Not “As Canadian as Possible Under the Circumstances”: The Struggle to be Visible in Canadian Curriculum Studies

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Homi Bhabha and Canadian Curriculum Studies: Beyond the Comforts of the Dialectic

In this article we consider the potential for the work of the postcolonial theorist, Homi Bhabha, to engage us in important reflections on Canadian curriculum studies. Drawing on Bhabha’s writings and interviews, we offer possibilities for ways in which his concepts of cultural difference, hybridity, and the third space, could influence English language art education, social studies education and teacher education

The Difficulty With Difference in Teacher Education: Toward a Pedagogy of Compassion

In this article we consider possibilities for addressing the dilemmas and difficulties that often arise in preparing beginning teachers for culturally diverse classrooms. Based on our research and personal experiences in teacher education classes and informed by psychoanalytic theory, we discuss student teachers' possible resistance to the "difficult knowledge" of racism and oppression. We suggest that a pedagogy of compassion may offer potential for opening productive conversations with our students on questions of cultural difference and teaching.Dans cet article, les auteurs étudient diverses strategies pourfaireface aux dilemmes et aux difficulties qui se posent souvent alors que Von prépare les nouveaux enseignants à travailler dans des salles de classe où il y existe une diversité culturelle parmi les apprenants. En puisant tant dans leurs recherches que leurs vécu, et s'appuyant sur la théorie psychoanalytique, les auteurs discutent de la résistance que les stagiaires pourraient manifester face à "Vapprentissage difficile" du racisme et de I'oppression. lis terminent en proposant qu'une pédagogie de la compassion pourrait s'averer utile pour entamer avec les étudiants des conversations productives au sujet des differences culturelles et de I'enseignement

Exploring Issues of National Identity, Ideology and Diversity in Contemporary Canadian Picture Books

The pre-service teachers who negotiate their own sense of national identity are challenged and their views of otherness is examined through reading and responding to a range of contemporary Canadian picture books. The year-one findings from one site of the study in the Western Canadian province of Alberta is focused to analyse the growing disparity between the backgrounds of beginning teachers and the students in their classrooms

The Chronotope of the Threshold in Contemporary Canadian Literature for Young Adults

Review of: Maksimowska, Aga. Giant. St. John’s: Pedlar, 2012. Snyder, Carrie. The Juliet Stories. Toronto: Anansi, 2012. Stevenson, Robin. Inferno. Victoria: Orca, 2009. Walton, Jo. Among Others. New York: Tor, 2011.   DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2012.002

Building Place: Students’ Negotiation of Spaces and Citizenship in Schools

This study explored how high school students’ negotiate school spaces beyond the classroom within a broader context of citizenship education and identity construction. Using visual hermeneutics, researchers worked over three years with students and staff in a large, diverse, urban, public high school. Through student-produced photo- graphs of school space, questionnaires, interviews with staff and students, and obser- vations of students’ use of space, researchers found that physical and social construc- tion of space, students’ occupation and congregatation in spaces, the visual landscape of a school, and practices of school surveillance all influence the negotiation of identi- ties and citizenship among students. Key words: identity, physical enrvironment, social environment, visual hermeneutics, school landscape Cet article relate comment des élèves du secondaire négocient des espaces scolaires en dehors de la classe dans un contexte d’éducation à la citoyenneté et de construction d’identité. À l’aide d’une herméneutique visuelle, les chercheurs ont travaillé sur trois ans avec des élèves et des membres du personnel dans une école secondaire urbaine de grande taille accueillant une clientèle diversifiée. À travers des photos d’espaces scolaires prises par les élèves, des questionnaires, des entrevues avec des membres du personnel et des élèves et l’observation de l’utilisation de l’espace par les élèves, les auteurs ont trouvé que les constructions physiques et sociales des espaces, leur occupation par les élèves et leurs habitudes de rassemblement dans ces espaces, le paysage visuel de l’école et les pratiques de l’école en matière de surveillance exer- cent tous une influence sur la négociation des identités et de la citoyenneté chez les élèves. Mots clés: identité, environnement physique et social, herméneutique visuelle, pay- sage de l’école

Awareness, Discovery, Becoming, and Debriefing: Promoting Cross-Cultural Pedagogical Understanding in an Undergraduate Education Program

This article discusses the first phase of an action research project aimed at identifying a collaborative and collective response to the need to prepare student teachers to work in diverse school contexts. The research brought together university researchers, community and cultural institutions, professional associations, school boards, and government and civil organizations to design a Diversity Institute for integration into the teacher preparation program at the University of Alberta. Student teachers’ responses to the Diversity Institute suggest that although a few participants were able to develop new understandings of themselves and others and to effect changes in their pedagogical practices, many remained at a shallow level of awareness about the complexities of diversity and difference. Reflections on the first phase of the Institute point to the underlying dynamics of learning and unlearning that are at work in becoming a teacher and the need for time and space for a deeper engagement with diversity in the teacher education program.Cet article présente la première phase d’un projet de recherche action visant l’identification d’une réponse collaborative et collective au besoin de préparer les étudiants en pédagogie à travailler dans divers contextes scolaires. La recherche a impliqué la collaboration de chercheurs universitaires, d’instituts communautaires et culturels, d’associations professionnelles, de conseils scolaires et d’organisations gouvernementales et civiles, dans la conception d’une série d’ateliers et de présentations (nommée Diversity Institute 2008) qui a ensuite été intégrée au programme de pédagogie à l’Université de l’Alberta. La réaction des étudiants en pédagogie qui ont participé aux ateliers et aux présentations indique que, même si quelques participants ont pu développer de nouvelles connaissances sur eux-mêmes et les autres, et qu’ils ont réussi à modifier leurs pratiques pédagogiques, plusieurs n’ont acquis qu’une connaissance superficielle des complexités de la diversité et la différence. Les réflexions sur la première phase de Diversity Institute ont fait ressortir, d’une part, les rapports dynamiques et sous-jacents d’apprentissage et de désapprentissage qui accompagnent la formation des étudiants en pédagogie et, d’autre part, le besoin de temps et d’espace au sein du programme de pédagogie pour permettre une appréciation approfondie de la diversité

Methane production and consumption in grassland and boreal ecosystems

The objectives of the this project were to develop a mechanistic understanding of methane production and oxidation suitable for incorporation into spatially explicit models for spatial extrapolation. Field studies were undertaken in Minnesota, Canada, and Colorado to explore the process controls over the two microbial mediated methane transformations in a range of environments. Field measurements were done in conjunction with ongoing studies in Canada (the Canadian Northern Wetlands Projects: NOWES) and in Colorado (The Shortgrass Steppe Long Term Ecological Research Project: LTER). One of the central hypotheses of the proposal was that methane production should be substrate limited, as well as being controlled by physical variables influencing microbial activity (temperature, oxidation status, and pH). Laboratory studies of peats from Canada and Minnesota (Northern and Southern Boreal) were conducted with amendments of a methanogenic substrate at multiple temperatures and at multiple pHs (the latter by titrating samples). The studies showed control by substrate, pH, and temperature in order in anaerobic samples. Field and laboratory manipulations of natural plant litter, rather than an acetogenic substrate, showed similarly large effects. The studies concluded that substrate is an important control over methanogenesis, that substrate availability in the field is closely coupled to the chemistry of the dominant vegetation influencing its decomposition rate, that most methane is produced from recent plant litter, and that landscape changes in pH are an important control, highly correlated with vegetation