Coordinating policy layers of school fundraising in Toronto, Ontario, Canada: An institutional ethnography

In this article, I report findings from an investigation into the politics and coordination of school fundraising in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Theoretically grounded in institutional ethnography and critical policy analysis, the study began from the standpoint of parents asked to give money to their children’s school(s). I show how provincial and TDSB funding, parent involvement, fundraising, and school council policies organize parents’ experience of school fundraising. I also explore how participating in fundraising enables parents to meet neoliberal expectations of a “good parent” and how through their efforts to secure advantages for their children, fundraising parents are accomplices in the privatization of public education. I conclude by discussing possibilities for intervention into the social organization of school fundraising in Toronto schools.SSHR

Positioning Ontario’s Character Development Initiative In/Through Its Policy Web of Relationships

Constructing a policy web of relationships is proposed as a useful way to identify and understand complex relationships between policies and their contexts. In Canada, the province of Ontario's Character Development Initiative (CDI) and its relationships to student achievement, citizenship education, and safe schools policies provide an illustrative example of the web’s utility. Mandated by the Ontario Ministry of Education, the Character Development Initiative was expected to be implemented by all publicly funded school boards during the 2007-2008 school year. This application of the policy web shows how what happens in one policy affects what happens in another and highlights relationships between policies that might be overlooked if one’s focus is limited to a single policy’s texts, practices, or influences alone. This example also shows how creating a policy web of relationships highlights issues, texts, practices, and ideas important across different policy fields and how a particular policy is positioned in relation to other policies. This knowledge may be used to support, resist, or influence policy at different levels. Mapping the relationships between policies using a web of relationships also provides historical understanding of the policies and knowledge about why policies (re)emerge at particular moments. La création d'un réseau de relations portant sur les politiques est évoquée comme façon utile d'identifier et de comprendre les rapports complexes entre les politiques et leurs contextes.  Au Canada, l'initiative ontarienne nommée Initiative de développement du caractère, et ses liens avec le rendement des élèves, l'éducation à la citoyenneté et les politiques sur la sécurité à l'école, offre un exemple de l'utilité d'un tel réseau. On s'attendait à ce que l'initiative de développement du caractère, mandatée par le Ministère de l'éducation de l'Ontario, soit mise en œuvre par toutes les écoles publiques pendant l'année scolaire 2007-2008. Cette application de réseau de politiques démontre dans quelle mesure un changement dans une politique affecte l'évolution d'une autre, et fait ressortir des liens entre les politiques dont on ne tiendrait pas compte si on limitait notre attention aux textes, pratiques ou influences d'une seule politique. De plus, cet exemple illustre la façon dont un réseau de politiques fait ressortir d'une part, l'importance de questions, textes, pratiques et idées d'un domaine à l'autre et d'autre part, la position d'une politique par rapport aux autres. Ces connaissances peuvent servir à appuyer, rejeter ou influencer les politiques à divers niveaux. Un réseau de relations entre les politiques offre également un aperçu historique de celles-ci et une explication de leur émergence à des moments donnés

How Schools Define Success: The Influence of Local Contexts on the Meaning of Success in Three Schools in Ontario, Canada

Creating successful schools is a priority for governments, district officials, administrators, teachers and parents around the world, but just what does ‘school success’ mean? Grounded in theories of collective sense-making and learning, this article presents how school success is defined in three schools in Ontario, Canada, and draws on Ball, Maguire and Braun’s theory of policy enactment to explain similarities and differences between the schools’ definitions. A comparative case study of three elementary schools in the same neighbourhood finds that students’ happiness and academic learning (rather than achievement on standardized tests) are common aspects of each school’s multifaceted definition of success. Each school also has unique elements in its definition that can be attributed to differences in the schools’ situated, material, and professional contexts. In addition to local influences, class-based deficit ideology and professional discourses in their external contexts impact the schools’ definitions of success. Notably, the schools’ definitions emphasize individual growth and outcomes that reproduce rather than transform social inequities

DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION THROUGH COMMUNITY-BASED POLICY DIALOGUES

In 2008, People for Education, an Ontario-based parent-led organization, hosted eight policy dialogues with citizens about possibilities for the province‟s public schools. Policy dialogues are conversations about policy issues, ideas, processes, and outcomes where participants share their knowledge, perspectives, and experiences. In small groups dialogue participants were asked to share their ideas about the ideal school of the future. Participants‟ ideas were recorded by a facilitator. Following each dialogue participants were asked to complete a short survey about their experience. Fifteen sets of facilitators‟ notes and 46 participant surveys were analyzed in this study. The data show that participants‟ ideal school emphasizes variety, flexibility, caring relationships, individualized programs, and community connections. Importantly, policy dialogues promote participants‟ cognitive, affective, and behavioural engagement with education policy. Finally, policy dialogues enhance democracy in education by providing opportunities for critical examination of public policy by ordinary citizens who are viewed as important policy actors

