This paper examines teachers' experiences in responding to a new Chemistry curriculum in the province of Manitoba in Canada informed by a "tetrahedral" orientation (Mahaffy, 2005) as a pedagogical framework for the teaching of Chemistry. This tetrahedral orientation endorses macroscopic, microscopic, symbolic and human element teaching…

In this paper, we explore an approach to understanding how multimodality works in a community of practice. Using a social learning framework, we show how a community of practice, involving a pair of high school students, engaged in perceptual, bodily, and imaginary experiences while discussing about calculus concepts in a dynamic geometry…

"realfriends" is a social action project created by Grade 12 English students in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Its purpose was to create a face-to-face social network that would help change the school climate into a more social space. Interest in socializing is nothing new for teenagers, but these students articulated a worry that people their…

We identify the effect of individual high school principals on graduation rates and English exam scores using an administrative data set of grade 12 students in BC Canada. Many principals were rotated across schools by districts, permitting isolation of the effect of principals from the effect of schools. We estimate the variance of the…

Research shows that carefully planned acceleration offers academic benefits with little social or emotional risk to high-ability learners. However, acceleration is underutilized and little is known about students' motivations to accelerate. In this study, 21 high-ability high school students in Grades 11 and 12 took part in a structured…

The study examines science-related course choices of high-school students in the culturally diverse schools of the province of British Columbia, Canada. The analysis employs K-12 provincial data and includes over 44,000 students born in 1990 who graduated from high school by 2009. The research sample reflects the presence of about 27% of students…

Current reforms in elementary and secondary science education call for students and teachers to develop more informed views of the nature of science (NOS)--a process in which science textbooks play a significant role. This paper reports on a case study of the development of representations of the NOS in a senior high school chemistry textbook by…

This paper provides a detailed analysis of the mathematical communication involving a pair of high school calculus students who are English language learners. The paper focuses on the word-use, gestures and dragging actions in the student-pair communication about calculus concepts when paper-based static and then touchscreen dynamic diagrams.…

The present study examined the mediational role of academic motivation in the association between school self-concept and school achievement among 355 Indian immigrant adolescents in Canada and 363 Indian adolescents in India. Surveys were administered among Grades 9-12 students in Canada and India to assess their academic self-concepts, academic…

The Student Transition project (STP) has collected eleven years of grade 12 and post-secondary enrollment data, since it's inception in 2003. This information is used to track student transitions from grade 12 graduation into post-secondary education, student mobility between post-secondary institutions and post-secondary credential completions.…

Every year the author and his colleagues take their grade 12 English students to see four plays at one of Canada's major theaters. Chatting about the series on the last day of class, his students asked him if he had seen "the blue glow from the back row." Laughing at his bewilderment, they told him that during the performances so many…

Although there has been a substantial increase over the past decade in studies that have examined the psychosocial correlates of spirituality/religiosity in adolescence, very little is known about spirituality/religiosity as a domain of development in its own right. To address this limitation, the authors identified configurations of multiple…

The Student Transitions Project (STP) has focused its research since 2005 on the achievements of British Columbia (B.C.) grade 12 graduates who enrolled in post-secondary education. Some students who do not graduate from Grade 12 also enroll at post-secondary institutions in a variety of programs, but little has been reported on these…

The purpose of this paper is to identify motivators that support educational success, as perceived by Aboriginal high school students enrolled in two urban Saskatchewan schools. Twelve semi-structured individual interviews revealed that students were motivated by a hospitable school culture, relevant learning opportunities, and positive personal…

Background: Male adolescents underutilize youth health centers' (YHC) services despite facing a variety of significant health issues. The purpose of our study was to explore adolescent males' perceptions of health service needs, utilization of YHC services, and barriers and facilitators for such utilization as a function of school grade among a…