could be observed when Canadian boys and girls learn to code in a formal classroom environment. The study involved sixty-four, sixth grade students in a suburban Toronto District School Board school who were taught basic computer programming skills using a curriculum developed by the PLAYCES lab at York University. The results showed that in all three classes, although the boys displayed more confident behaviours (e.g. willing to take risks while working, trouble shooting, persisting in the face of challenges etc.) than the girls, there were a few distinct situations in which the girls displayed a strong sense of confidence. The girls' behaviours were analyzed and linked to social contexts and social expectations.
Open Access
Deaf children creating written texts
(Gallaudet University Press, 2000) Mayer, C.; Akamatsu, C. T.
Open Access
University Governance in Canadian Higher Education
(Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, United Kingdom., 2001) Jones, G.A.; Shanahan, Theresa; Goyan, P.
In this paper we review the major historical developments in the evolution of Canadian university governance arrangements and synthesise data from two important national studies in order to provide an overview of university governance in Canadian higher education. We provide an analysis of university governance structures and arrangements, and conclude by reviewing a number of important contemporary issues.
Open Access
Continuing Collaborative Knowledge Production: Knowing when, where, how and why
(Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2001) Haig-Brown, Celia
This paper questions assumptions about conducting research based in programs developed to serve communities which have traditionally had restricted access to the university. Grounded in an off-campus Master of Education initiative, it raises a number of ethical considerations. The questions addressed are as follows. (1) When does one move to doing research on a project which has been a satisfactory collaboration between a university and a community? (2) How is an academic to think about a collaborative project which will not, or perhaps cannot, become a site of research? (3) Where, in the space between community members’ focus on the local/specific and an academic’s focus on the global/theoretical, is it appropriate to share what has been learned? (4) Why should members of a First Nations/Aboriginal community (read any traditionally excluded group) participate in a piece of research destined for the world of academe?
Open Access
“Returning the Dues:” Community and the Personal in a University-School Partnership
(Urban Education, 2001-03-01) Haig-Brown, Celia; James, Carl E.
This study uses interviews to explore students’ perspectives of a university path program, one initiative of a university-school partnership. Responses show that the abstraction of the program lives in concrete and personal dimensions for students as they move from high school to university in the same neighborhood. Advanced placement work at the university and the secondment of faculty from the school board blur distinctions between school and university. Most striking is the students’ desire to contribute to the community that has supported them and is most closely associated with their families, the school, and the university that lies, at least geographically, within community bounds.
Open Access
A Pedagogy of the Land: Dreams of respectful relations
(McGill University, Faculty of Education, 2002) Haig-Brown, Celia; Dannenmann, Kaaren
This article arises out of a partnership between an aboriginal community member and a university faculty member whose relational focus is the development of a pedagogy of the land within the Indigenous Knowledge Instructors Program. (Re)creating traditional knowledge with others in contemporary contexts, as their birthright, is the goal of the program. We struggle to communicate and locate this work within an appropriate 'community.' Dreaming of respectful relations, we are committed to thinking through the complexity of such a quest.
Open Access
Traditional Governance Structures - Current Policy Pressures: The Academic Senate and Canadian Universities.
(Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, United Kingdom., 2002) Goyan, P.; Shanahan, Theresa; Jones, G.A.
The objective of this paper is to identify current policy pressures in Canadian higher education and explore their implications for academic decision‐making bodies based on data we obtained in our national study on university senates. We describe two inter‐related sets of public policy pressures that have emerged in recent years in Canada including on‐going financial restraint and a renewed interest in university research. We conclude by reviewing a number of important implications for Canadian university governance in the context of contemporary policy pressures.
Open Access
Creating spaces: testimonio, impossible knowledge, and academe
(International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2003) Haig-Brown, Celia
This article examines what it means to engage seriously with speech and writing events, such as testimonio, articulated by people whose theoretical base lies primarily in experience outside the walls of academe. I argue that we dismiss such unfamiliar scholarship to the detriment of all involved. If we are truly committed to learning, then we must expose ourselves to language forms and cultural norms that are different from those with which we are familiar. We must learn from them how to acknowledge the limits of our analysis and how to find “impossible knowledge” in unaccustomed places.
Open Access
Foreign Impacts on Japanese and Chinese Higher Education: A Comparative Analysis
(2004) Zha, Qiang
Two forces shaped Japanese and Chinese systems of higher education. These include the impact of foreign influences on the basic academic model; and the indigenization of the universities as part of the national development processes that took place in each country. Japan and China share significant similarities in the patterns and process of their adoption of foreign influences. This essay, however, discusses through comparison the underlying differences behind the perceived similarities between the two countries in borrowing and adopting foreign forms of higher education. The author argues that Japan followed a bifocal approach to the appropriation of foreign ideas in relation to the development of its higher education system. China, in contrast, adopted a go it alone policy, as it was unwilling or unable to abandon some of its deeply held traditional beliefs. The author therefore concludes that Japanese higher education succeeded in drawing a distinction between imported innovations and original ethos, while Chinese higher education failed to adapt innovative foreign models to its traditional patterns.
