Official-Language Minority and Aboriginal First-Language Education: Implications of Norway’s Sámi Language Act for Canada

Norway has given official-language status to the languages of its aboriginal peoples, the Sámi, yet Canada has accorded that status only to English and French, the languages of the colonizers. In Norway, the 1992 legislation giving major language and cultural rights to the Sámi has had a major impact on Sámi education. This Norwegian experience has significant implications for official-language minority and aboriginal first-language education in Canada, shedding light on such important topics as minority teacher educa- tion, minority first-language pedagogy, curriculum texts, community attitudes to minority languages, language support services, school administration, devolution of control, cultural incorporation, and the maintenance of cultural identities. As a result, in this article I question the appropriateness of official policies and language practices in Canada. La Norvège a accordé le statut de langue officielle aux langues de ses peuples autochtones, les Sámis. Cependant, le Canada n’a accordé ce statut qu’à l’anglais et au français, langues de ses colonisateurs. En Norvège, la législation de 1992, accordant des droits linguistiques et culturels majeurs aux Sámis, a eu un impact considérable sur l’éducation de ceux-ci. Cette expérience norvégienne qui comporte des implications significatives pour l’éducation relative à la langue officielle des minorités et à la langue maternelle des autochtones au Canada, jette un éclairage sur des sujets importants pour les minorités tels: la formation des maîtres, la pédagogie relative à leur langue maternelle, les attitudes de la communauté à l’égard des langues des minorités, les services de soutien linguistiques, l’administration scolaire, la dévolution du contrôle, l’incorporation culturelle et le maintien des identités culturelles. Par conséquent, je remets en question dans cet article le bien-fondé des politiques officielles et des pratiques linguistiques au Canada.

Acquiring skills in music technology

This chapter explores how individuals acquire music technology skills in various settings. We consider this acquisition with reference to the psychological theories of behaviourism, constructivism and metacognition/metalearning. We also discuss what it means to learn, be creative and pursue a musical career within a fast-moving, technology-driven world. What do professional musicians, sound engineers and educators regard as key skills and competencies in music technology, how have priorities changed over time and what attributes are considered as essential for the future? We illustrate our key findings using a wide range of examples drawn from varied cultures, musical and educational settings

Northern Canadian Aboriginal teachers' perceptions of classroom learning environments

This study is based on the premise that Aboriginal teachers possess valuable knowledge and insights with regard to the education of Aboriginal children. The assumption was that, if asked, these teachers would willingly share their experiences, knowledge, and perceptions in an effort to contribute to the academic research which seeks to understand the processes of cross-cultural negotiation and ameliorate the cultural conflict existing in cross-cultural classrooms. The purpose of the study was to determine the perceptions of Northern Canadian Aboriginal teachers regarding effective classroom learning environments. This study examines the early socialization experiences of seven Northern Canadian Aboriginal teachers. The research attempts to link traditional cultural values and primary socialization experiences to the teachers' perceptions, beliefs, and practices regarding the development of their classroom learning environments. In effect, to address the "why" questions with regard to the teachers' development of the learning environment within their classrooms. When the research data were analyzed, the relationship between the teachers' recounted socialization experiences, traditional cultural values, and their development of classroom learning environments was evident. The conclusion can be made that these Aboriginal teachers integrate traditional cultural values learned through their primary socialization experiences with their development of classroom learning environments which reflect their culture, and compliment the patterns of interaction in their communities, to make learning in the classroom as compatible as possible with the learning that takes place outside it. Further, this study provides information, through the Aboriginal participants' observations and suggestions, for non-Native teachers who are concerned with creating classroom environments that reflect Aboriginal students' culture and respect the knowledge which they bring with them to the classroom setting. The identification of a research method which facilitated small group interaction and participation in the research process was perceived as a critical consideration with regard to conducting this study. Focus groups were identified as a suitable methodology and used as the means of data collection for this qualitative research study. An important result was that collective exploration of individual experiences served to expand the participants' knowledge and understanding of their own teaching practice. Conclusions regarding the appropriateness of the focus group methodology when conducting research with Aboriginal participants are included in the findings of the study

Towards an increase in the supply of physics teachers

This research aimed to assess the current situation with regard to the staffing and uptake of physics courses in schools; to determine the attitudes of physics undergraduates, physics PGCE students and teachers of physics towards a career in teaching; to investigate the factors which may affect these attitudes and from this information to suggest ways in which the supply of physics teachers may be increased. In the short-term, if the curriculum time allotted to physics is to be maintained, it may be necessary to devise teaching schemes involving less class contact time for physics teachers or the use of underqualified teachers of physics. In this context the learning method generally called supported self-study is described. [Continues.

