BALANCING COMPETING RIGHTS: A STAKEHOLDER MODEL FOR DEMOCRATIC SCHOOLS

In this article, I discuss a Canadian public school controversy and Supreme Court of Canada decision involving competing stakeholder rights to freedom of religion, safety and equality. Policy considerations that allowed one group of stakeholders to express their constitutional rights raised concerns among other stakeholders. A policy vacuum and a lack of guidelines for educational policy‐makers exist as Canadian schools become increasingly diverse, and as more individuals assert their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I have provided a Stakeholder Model to help school officials navigate competing rights through non‐arbitrary and constitutionally compatible policy decisions. Key words: religious expression, secular education, safety, non‐arbitrary policy decisions Dans cet article, l’auteure se penche sur une controverse apparue dans les écoles publiques canadiennes sur la base d’une décision de la Cour suprême du Canada au sujet d’un conflit de droits opposant liberté de religion, sécurité et égalité. Les considérations de principe qui ont permis à un groupe de personnes intéressées d’exprimer leurs droits constitutionnels ont suscité des inquiétudes au sein d’autres groupes. Il existe à ce propos un vide politique et une absence de directives à l’intention des décideurs en éducation au Canada. Or, les écoles canadiennes deviennent de plus en plus diversifiées et un nombre accru de personnes affirment leurs droits en vertu de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. L’auteure fournit un modèle pour les parties en présence permettant d’aider les autorités scolaires à naviguer à travers des droits qui se font concurrence dans des décisions d’orientation non arbitraires et compatibles avec la Constitution. Mots clés : expression des convictions religieuses, école laïque, sécurité, décisions d’orientation non arbitraire

Cyber-Dilemmas: Gendered Hierarchies, New Technologies and Cyber-Safety in Schools

This paper addresses gender issues relating to cyber-bullying among adolescents which is reflective of adult Internet use. It highlights legal considerations to address the policy vacuum on this emerging form of gendered violence. Résumé Cet article se penche sur les questions reliées à la cyberintimidation chez les adolescents qui reflète l'usage de l'internet chez les adultes. Ceci met en relief les considérations légales pour adresser le vide des politiques sur cette forme de violence qui surgit basée sur le sexe

A Delicate Balance: Defining the Line Between Open Civil Proceedings and the Protection of Children in the Online Digital Era

He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. [. . .] They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable. — George Orwell, 1984 On Thursday September 27, 2012, a few months after our paper was written, the Supreme Court of Canada solidified the rights of children victimized by cyberbullying in the landmark decision of AB (Litigation Guardian of) v Bragg Communications Inc. The unanimous decision overturned the holding of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in part. The justices agreed with the contention that objectively discernible harm would result to the15-year-old female plaintiff who was victimized by online sexualized bullying, if she was forced to proceed in a legal action against her cyber-perpetrators under her real name. Writing on behalf of the court, Justice Abella held that, “. . .common sense and the evidence show that young victims of sexualized bullying are particularly vulnerable to the harms of revictimization upon publication, and since the right to protection will disappear for most children without the further protection of anonymity, the girl’s anonymous legal pursuit of the identity of her cyberbully should be allowed.” Justice Abella argued, in other words, that while the open court principle mandates that court proceedings presumptively remain open and accessible to the media and the public, there were sufficiently compelling interests in this case, namely, the protection of children and their privacy, to warrant restrictions on freedom of the press and openness. The Supreme Court did not grant, however, the child-plaintiff’s request for a publication ban of the allegedly defamatory material contained in a fake Facebook profile in her name. Instead, the court held that such a confidentiality order would be excessive, given that her name could no longer be connected to the information

Confronting cyber-bullying : what schools need to know to control misconduct and avoid legal consequences /

IndexBibliogr

A Delicate Balance: Defining the Line Between Open Civil Proceedings and the Protection of Children in the Online Digital Era

He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. [. . .] They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable. — George Orwell, 1984 On Thursday September 27, 2012, a few months after our paper was written, the Supreme Court of Canada solidified the rights of children victimized by cyberbullying in the landmark decision of AB (Litigation Guardian of) v Bragg Communications Inc. The unanimous decision overturned the holding of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in part. The justices agreed with the contention that objectively discernible harm would result to the15-year-old female plaintiff who was victimized by online sexualized bullying, if she was forced to proceed in a legal action against her cyber-perpetrators under her real name. Writing on behalf of the court, Justice Abella held that, “. . .common sense and the evidence show that young victims of sexualized bullying are particularly vulnerable to the harms of revictimization upon publication, and since the right to protection will disappear for most children without the further protection of anonymity, the girl’s anonymous legal pursuit of the identity of her cyberbully should be allowed.” Justice Abella argued, in other words, that while the open court principle mandates that court proceedings presumptively remain open and accessible to the media and the public, there were sufficiently compelling interests in this case, namely, the protection of children and their privacy, to warrant restrictions on freedom of the press and openness. The Supreme Court did not grant, however, the child-plaintiff’s request for a publication ban of the allegedly defamatory material contained in a fake Facebook profile in her name. Instead, the court held that such a confidentiality order would be excessive, given that her name could no longer be connected to the information

