Creating a Comprehensive Search Strategy for Research on Learning Disabilities Using the Pearl Harvesting Information Retrieval Framework

The migration of libraries to the digital realm has created new opportunities for information sharing; however, the abundance of available literature has made locating relevant research studies on specific learning disabilities a difficult task, one that existing search strategies have not adequately addressed. Moreover, definitions of specific learning disabilities have evolved and the nature of this field is interdisciplinary, creating a confusion of possible search terms for the topic. The present investigation used the Pearl Harvesting Information Retrieval Framework to create a comprehensive search strategy for locating research on learning disabilities. The analysis produced four groups of harvested search terms for the subtopics of general learning disabilities, reading disabilities, math disabilities, and nonverbal learning disabilities. The wide range of diverse search terms retrieved a significantly greater number of relevant citations than other search strategies

A Narrative Inquiry of Teacher Candidate Experiences of Sexual Violence Prevention Education

Sexual violence scholars and practitioners in postsecondary and community contexts have long called for K-12 education to join them to take on the challenge of sexual violence prevention, citing school as simultaneously an important factor in addressing sexual violence and a place where it occurs. Meanwhile, teacher education scholars have pointed out there are missed opportunities to provide training for teachers at the earliest point in their training. Teacher candidates’ concurrent roles as an at-risk population and as educators and leaders entering schools puts them in an interesting space that is worth investigating. This research uses narrative inquiry to explore teacher candidates’ experiences of sex education during their time in school, their emerging understandings of sex and sexual violence, and their experiences learning about sexual violence prevention before and during their teacher education. Recruitment took place at a medium sized university in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, and data consisted of interviews with fifteen first- and second-year teacher candidates of various specialties and educational backgrounds. Narrative analysis was informed by feminist epistemology and theory, as well as the tenets of feminist methodology and narrative inquiry. Findings indicate the following: 1) experiences of inadequate sex education from teacher candidates’ time in K-12 education; 2) learning about sex and sexual violence in the margins of the curriculum; 3) experiences of gendered, risk-based discourses and narrow definitions of sex didn’t prepare participants for sexual citizenship; 4) narratives of fragmented understandings of consent and the continuum of sexual violence; 5) participants’ own K-12 teachers’ discomfort with teaching sex education and addressing sexual violence; 6) stories of not having learned about sexual violence until postsecondary school; 7) teacher training did not prepare participants’ to teach about sex education, nor to address sexual violence prevention; 8) the desire to learn about consent and sexual violence in participants’ new roles as teachers entering school and education systems. These narrative themes are discussed in relation to feminist understandings of sexual violence and prevention education, narrative meaning making in teacher education, knowledge mobilization, and directions for future research

Frontline Workers from Home: A Feminist Duoethnographic Inquiry of Mothering, Teaching, and Academia during the Initial Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this article, we use a feminist lens to discuss and critique the unique challenges associated with our multidimensional identities as Ontario elementary schoolteachers, mothers, and academics. Employing a duoethnographic method, we recount our personal lived experiences of mothering, teaching, and academic related tasks during initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. We juxtapose our experiences at home, in our combined identities and roles, with the various levels of expectations set upon us. From the teaching front, these expectations include those from the government, school boards, and educational administration. On the academic front, there are the hidden expectations of writing and publishing, and being productive during mandated down time. At home, there are increases in domestic labour, caring for children and, for one of the authors, homeschooling. Taking into account the “Learn at Home” program, mandated synchronous learning, Ontario’s provincial approach to reopening schools for the 2020–2021 school year, and the literature on motherhood and academia, this article explores the nuanced experiences, barriers, and challenges that we encountered at the beginning and throes of the pandemic and into the unknown. The dialogic analysis of our experiences is rooted in feminist understandings of motherhood, teaching, and academia; it highlights the gendered issues of domestic and precarious labour, paid labour, caregiving, and mandatory social isolation

Feminist Pedagogy from Pre-Access to Post-Truth: A Genealogical Literature Review

This paper traces the development of feminist pedagogy from its origin as a revolution to the male-dominated postsecondary curriculums of the 1960s to its current forms as a classroom and community pedagogy that intentionally troubles, politicizes, and transforms educational experiences. The present paper is a literature review of feminist pedagogy that follows the genealogical method, which is the examination of the genealogy of a particular theory or research focus and traces the earliest framing and articulation of that scholarly topic through several generations of the development of scholarly topic to the present. While feminist pedagogy originated as a method of teaching about feminist issues, it has become a distinct pedagogy that has been adapted in various educational settings; what remains is the conscious consideration of the methods, styles, and strategies of feminist pedagogy. Along with discussing scholarship on the women’s movement and other social and cultural phenomena that shaped feminist theory and practice, I synthesize articles and books on feminist pedagogy. Considering its history, I discuss the contemporary state of feminist pedagogy. I conclude that feminist pedagogy in its current form is implicated in a complex political climate that simultaneously calls for and threatens it