Shakespeare and Boyhood: Early Modern Representations and Contemporary Appropriations

This dissertation demonstrates that Shakespearean boyhood, both in early modern plays and contemporary reimaginings for young readers, critiques patriarchal and hegemonic ideals through the rhetoric and behavior of boy characters. Although critics have called Shakespeare’s boy characters indistinguishable, I find that they provide Shakespeare a unique resource to offer persuasive skepticism about heroic conventions, education, and political instability. This project begins by examining the lexical network of boy in order to chart its uses in early modern England. The subsequent three chapters establish how Shakespeare uses boys to comment on a range of ideal manhoods, such as the chivalrous knight, the Herculean hero, the humanist man of moderation, and several dramatic representations of the monarchy. Having established the diverse ways Shakespeare uses boy characters to negotiate masculine gender ideals, this project then investigates how Shakespearean boyhood is appropriated in contemporary children’s literature. I discover that the gender features regarding Shakespeare’s boys noted in previous chapters find expression in these later adaptations, and that the gender complexities that exist in Tudor-Stuart drama and culture appear in these boy books and point to a more fluid notion of gender identity than critics have hitherto considered. Methodologically, this project draws on masculinity studies, childhood studies, and social histories of the family, as well as gender and adaptation theories to account for the boy’s analogous function in early-modern plays and contemporary novels. The larger significance of the project is in how it enhances our understanding of how Shakespeare conceived of boyhood in his plays and how such plays have been reconceived in contemporary boy books. By analyzing both the early modern representations and contemporary appropriations of Shakespearean boyhood, I first demonstrate how the playwright’s complex use of boyhood critically engages with some of the most pressing issues regarding early modern masculinity and offers compelling skepticism about conventional ideals of early modern manhood. Then, I establish how Shakespearean boyhood resurfaces in these adaptations when children’s authors likewise depict varied and complicated boys equally in dialogue with contemporary gender debates about boyhood

You\u27re a teacher because you say you are: Performance, Professionalization, and the Early Modern English Schoolmaster

Tudor and Stuart England serves as the ideal sociological, historical, and literary landscape for confronting a turbulent legacy of professionalization among educators. During an era in which occupational groups began to professionalize, teachers--from domestic tutors, to grammar schoolmasters, to university dons--emerged as a vital core of an educationally-conscious and theatrical society. Many early modern educators incorporated drama in their classrooms, and some acted or wrote for the stage. Because of their placement within an inherently educational and dramatic culture, schoolmasters did not enjoy the status and recognition of the so-called traditional professions. Given the theatricality of the classroom, I argue that the early modern stage makes the precariousness of these professionals particularly visible via the dramatic representations of their work. Just as the actors who play schoolmasters on stage must perform their parts, those who practice as educators in daily discourse must act according to a set of rules and expectations set forth by members of the public and by other members of the profession. This common thread of performance binds dramatic and actual schoolmasters together, and their struggle for professional recognition plays out in the confines of the theater or in the classroom. Beyond reflecting the reality of many schoolmasters\u27 situations, I suggest that on-stage performances of the profession informed or shaped their contemporary professionalization efforts.With the proximity of performance and pedagogy serving as my critical foundation, my project seeks to understand professionalization through the lens of performance. To this end, I offer a series of close readings of key dramatic texts, starting with Gascoigine\u27s The Glasse of Government, which prominently feature representations of the figure of the schoolmaster. After providing a historical overview that establishes the schoolmaster\u27s professional identity via the period\u27s non-dramatic and pedagogical literature, I concentrate on both academic and nonacademic plays in which the schoolmaster (and, by extension, an entire profession) suffers an image crisis that replicates the contemporary professional climate. I highlight how these diversely qualified and positioned educators perform their professions on stage either to the benefit or detriment of a larger, shared professionalization movement. Whereas the period\u27s vernacular academic drama (as seen in Club Law and The Parnassus Plays) or commercial plays set in the university (Marlow\u27s Doctor Faustus and Greene\u27s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay) largely upholds the profession by demonstrating how central performance was to scholarly, social, and national advancement, the era\u27s public drama generally depicts a less complimentary reality via performance. When schoolmasters find themselves on the world\u27s stage beyond their classroom, such as Gerald in The Two Noble Kinsmen and Holofernes in Love\u27s Labour\u27s Lost, their professional status is emptied of meaning as made emblematic by their time on stage. In addition to considering representations of established schoolmasters, I devote space to investigating plays (Redford\u27s Wyt and Science, Shakespeare\u27s The Taming of the Shrew, and Dekker and Webster\u27s Westward Ho) in which the role of the schoolmaster is freely assumed by non-educators thanks to the performance potentials inhered in the profession. Thus, in viewing the staged schoolmasters\u27 acting as a display of a larger professional practice built on performance elements, I demonstrate how we might read dramatic representation as an active contributor to the historic professionalization crisis common to early modern schoolmasters

Médiatisation et juridicisation : les nouvelles formes d’action des militants de l’école

A partir d’une étude ethnographique du combat mené en faveur de la scolarisation des enfants d’un squat par un ensemble d’associations, cet article met en évidence les nouvelles formes de lutte des militants de l’école. Confrontés aux contradictions de l’administration et du politique, ils apprennent à se servir d’armes comme le recours aux médias et à la justice pour faire valoir leur cause. Les fédérations de parents d’élèves et les syndicats enseignants se trouvent déstabilisés par ces évolutions qui resituent leur combat dans un environnement social large et complexe en même temps qu’elles les obligent à une grande attention au localBased on an ethnographic study focused on a struggle in favor of schooling squatters’ children by a group of associations, this article throws light on new forms of school militants’ fighting. Confronted to contradictions of the administration and the politics, they learn how to use weapons such as media and justice in order to advance their cause. These evolutions destabilize parents’ federations and teachers unions who resituate their struggle in a broad and complex social environment, paying more attention to the loca