Bridging the Gap: Towards a Cosmopolitan Orientation in the Social Studies Curriculum in Saskatchewan High Schools

Vital to Canadian social and cultural cohesion in a globalized world is an urgent need to enact new social and educational discourses and initiatives essential to expand an understanding of our interconnected relationships that coalesce with the key tenets of cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is a theory that endorses a sense of global responsibility and connectedness, respect for human rights and difference inside and outside our borders, and detachment from our communal, national, religious, ethnic, as well as other forms of particularities. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to investigate to what extent the social studies curriculum in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12 in Saskatchewan integrates or reflects cosmopolitan perspectives in an increasingly interconnected world. Thus, data collection consists of content analysis of the Saskatchewan curriculum and five interviews with social studies teachers in Saskatchewan high schools. Data analysis is guided by the literature review on cosmopolitanism that operates as the theoretical framework of this study and by critical discourse analysis. This research contributes to our understanding of what cosmopolitan education can offer in terms of possibilities to the social, cultural, educational, and political configurations of Canadian society. Emphasis is also on the need for future implementation of courses focusing on cosmopolitanism in higher education to raise awareness among students, prospective teachers, policy makers, curriculum designers, educational administrators, and government agencies about cosmopolitanism as an active agency to alleviate social ills. In conclusion, I offer suggestions for strengthening the social studies curriculum in Saskatchewan high schools to promote cosmopolitan values. Thus, the significance of the study lies in its theoretical and practical implications for social and educational policies in Canada and internationally

Critical Media Literacy: A Vehicle For Transformative Learning Towards Social And Emotional Competence

The implementation of critical media literacy in the curriculum has been advocated mainly to construct and deconstruct knowledge, to empower students to counter the threat of pleasurable but insidious hegemonic messages, ideological misrepresentation of reality, racist portrayals of minorities, and so forth. The purpose of this study is to promote a new approach to critical media literacy in adult education. It examines the proposition that critical media literacy, particularly through the use of films, can be a vehicle for transformative learning towards social and emotional competence in everyday relationships, in the workplace, in the family and in the communities where we live. Therefore, the thesis explores the theory of Transformative Learning, the construct of social and emotional intelligence and the literature on critical media literacy to set the theoretical and practical background for this study. Based on the review of the literature, intersections among these three educational domains are delineated. The study ends with a discussion of scenes from the movies Crash (Haggis, 2005) and Revolutionary Road (Mendes, 2008) as exemplars for the implementation of the proposed approach to critical media literacy in adult learning contexts, including classrooms

Critical Pedagogy Through Popular Culture

In our media-saturated society, integrating critical pedagogy in the curriculum at all levels has sparked the interest of researchers, scholars, and educators. They have focused their effort on redefining literacy, analyzing the profound influence of the media on the social, economic, and political issues, and promoting critical pedagogy to engage students to challenge the ideological and hegemonic representations, the structures of oppression, gender, class, power, and race. This study attempts to highlight that, in addition to these goals, critical pedagogy of popular culture in the curriculum holds other tremendous benefits to students such as expanding thinking about others, finding alternative narratives in students’ own lives, enhancing cultural synchronization, building culturally responsive awareness, building consumer awareness, and scaffolding social intelligence. This study also discusses the essential aspects of a successful implementation of critical pedagogy of popular culture in terms of content, teacher’s role and education. Keywords: critical pedagogy, popular culture, culturally responsive pedagog

Making the Case for Cosmopolitan Pathways for Canada’s Diversity

This article seeks to develop the argument that it is time for a national roundtable negotiation among Indigenous peoples, the two English and French settler nations, the BIPOC communities and the various immigrant groups to consider the merits of cosmopolitanism as a moral and cultural framework of our interrelated relationships and intercultural encounters in Canada. In an interdependent globalized world that is becoming “superdiverse,” I argue that it is time to shift from the language of “tolerance” of the “Other” to the language of “engagement” with “fellow human beings” guided by the moral and cultural cosmopolitanism for social and global justice, equality and equity, and inclusion through the fulfillment of human rights. The purpose of this public discussion is to urge the Canadian Council of Ministers of Education as well as the federal government to put this question on their agenda for consideration as a new framework for Canada’s educational, social, economic and political policies. This argumentative paper has the potential to benefit policymakers, curriculum designers, educators, and ministries of education across Canada and beyond to consolidate moral and cultural cosmopolitanism as a national and international approach to harmonious human coexistence