This paper reports on research conducted as part of the International Instructional System Study that explored five subject areas across nine jurisdictions in six high-performing countries. The Study's overall aim was to understand what, if anything, there is in common in the curricula and assessment arrangements among the high-performing…

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) mission is to enhance knowledge about education systems worldwide, and to provide high-quality data that will support education reform and lead to better teaching and learning in schools. In pursuit of this aim, it conducts, and reports on, major studies of student…

British Columbia (BC) has experienced a significant teacher shortage for years. While every region of the province is impacted, rural and remote communities have experienced a worsening shortage especially during the pandemic. Additionally, there is a critical shortage of specialist teachers across the province. This Education Brief outlines five…

Experiential learning has the potential to enhance students' success and prepare them for the job market, including through class experiences that mirror experiences in the workforce. In this article, I lay out the process of incorporating experiential learning in a global health course. I have derived three key lessons from the design and…

This study compares and contrasts four international faculty development programs for blended learning in order to understand the benefits, challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations from such initiatives. The benefits identified for faculty members, who participated in these programs, were that they became more reflective of their teaching…

Even though there is no common conceptual basis guiding teacher education in Canada, over the past two decades teacher educators both in Canada and around the world have called for teacher candidates to become agents of change. While researchers across Canada strive to demonstrate "how" to prepare pre- and in-service teachers to be…

At the time of writing, the first community colleges in Ontario were preparing for transition to an accreditation model from an audit system. This paper revisits constructivist literature, arguing that a more pragmatic definition of constructivism effectively blends positivist and interactionist philosophies to achieve both student centred…

Quebec students have generally excelled in international mathematics comparisons and 22% performed in the top category, Level 6, on PISA in 2012. Several countries with more extensive gifted programs scored and ranked considerably lower and had smaller proportions achieving Level 6. Does this mean a general mathematics curriculum with such indices…

This article addresses the challenge of personalizing learning while also ensuring alignment with system and school improvement plans. Leaders of the York Region District School Board in Ontario knew that what took their high-performing school district from good to great would not take it from great to excellent. The district's early model of…

The performance measures included in the 2014/15-2016/17 Service Plan have been reviewed, resulting in the replacement of some measures and the introduction of new measures to more accurately reflect the Ministry's mandate and strategic directions. These changes are discussed in relation to each relevant performance measure. In keeping with the…

Key findings from a new study highlight how Learning Forward's long-standing position on professional learning correlates with practices in high-performing systems in Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and British Columbia. The purpose of this article is to share key findings from the study so that educators might apply them to strengthening…

Traditionally in Canada, attention to political or civic education has been at the primary- or secondary-school level. This study focuses on the place of civic engagement in introductory Canadian politics and government university courses in Canada by surveying instructors on their attitudes and approaches to civic engagement in the classroom.…

This paper explores the integration of Open Educational Practices (OEP) into an institutional strategy to develop distinctive excellence in teaching, learning and scholarship. The institution in the case study is a public polytechnic university serving a metropolitan area in Canada. If emerging Open Educational Practices are to flourish at our…

Learning goal (LG) identification can greatly inform curriculum, teaching, and evaluation practices. The complex laboratory course setting, however, presents unique obstacles in developing appropriate LGs. For example, in addition to the large quantity and variety of content supported in the general chemistry laboratory program, the interests of…

The ability to think in terms of a system is critical to achieving common direction, alignment, and commitment in highly distributed health systems. In Canada, provincial and territorial ministries of health provide leadership on the direction of health reform while leadership to align system levels is determined by a far more distributed group of…