Post-secondary education (PSE) experienced explosive growth and diversification over the past century, affording students a range of increasingly complex pathways that they can travel to acquire a credential. In various jurisdictions, governments have made significant investments to facilitate student uptake of unconventional transfer pathways…

This study assesses the extent to which public high schools become more or less socially mixed after families are allowed to choose schools outside their designated catchment areas in a mid-sized Canadian city. We draw on settler-colonial theory, critical human geography, and critical social theory while applying a critical mapping of school…

This study uses a framework of transformative learning theory to explore fourteen participants' experiences with learning William Glasser's Choice Theory. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with students, staff and alumni of an alternative secondary school in order to explore their perspectives on the transformative potential of a…

This article investigates whether parents in the United States and Canada send their children to schools that are similar to the schools they attended. Intergenerational continuity in the type of high school attended may be generated by social status or religious socialization concerns, or simply through familiarity, identity, and network ties…

Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students' performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP)…

The extent to which increasing students' ability to choose between schools can impact their educational outcomes continues to generate significant research interest. I take advantage of the unique context in the province of Ontario, where two publicly funded school systems operate in parallel. I find a small positive impact of school choice on…

The neoliberal turn in public education positions the parent as a consumer within an expanding educational marketplace. This shift is premised on the notion that the free market is best suited to promote equity. Critics of this claim highlight how a larger choice arena creates additional opportunities for privileged parents to mobilize their…

The following article relates a reflexive ethnographic research project that focuses on youth voice in relation to the process of choosing a high school and a language of instruction in Ontario, Canada. The purpose of this methodological article is to relate a story of research and explore the tensions between theory and practice experienced by a…

Teaching in a democracy is challenging and filled with dilemmas that have no easy answers. For example, how do educators meet their responsibilities of teaching civic norms and dispositions while remaining nonpartisan? "Democratic Discord in Schools" features eight normative cases of complex dilemmas drawn from real events designed to…

This study is an ethnographic case study of two schools as they implemented an enrichment program. The sample included students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and board and government personnel. Data was drawn from interviews and observations of participants, curriculum analysis, and communication between school, home, and the public.…

Using student achievement data from British Columbia, Canada, this study is an exploration of the differences that lie within the private school sector using hierarchical linear modeling to analyze the data. The analysis showed that when controlling for language, parents' level of educational attainment, and prior achievement, the private school…

This analysis draws on interview data from a three-year study of educational decision making of youth living in a coastal community in Atlantic Canada. Students whose educational and mobility aspirations extend outside the known spaces of the community develop the ability to negotiate multiple social spaces in and out of school. The school- …

Based on semi-structured interviews with high school teachers in Edmonton, Alberta, the reported study examined teachers' attitudes towards their roles and responsibilities in marketing their school, and the perceived impact of educational markets upon teachers' well-being. The teachers define marketing negatively and narrowly, resist any…