Physical access for persons with disabilities

For persons with disabilities, the activities that able-bodied people take for granted can be major, often insurmountable challenges. Attempting to enter a restaurant for lunch with friends can result in lengthy and adversarial litigation if the facility is not accessible to a person with a disability or other mobility impairment. This litigation would be initiated after the individual was effectively refused service; a refusal based on hislher personal physical characteristics. If a shopping mall is not equipped with "access amenities", then the disabled person may be excluded from shopping there and thus exercising consumer freedom. If workplaces are not equipped to accommodate the access needs of persons with disabilities, then those people are effectively barred from gainful employment there. If a municipal goveniment building is inaccessible to disabled persons, then they may be excluded from participating in council meetings. These are all activities that the majority of the population enjoys as a matter of course, in that they represent the functions of a free citizen in a free society. If a person is excluded from such activities because of some personal characteristic, then that person is subjected to differential or discr~minatory treatment. The guarantees provided in Canadian feden! and provincial rights legislation, are such that people are not to be discriminated againsL Where buildings and facilities othen\iise open to the public are not accessible for persens with disabilities, then those people are being discriminated against. To challenge these discriminatory practices, individuals initiate complaints through the administrative justice system. To address the extent to which this is a problem, many sources were consulted. Constitutional lawyers, tribunal members, advocates for the disabled and land use planners were interviewed. Case law and legislation were reviewed. Literature on citizenship theory, dispute resolution and dispute avoidance was compiled and assessed. And, the field of land use planning was analyzed (drawing on the WTiter's educational and experiential background) as a possible alternative method for effecting systemic access for persons with disabilities. The conclusion of this study is that there does exist a proactive method for assuring access, a method that can apply the systemic remedy needed to deal with this problem. The current method, which is an adversarial and piecemeal complaint process, has proven ineffective in remedying this discrimination problem~ Failure to provide an appropriate remedy means that persons with disabilities will not enjoy the degree of citizen status enjoyed by the able-bodied. This is the current circumstance, and since equity is the aim of rights legislation, and since such legislative and administrative frameworks have failed in that purpose, then an alternative method is necessary. An alternative model is the one in which land use planning is based. It has conflict avoidance and conflict minimization as underpinnings. And, most importantly, land use planning is already a proyen method of combatting discrimination.

Towards a just community: an examination of the development of cultural citizenship rights in Canada from a communitarian perspective

The notion of citizenship, while a basic human right, has come under scrutiny. It was once assumed a liberal inspired regime of citizenship rights would reign as the primary ideological perspective in the Western world, however this has not been the case. Numerous competing paradigms have questioned the premise upon which liberal guarantees of citizenship rights are based. In particular, communitarianism has subjected liberal rights discourse to a closer examination. Communitarian theory holds that universalist principles negate any articulation of community and its internal diversity, such as cultural citizenship. It is this understanding of citizenship that has taken hold in Canada. The Canadian political experience illustrates a number of attributes associated with communitarian thought. It is a collectivist society that articulates a notion of the common good, acknowledges the internal diversity of its citizens and possesses a highly developed deliberative democratic process. To this end, Canada can be described as being more communitarian than liberal in nature in the process it has adopted to address citizenship rights. However, the type of commuIiitarianism displayed in Canada differs from the political models examined by such scholars as Michael Sandel, Iris Marion Young or Will Kymlicka. Cultural citizenship rights are fluid and malleable in Canada. While no clear guarantees of citizenship rights exist, there is a common commitment by Canadians to engage in a fair, open and inclusive deliberative process. This model is unique to Canada; it cannot be exported in that it is a product of Canadian political culture. As a result, the contemporary demands of cultural citizenship are dealt with effectively and democratically in Canada in that the proper mechanisms for public deliberation exist.

The Implementations of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in Beijing and Ontario Schools

Since the knowledge-based economy has become a fashion over the last few decades, the concept of the professional learning community (PLC) has started being accepted by educational institutions and governments as an effective framework to improve teachers’ collective work and collaboration. The purpose of this research was to compare and contrast the implementations of PLCs between Beijing schools and Ontario schools from principals’ personal narratives. In order to discover the lessons and widen the scope to understand the PLC, this research applied qualitative design to collect the data from two principal participants in each location by semistructured interviews. Four themes emerged: (a) structure and technology, (b) identity and climate, (c) task and support, and (d) change and challenge. This research found that the root of the characteristics of the PLCs in Beijing and Ontario was the different existing teaching and learning systems as well as the test systems. Teaching Research Groups (TRGs) is one of the systems that help Chinese to organize routine time and input resources to improve teachers’ professional development. However, Canadian schools lack a similar system that guarantees the time and resources. Moreover, standardized test plays different roles in China and Canada. In China, standardized tests, such as the college entrance examination, are regarded as the important purpose of education, whereas Ontario principals saw the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) as a tool rather than a primary purpose. These two main differences influenced principals’ beliefs, attitudes, strategies, and practices. The implications based on this discovery provide new perspectives for principals, teachers, policy makers, and scholars to widen and deepen the research and practice of the PLC.

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