The earth is drowning in plastic waste. Yet, as the plastic waste crisis grows exponentially, responses to excess waste remain stuck around containment and management processes. These approaches fail to notice that plastics know no boundaries. We now encounter plastic rocks, plastic water, plastic bodies, plastic worlds spilling into oceans and…

As we re-imagine the role and value of the university, we need to pose new questions about knowledge and institutionality at a moment of intersecting crises. This essay presents a case study of a university in Western Canada, one shaped by the impacts of intensive extraction from human and more-than-human beings and now facing the challenge of…

The University of British Columbia (UBC) opened Canada's first International House (I-House) in 1959 after a decade of activism from students and faculty. Students had demanded an I-House to help them find housing, and to ensure that "brotherhood may prevail," as the I-House motto promised. The I-House campaign received support from…

The context of higher education in Canada suffers from alarming rates of dropout and prolongation of study programmes. The lack of academic writing ability and feeling of isolation are among aggravating factors impeding on the success of graduate students. Writing retreats are identified as a potential solution to support and improve academic…

Through critical and creative reflection, I consider what it means to be a Treaty Person in so-called Canada from the perspective of a settler educator. I focus on winter count making, which is a traditional practice of the Lakota (Sioux), Blackfoot, Kiowa, and Mandan Nations of the Prairies where symbols are created and used to recall significant…

We explore the need for educators to design, implement, and assess online education for Indigenous students with intention and in a good way. As more Indigenous learners access online programs, it is essential to amplify the discussion on how post-secondary education institutions can better design educational programs and support learners through…

This article examines the evolving nature of how race and difference are represented in creative applied theatre work in classroom and community-based settings. The author uses several examples of performances and workshops she's attended to ask important questions that point to the tensions percolating in our discipline around who gets to tell a…

Canadian public school authorities are busily producing gender diversity policies in order to meet their new legal responsibility to provide an environment free from gender identity and gender expression discrimination. These policies tend to offer specific guidance about how administrators and educators should respond to the needs of…

Social work's traditional emphasis on the individual in the context of social environments has resulted in a neglect of the person in the context of physical environments. This conceptual article addresses this oversight by presenting three subconcepts of place--place attachment, place identity, and territoriality--and draws on research examples…

Social work education in the Global North is rooted in an underlying discourse of power that defines the 'knower' parameters and, therefore, legitimises who can 'teach'. For this paper, the spatial orientation of whiteness in the classroom in a time of coloniality and intersectionality is the unit of analysis. This whiteness is made visible by not…

This paper asks, what is the outdoors, and challenges conceptions of the role the outdoors play in education. It critically examines why a better understanding of the outdoors is important to outdoor education, how wilder places are essential to education, and how learning generated from these places can be translated into sustainable thinking and…

This paper examines the attributes of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) as well as its theoretical foundations. Gay's (2018) work describes the eight attributes of CRT as validating, comprehensive and inclusive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, emancipatory, humanistic, and normative and ethical. After unpacking each attribute, I…

Looking back and learning from Indigenous knowledges in education holds the key to supporting change in educational spaces today to be more inclusive and wholistic. Indigenous practices, passed down from generation to generation, hold important knowledge that can be used in classroom teaching. My hope is that by using this Indigenous lens of…

Students with disabilities are far less likely than their peers to participate in work-integrated learning (WIL). This gap may contribute to the high levels of unemployment for people with disabilities. Unemployment rates compound when accounting for intersectional identities, with disabled people of color experiencing even higher rates of…

Using a Community-First Land-Centered Framework this article reflects on an analysis of the research findings of a SSHRC funded research project. The project examined the ways two universities were interpreting and taking up the TRC report and its 94 Calls to Action. This is a crucial time in Canada's relationship with Indigenous Peoples and the…