The present study explored the impacts of a contextualised outdoor science curriculum on "what" and "how" elementary students learn when immersed in the local contexts in which natural phenomena occur. We conducted 63 individual interviews with fifth- and sixth-graders (between 10 and 12 years old) living in the inner city of…

This study investigates the implications of engaging plurilingual children in creative multilingual placemaking practices on their language awareness and sense of belonging. Children participated in carefully designed class activities, engaging in tasks focused on reflecting on their own identities, the community's, and the neighbourhood's,…

Purpose: Using Johansson-Sköldberg "et al."'s (2013) descriptions of design discourses, this study aims to analyze teacher interviews, research notes and teacher and student artifacts to determine if engagement in design practices led to changes in the teacher's thinking. Design/methodology/approach: This article presents results from a…

This collaborative action research project in Alberta, Canada, explored how dual-language books (DLBs) can foster literacy instruction and learner engagement through language awareness. Canada's changing demographics have resulted in mother tongue diversity and many urban schools identifying at least 25% of students as being English language…

The paper examines how the game Minecraft can be used as a new digital learning environment in the context of second language teaching and learning. It explores how the concepts of digital space and digital place within the new 3D digital environment can contribute to reshaping the language learners' experience and promote greater engagement in…

Technology continues to form an important part of the educational landscape, although the value of portable devices as learning tools is still being explored and debated. In light of the technology-based teaching methods suddenly brought into effect in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the deliberate use of technology for learning is increasingly…

This study investigates the relationships between the observed quality of classroom teaching assessing Atmosphere, Instruction, Management and Student Engagement, ("AIMS," Roehrig, A. D., and E. Christesen. 2010. 'Development and Use of a Tool for Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness in Grades K-12.' In "Innovative Assessment for the…

Multiliteracies pedagogy has played an important role in the way classrooms worldwide conceptualize literacy learning. And yet, some argue, its orientation toward literacy by design, with an ultimate focus on the production of transformed texts, may narrow the very possibility of opening students' social futures that it seeks to promote. Recent…

The promise of "21st century learning" is that digital technologies will transform traditional learning and mobilize skills deemed necessary in an emerging digital culture. In two case studies of video making, one in a Grade 4 classroom, and one in an adult literacy setting, the authors develop the concept of "production…

Although youth-led programs (YLP) have been successful in many areas of public health, youth leadership is rarely used in the prevention of peer aggression. A YLP to reduce bullying, sexual harassment, and dating aggression was compared experimentally with the board-mandated usual practice (UP). Four middle schools in an urban Canadian school…

This Annual Service Plan Report discusses the results related to measures in the Ministry of Education's 2016/17-2018/19 Service Plan. British Columbia's education system continues to rank among the best in the world. This year over 640,000 students attended public and independent schools in every corner of the province, eager to develop their…

Even when accounting for past performance, academic achievement can be influenced by teacher expectations, which are lower for disadvantaged and visible ethnic minority children. We use a Quebec (Canada) population-based sample (N = 1,311) to examine whether ethnicity and teacher-perceived signs of disadvantage in kindergarten predict child…

While students begin schooling with high engagement levels, these levels begin to drop in the middle years of schooling but appear to recover somewhat in 10th grade, suggesting that the middle years of schooling are an especially vulnerable time in terms of student engagement (Willms et al., 2009). Moreover disengagement is most common in students…

This report summarises Year 6 pupils' attainment in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) survey of 2016 in Northern Ireland and explores the context of that attainment. PIRLS is an international comparison study of reading at ages 9-10. PIRLS has a five-yearly cycle. Northern Ireland took part in PIRLS for the second time…

This summary accompanies the national report for Northern Ireland (Sizmur et al., 2017). It outlines the attainment of Year 6 pupils in Northern Ireland in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2016 survey and explores the context of that attainment. PIRLS is a study of reading at ages 9-10 and has a five-yearly cycle.…