Open Access
Comparing University: A Case Study between Canada and China
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) Lang, Daniel; Zha, Qiang
Open Access
Understanding Research on Homelessness in Toronto: A Literature Review
(York University and Wellesley Central Health Foundation, 2004) Gaetz, Stephen
Open Access
The Resurgence and Growth of Private Higher Education in China
(2006) Zha, Qiang
Open Access
Participants, texts, and processes in second language writing assessment: A narrative review of the literature.
(University of Toronto Press, 2007) Barkaoui, Khaled
Essay tests are widely used to assess ESL/EFL learners' writing abilities for instructional, administrative, and research purposes. Relevant literature was searched to identify 70 empirical studies on ESL/EFL essay tests. The majority of these studies examined task, essay, and rater effects on essay rating and scores. Less attention has been given to the effects of of examinee factors, scoring methods, and assessment contexts. This absence seems mainly to be the result of a traditional concern with controlling for task and rater variability as 'sources of measurement error'. This article argues for viewing these factors as 'sources of variability' that contribute to the richness and uniqueness of the contexts within which writing performance and assessment occur and for taking them into account when interpreting and using essay test scores. The paper concludes with several implications for research and practice.
Open Access
Rating scale impact on EFL essay marking: A mixed-method study
(Elsevier, 2007) Barkaoui, Khaled
Educators often have to choose among different types of rating scales to assess second-language (L2) writing performance. There is little research, however, on how different rating scales affect rater performance. This study employed a mixed-method approach to investigate the effects of two different rating scales on EFL essay scores, rating processes, and raters’ perceptions. Four EFL teachers in Tunisia rated a set of 24 EFL essays silently and two subsets of four essays while thinking aloud using a holistic scale and then a multiple-trait rating scale. The essay scores were analyzed using G-theory while the think-aloud protocols were coded in terms of Cuming, Kantor, and Power's (Cumming, A., Kantor, R., & Powers, D. (2002). Decision making while rating ESL/EFL writing tasks: A descriptive framework. Modern Language Journal, 86 (1), 67–96.) rater decision-making scheme. The holistic scale resulted in higher inter-rater agreement. Raters employed similar processes with both rating scales. Raters were the main source of variability in terms of scores and decision-making behavior. These findings have implications for writing assessment practices and for further research.
Open Access
Shifting Roles and Approaches: Government Coordination of Postsecondary Education in Canada from 1995 to 2006
(Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2007) Shanahan, Theresa
This paper analyses changing approaches to system-level governance in Canadian post-secondary education from 1995-2006. A review of major policy initiatives reveals a shift in provincial and federal government roles in and approaches to the coordination of post-secondary education. The federal government has strategically invested in post-secondary education, increasing its direct and indirect support for research and development and, at the same time, retreating from other areas of support. Provincial governments have expanded post-secondary systems and increased institutional diversity and the role of the market in post-secondary education while simultaneously developing more mechanisms of coordination.
Open Access
Taking Indigenous Thought Seriously: A Rant on Globalization with Some Cautionary Notes
(Canadian Society for the Study of Education, 2008) Haig-Brown, Celia
Open Access
Indigenous Thought, Appropriation and Non-Aboriginal People
(Canadian Society for the Study of Education, 2010-01-04) Haig-Brown, Celia
In this article, I explore the question, “What is the relationship between appropriation of Indigenous thought and what might be called ‘deep learning’ based in years of education in Indigenous contexts.” Beginning with an examination of meanings ascribed to cultural appropriation, I bring texts from Gee on secondary discourses, Foucault on the production of discourse, and Wertsch on the deep structures underpinning discourse into conversation with critical fieldwork experiences extracted from years of research and teaching. Ultimately hopeful, I conclude the article with direction from Indigenous scholars on appropriate cultural protocol in the use of Indigenous knowledges by non‐Aboriginal people in educational contexts.
Open Access
The Life of a Plant: Playing a Science-based Game in School
(2010-12-08T04:00:30Z) Jenson, Jennifer, Dr.; Muehrer, Rachel
This is a report on the use of a science-focused video game in five very different secondary school settings in Ontario, Canada. A mixed-methods approach was used in the study, and included data gathered on general gameplay habits and technology use, as well as informal interviews with teachers and students who played the game. In total, 161 participants played a series of games focused on the “life of a plant”, and were given both a pre and post quiz to determine if the game helped them retain and/or change what they knew about scientific processes like plant cell anatomy and photosynthesis. Participants showed statistically significant improvement on quizzes that were taken after playing the game for approximately one-hour sessions, despite difficulties in some cases both accessing and playing the game for the full hour. Our findings also reveal the ongoing challenges in making use of technology in a variety of school sessions, even when using a browser-based game, that demanded very little other than a reliable internet connection.
Open Access
Abstract: Experiential Learning through Digital Storytelling (review)
(2011-02-23T21:30:40Z) Anderson, Kenneth Howard