Chapter XI. Defining the Legal Lines: eGirls and Intimate Images

Introduction The objective of this chapter is to address the nuanced complexities relating to sexting in the context of sexualized cyberbullying among youth, and related legal and educational dilemmas in public policy. We focus on key societal and legal issues to address why recent legislative proposals and legal responses to sexualized cyberbullying are misguided. To provide the context behind the legalities, we first highlight the scholarly discourse around the dynamics of rape culture to d..

NOVEL, EDUCATIONAL AND LEGAL RESPONSES TO TECHNOLOGY-FACILITATED SEXUAL VIOLENCE

The three panel presenters and session chair are co-researchers in a seven-year research partnership—involving 28 educational institutions, 25 co-investigators,15 community partners, and 50+ students—that aims to address sexual violence in physical and virtual forms in university contexts across Canada and internationally. The project specifically seeks to address, dismantle and prevent sexual violence by means of multi-sector partnership solutions across the fields of education, law, policy, arts, popular culture, health care, management, news and social media. Using the methodological framework of Parallaxic Praxis (Sameshima et al., 2019), the team looks at a phenomenon from different perspectives by using varied methodological processes as well as a range of rigorous methods of encoding, decoding, and rendering data; and establishing post-qualitative possibilities for generating and mobilizing knowledge to broader audiences. The juxtaposition of renderings (constructions made from deep analysis of the phenomena such as papers, presentations, artworks, and other artefacts), when presented together, manufacture a dynamic agency between works capturing intertextualities, aporias, choruses, and a poesis that arise in the coalescence of the unassimilated, individual investigations. In this panel, an overview of the larger project and the significant milestones in the first four years specifically related to internet technologies will be provided. Drawing from multi-perspectives, the second presenter will address image-based sexual abuse and copyright in Canada, and the third will share data collected from this project in the form of excerpts from an epistolary novel. The session demonstrates how multi-modal investigations and dissemination offer possibilities for extending knowledge production

Development of the Bullying and Health Experiences Scale

Background: Until recently, researchers have studied forms of bullying separately. For 40 years, research has looked at the traditional forms of bullying, including physical (eg, hitting), verbal (eg, threats), and social (eg, exclusion). Attention focused on cyberbullying in the early 2000s. Although accumulating research suggests that bullying has multiple negative effects for children who are targeted, these effects excluded cyberbullying from the definition of bullying. Objective: This paper responds to the need for a multidimensional measure of the impact of various forms of bullying. We used a comprehensive definition of bullying, which includes all of its forms, to identify children who had been targeted or who had participated in bullying. We then examined various ways in which they were impacted. Methods: We used an online method to administer 37 impact items to 377 (277 female, 100 male) children and youth, to develop and test the Bullying and Health Experience Scale. Results: A principal components analysis of the bullying impact items with varimax rotation resulted in 8 factors with eigenvalues greater than one, explaining 68.0% of the variance. These scales include risk, relationships, anger, physical injury, drug use, anxiety, self-esteem, and eating problems, which represent many of the cognitive, psychological, and behavioral consequences of bullying. The Cronbach alpha coefficients for the 8 scales range from .73 to .90, indicating good inter-item consistency. Comparisons between the groups showed that children involved in bullying had significantly higher negative outcomes on all scales than children not involved in bullying. Conclusions: The high Cronbach alpha values indicate that the 8 impact scales provide reliable scores. In addition, comparisons between the groups indicate that the 8 scales provide accurate scores, with more negative outcomes reported by children involved in bullying compared to those who are not involved in bullying. This evidence of reliability and validity indicates that these scales are useful for research and clinical purposes to measure the multidimensional experiences of children who bully and are bullied

Do children who bully their peers also play violent video games? A Canadian national study

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Journal of School Violence in 2013, available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15388220.2013.803244.The study examined whether children who bully others are likely to prefer playing video games that are rated high in maturity and violence. A stratified random sample of Canadian children ages 10 to 17 years from the provinces of Canada was obtained. Parents (n = 397) and their children (n = 492) completed an online survey of children’s bullying behaviors and their three favorite video games. Ordinal logistic regression analyses showed that parents’ and children’s reports of child preferences for mature and violent video games were significantly related to children’s perpetration of bullying and cyberbullying. Panel regression analyses revealed no significant difference between parent and child informants. Children who play highly violent and mature video games were likely to bully and cyberbully their peers, according to both parent and child reports.Standard Research Grant #410-2007-0671 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada supported this research