Despite the rapid growth in online and distance learning in Canada, there does not appear to be much interest on the part of teacher education programs to evolve to meet the needs of future generations of teacher candidates. While understanding the notion that systemic change in tertiary education takes time, the steady growth of online and…

COVID-19 containment measures brought many changes in our lives and forced teachers all around the world to adopt various new practices. Given its specific education requirements and numerous school boards, the province of Quebec, Canada, was chosen to study the effects of the pandemic on music teaching in schools in the spring and fall of 2020.…

Purpose: This two-year study illuminates the experiences of technology coaches (digital learning coaches [DL] and science technology engineering and mathematics/literacy coaches [STEM/L]) as they engaged in their own professional learning (PL) facilitated by a faculty researcher. Design/methodology/approach: Technology coaches from different…

The pandemic led many schools to invest in technology that remains in classrooms today. The abrupt changes did not leave much time for professional development or planning time on how to use these digital tools to support literacy development effectively. Educators continue to grapple with how to use this technology to support language arts,…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning became the predominant mode of learning for 33 to 54% of students in Canada's three largest school boards. As inclusive practices continue to grow and online learning is now part of the Ontario curriculum, educators need guidance on how to support K-12 students with diverse learning needs in online and…

We examined students' perceptions of mattering during the pandemic in relation to in-person versus online learning in a sample of 6578 Canadian students in Grades 4-12. We found that elementary school students who attended school in-person reported mattering the most, followed by secondary school students who learned part-time in-person and the…

This paper further explores the findings of a 2020 case study focused on the perspectives of parents of children aged 5-9 years old attending elementary schools in French language programs during the 2020 school closure and the potential legacy of the Coronavirus pandemic on education. In March 2020, the school learning of elementary school…

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to the burgeoning of online, blended, and hybrid classrooms. The transition to virtual learning has been a challenge for many teachers and learners, but for multilingual learners (MLs) who have to navigate the virtual learning environment in a new language, online learning can be particularly difficult.…

In this study, we enacted critical participatory action research (CPAR) within an online community of practice (CoP). The CoP was designed to build a community of outdoor play and learning (OPAL) practitioners. This paper describes how a cohort (n=18) of experienced Kindergarten to grade eight (K-8) teachers from across British Columbia shared…

In this paper, we document elementary school teachers' attitudinal and pedagogical changes during the rapid move from brick-and-mortar to virtual schooling initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We administered four online surveys (in September and October 2020, and in March and June 2021) to determine teachers' perceived challenges and successes in…

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented disruption to education and schooling at the end of the 2019-20 school year. Operating in a context of great uncertainty, education leaders were tasked with making key decisions with potentially far-reaching impacts on the educational and mental and physical health of students and families. Drawing on…

The school closures necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic created a rapid shift to alternative modes of educational delivery, primarily online learning and teacher-supported home-schooling. This shift has revealed deep inequities in education systems worldwide, as many children lost access to teachers and schooling. An effective response to these…

The City of Kitchener is the largest city in Waterloo Region in the province of Ontario, the third fasting growing region in Canada, yet it has only one air quality monitoring station. Our research group launched a pilot project in September 2020 to install a network of AQMesh multisensor mini air quality monitoring stations (pods) near elementary…

This study involves an in-depth examination of Canadian elementary teachers' cognitive processes and metacognitive strategies they used during a self-directed online learning experience. The virtual revisit think aloud, a methodology that combines a retrospective procedure with screen recording technology, was used to capture verbalisations from…

This year, widespread school closures due to the coronavirus pandemic have required almost all high-performing systems to implement distance learning to ensure that students continue learning. This document summarizes some initial takeaways from their experiences implementing distance learning in primary and secondary schools. Findings show that…