THE NORMALIZATION OF SCHOOL FUNDRAISING IN ONTARIO: AN ARGUMENTATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Fundraising is common in Canada’s public schools despite objections from some parents, educators, and other citizens who argue that the practice perpetuates inequities between schools and communities. In this article I first situate school fundraising in North America within its broader socio-historical contexts. I then describe Hajer’s (1997) argumentative discourse theory that grounds my investigation of the struggle over fundraising policy that has taken place in Ontario over the past 20 years. Drawing on findings from an argumentative discursive analysis of 159 texts produced since 1996, I present the arguments (i.e., the story lines) of two discourse coalitions that have engaged in the struggle over the meaning of school fundraising: the fund-the-basics coalition and the fundraising-is-necessary-and-desirable coalition. I demonstrate the dominance of the fundraising-is-necessary-and-desirable coalition’s argument by showing diverse ways the practice has become institutionalized and highlight aspects of the policy context that have contributed to the normalization of school fundraising. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the utility of Hajer’s argumentative discourse theory and analysis in education policy research and highlight contributions of the current study to understanding of advocacy, media, and education policy change.

Does Character Education Really Support Citizenship Education? Examining the Claims of an Ontario Policy

The claim that the character education policy of a school board in Ontario, Canada supports citizenship education is examined. 181 documents were analyzed to determine the ways the policy supports and/or undermines citizenship education’s goal to prepare students to become “knowledgeable individuals committed to active participation in a pluralist society” (Sears, Clarke, and Hughes, 2000, p. 153). The findings show that the policy encourages students to acquire specific values, behaviours, and interpersonal skills rather than conceptual or situational knowledge. While the policy encourages active citizenship by promoting the development of decision-making, conflict resolution, and communication skills, it emphasizes participation in activities that support rather than challenge the status quo. The policy also offers some support for developing students’ commitment to pluralism, but its narrow definition of diversity and emphasis on shared values, behaviour, and language contradict these efforts. I conclude that the policy supports citizenship education that adopts an assimilationist conception of social cohesion and/or social initiation as its purpose(s).

CHALLENGING POLITICAL SPECTACLE THROUGH GRASSROOTS POLICY DIALOGUES

Can simply talking about policy strengthen democracy? Drawing on data collected for case studies of one Canadian and two U.S. grassroots organizations, we demonstrate that taking part in policy dialogues hosted by grassroots organizations enables participants to gain greater clarity regarding policy issues, policy processes, and citizens’ perspectives and enhances some participants’ ability to take direct action in policy processes. These outcomes, and the opportunities for authentic engagement in policy processes offered by grassroots policy dialogues, can help challenge contemporary policy processes characterized as political spectacle, and, ultimately, enhance democracy in education. Implications of the findings for grassroots organizations and the field of community organizing are also discussed.

Ontario Teachers’ Policy Leadership During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this article, we combine theories of teacher leadership, policy leadership, street-level leadership, and policy enactment to inform our novel conceptualization of teachers’ policy leadership. We draw on data collected through a series of 3 focus group interviews with 31 secondary school teachers in Ontario between July 2020 and February 2021 to show how the dynamism of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted this aspect of their work. Specifically, our findings show the influence of administrative support and the shifting external, situated, and spatial contexts on teachers’ policy leadership. The findings also highlight the role of refusal and creative reinterpretation of educators who prioritized student well-being during the pandemic as schooling transitioned from more flexible emergency remote learning to a less flexible “business as usual” approach

Beyond Rhetoric: How Context Influences Education Policy Advocates’ Success

This article discusses findings from a study of a 22-year campaign to change special education assessment policy in Ontario by the advocacy organization People for Education (P4E) and explains how dominant discourses enabled the government to leave the issue unresolved. Based on a rhetorical analysis of 58 documents, the article identifies strategies used by P4E to persuade Ontario’s government and citizens to view students’ uneven access to educational assessments as a problem. Further, since this problem differently impacts children by class and geographical location, it perpetuates inequities. Despite using strategies deemed effective in other change efforts, arguments mobilized by P4E have not been persuasive in a neoliberal context that champions responsibilized individualism, meritocracy, human capital development, and reduced funding of public services

Teaching Policy by Collaborating Across Borders

Drawing on research from two cross-border course collaborations, we show that focused cross­ border online dialogues between Canadian and American graduate students can broaden students\u27 thinking beyond national borders, provide insight into how policies are implemented in schools, enable access to diverse perspectives on policy issues, and support learning about the influence of local, state/provincial, and national contexts on policy processes