Integrating Media Education Into the Curriculum: What Chinese Educators Can Learn from Ontario Education

This study sought to determine if and how the Ontario approach to integrating media education into the curriculum can be applied to Chinese education. The study used thematic analyses to identify the Ontario curriculum‘s attributes and approach to teaching media literacy, and to investigate relevant policies and national curriculum standards in Chinese compulsory education to reveal the status quo of Chinese media education. Finally, the study explored the feasibility of applying the Ontario media education model in China. Findings indicate that the Ontario model can be employed in the Chinese context, but only partly so, because current Chinese media education is limited by protectionism and restrictive policies corresponding to the use of media merely as research tools.

Hidden Motives: An Analysis of Online ESL Teacher Hiring Practices in Japan and Hong Kong

Hidden Motives: An Analysis of Online English as a Second Language (ESL) Teacher Hiring Practices in Japan and Hong Kong is a qualitative research paper examines and compares two large-scale Asian English language teaching programs: Japan’s Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme (JET Programme, 2010) and Hong Kong’s Native-speaking English Teacher (NET) Scheme (NET Scheme, 2013). Both government sponsored programs recruit internationally and invite participants to work within each country’s public schools while living amongst local communities and both programs utilize their online presence to attract, inform, and recruit individuals. The purpose of this research is to investigate whether the JET and NET websites are transparent with their governmental motives aside from improving their students’ English language abilities. While JET and NET websites were interrogated, the research questions were regularly revisited to determine if the two sites made any underlying motives clear to the candidates. The research, supported by academic literature, exposed the JET Programme website to be a branch of the Japanese government’s soft power campaign, whereby JET teachers were hired firstly as potential advocates for Japan and Japanese culture rather than English teachers. Conversely, the NET Scheme appeared to be solely commissioned for English language improvement as reflected by their website. Findings from the research can provide insight to applicants to help them decide if they want to participant in these programs. Without clearly understanding the background that motivates these programs, participants may unknowingly be used to support the host government’s agendas.

The Search for Scholarly Teaching in Elementary Education

Elementary teachers are expected to prepare students to work efficiently with others, solve complex problems and self-regulate their own learning. Considering the importance of a solid educational foundation in the early years, students would benefit if elementary teachers engaged in scholarly teaching. The purpose of this study was to investigate Boyer’s (1990) four dimensions of scholarship, application, integration, teaching and discovery, to better understand if there is scholarly teaching in elementary education. Four professional teaching documents were analyzed using a hermeneutic orientation. A deductive analysis suggests that we do have scholarly teaching in elementary education, with strong evidence that elementary teachers are scholars of application and integration. An inductive analysis of latent and manifest content suggests that underlying humanistic values run deeply through elementary education driving current curricular, instructional and pedagogical practices.

Disquietude: A Sonata-Form Inquiry Into Multiliteracies Practices in an EAL Classroom

This narrative case study describes an English as an Additional Language teacher’s struggle to understand her young adult learners’ apparent resistance toward multiliteracies pedagogical practices in a college setting. Multiliteracies Pedagogy (New London Group, 1996) advocates the use of digital media, and home languages and culture, to engage diverse youth in designing personally meaningful multimodal texts that can significantly impact learner identity, voice, and agency. This arts-based study uses an innovative sonata-style format to document the making of a class documentary, accompanied by teacher reflections on the video project in the form of poetry, journal excerpts, and classroom dialogue. The sonata form provides a unique methodology for teacher inquiry, allowing the teacher-researcher to explore the ways in which curriculum, pedagogy, and sociocultural influences intersect in the classroom. The study does not end with a clear resolution of the problem; instead, the process of inquiry leads to deeper understandings of what it means to teach in the complex worlds of diverse learners.

Critical incident analysis through narrative reflective practice: A case study

Teachers can reflect on their practices by articulating and exploring incidents they consider critical to themselves or others. By talking about these critical incidents, teachers can make better sense of seemingly random experiences that occur in their teaching because they hold the real inside knowledge, especially personal intuitive knowledge, expertise and experience that is based on their accumulated years as language educators teaching in schools and classrooms. This paper is about one such critical incident analysis that an ESL teacher in Canada revealed to her critical friend and how both used McCabe’s (2002) narrative framework for analyzing an important critical incident that occurred in the teacher’s class.

Exploring Capacity Building of Ontario Dental Hygiene Educators During National Curriculum Reform

In times of educational change, educators are given the task of implementing new initiatives that meet the needs of a changing environment; yet, they are often dismissed from developmental phases of the reform. This top-down structure deters educators’ personal capacity building as their knowledge, values, assumptions, and beliefs are not acknowledged or explicitly developed as part of the initiative. This study explored Ontario dental hygiene educators’ perspectives of how they may build personal capacity during an externally mandated national curriculum reform, the Entry-to-Practice Competencies and Standards for Canadian Dental Hygienists (National Competencies). Narratives were collected from 5 dental hygiene educators of diverse educational training and teaching organizations. Three themes emerged that included perceptions of structural influence, perceptions of learning access, and perceptions of identity. Each theme was linked to tasks that were required to build personal capacity for sustainable school change. The theoretical framework and the required tasks demonstrated the interconnectedness between educators, leaders, and the organization for building educators’ personal capacity.

Investigating Formative Assessment: Exploring the Impact on the Self-Efficacy and Motivation of Mathematics Students

This is a study of the implementation and impact of formative assessment strategies on the motivation and self-efficacy of secondary school mathematics students. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was implemented where quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed sequentially in 2 different phases. The first phase involved quantitative data from student questionnaires and the second phase involved qualitative data from individual student and teacher interviews. The findings of the study suggest that formative assessment is implemented in practice in diverse ways and is a process where the strategies are interconnected. Teachers experience difficulty in incorporating peer and self-assessment and perceive a need for exemplars. Key factors described as influencing implementation include teaching philosophies, interpretation of ministry documents, teachers’ experiences, leadership in administration and department, teacher collaboration, misconceptions of teachers, and student understanding of formative assessment. Findings suggest that overall, formative assessment positively impacts student motivation and self-efficacy, because feedback is provided which offers encouragement and recognition by highlighting the progress that has been made and what steps need to be taken to improve. However, students are impacted differently with some considerations including how students perceive mistakes and if they fear judgement. Additionally, the impact of formative assessment is influenced by the connection between self-efficacy and motivation, namely how well a student is doing is a source of both concepts.

Investigation of Theories Supporting Engagement of Resistant Learners in Formal Academic Settings and Curriculum

This study sought to explore ways to work with a group of young people through an arts-based approach to the teaching of literacy. Through the research, the author integrated her own reflexivity applying arts methods over the past decade. The author’s past experiences were strongly informed by theories such as caring theory and maternal pedagogy, which also informed the research design. The study incorporated qualitative data collection instruments comprising interviews, journals, sketches, artifacts, and teacher field notes. Data were collected by 3 student participants for the duration of the research. Study results provide educators with data on the impact of creating informal and alternative ways to teach literacy and maintain student engagement with resistant learners.