Professional development offerings for current and aspiring educational developers can be sparse and neither fully contextually appropriate nor personally relevant given the range of experiences people bring to the field. In the absence of suitable professionalization programs, we created a self-defined professional development approach to support…

About 20 years ago, a number of Yukon schools took a different approach to outdoor education and outdoor pursuits. During the 1970s and 1980s, most Yukon high schools and junior high schools offered a course called Outdoor Education. These courses fit into the conventional blocks in a school timetable. Outdoor activities longer than these blocks…

This paper focuses on the implications of two emerging digital technologies on the act of field birding, and the implications of these objects for thinking about wild birds. While the adoption of new immaterial technologies promises to improve the ease with which birding is practiced, their use leads to new ethical considerations. Using the…

A 25-year association with the Kwakiutl led to an invitation in 1987 to a Kwakiutl memorial potlatch in British Columbia (Canada). Jean Lave's concept of peripheral participation is used as a framework for examining how humans find their "way in" to such cultural events. (Author/MMU)

The ethnographer should be part historian, part psychologist, part sociologist, part anthropologist, and must apply rigorous and consistent rules and procedure to the various steps in his/her research in order to arrive at reliable conclusions. An ethnographic observational study of administrative behavior of eight school superintendents provides…

Canada has one of the most highly educated populations in the world, but its position is increasingly vulnerable, particularly when considered against the deliberate measures that other leading nations are taking to enhance their postsecondary education (PSE) systems. The absence of national data makes it difficult for Canada to measure its PSE…

Frogwatch is a volunteer monitoring program developed in response to worldwide concern about declining populations of amphibians. Outlines a frog-monitoring program and a wetland study to be conducted alone or together. Explains the basics, including choosing a frog, introducing the topic, mapping, recordkeeping, equipment, survey procedures, and…

Describes River Watch, an award-winning floating river study project that gives students continuous contact with the river environment. (PVD)

A university-based researcher and a grade seven teacher collaborated to plan a science curriculum that would help elementary school students discover the world of salmon and understand its life cycle. Describes key components of the salmon-enhancement program and river-health project. A student's record of hatching chum fry in the classroom is…

The Outdoor Education Program for student-teachers in University of New Brunswick's (Canada) Faculty of Education comprises four weekend trips to study four different ecosystems. The seashore community of Deer Island (New Brunswick) was chosen in 1980 as a typical ecosystem. The 3-day field trip revolved around activities that could be adapted for…

The North-South Dialogue Videotape Communication Project was an applied research program designed to assess the use of video programming as an aid to intercultural communication between isolated northern Canadian communities and southern educators. Project staff produced five video programs focusing on the culture and interests of northern people;…

Mapping is a means of experiencing a community's features that engages the mapmaker. Getting to know the community by drawing maps and learning about past and present inhabitants was the methodology for introducing local content into the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classroom. This model for mapping was used with adult and high school ESL…

The status of higher education as a field of study in Canada is examined and compared with the United States. The factor seen as most limiting the field's development is not low demand or limited employment opportunities, but reluctance to allocate resources because of low prestige and support outside academe. (Author/MSE)

The paper discusses retention models for the nontraditional student population, including transfer students, older adult learners, commuters, part-time students, graduate students, women, students with disabilities, and ethnic minorities. Since 1975, leading research in the field of postsecondary student retention has been grounded on Tinto's…