Across Canada, school districts have been confronting a backlash to their equity and social justice initiatives. Critics of public education have been arguing that the solution to these controversies is to increase school choice. Using several examples from the United States, this paper argues that the endgame of these strategies is to undermine…

Purpose: This paper reports on a study exploring a sustained coaching model of teacher professional development (PD). The study was undertaken with middle school teachers in a small rural school division in Alberta, Canada. The goal of the study was to theorize about the components of the sustained coaching model of PD that supported or was a…

Research extensively highlights the importance of social-emotional skills in learning and development. In this study, we evaluated whether social and emotional variables directly impact students' perceived cognitive competence and academic performance through a structural equation model. Survey responses (N = 29,384) were collected from 114 K-12…

Education policy continues to press for increased use of research evidence in decision-making, yet decades of research point to weak links between research and practice. We see evidence-informed improvement not as a problem with schools, but with a larger evidence-use ecosystem. As a step toward building and strengthening multidirectional paths…

The Surrey School District in British Columbia, Canada--the largest district in one of the top-performing provinces in a top-performing nation--abruptly closed all schools in March, as the pandemic swept through the nation. After two months of all-online instruction, the province called for partially reopening for a month in June, allowing…

The amount of tuition paid by international students to British Columbia (BC) public school districts in the 2017-18 school year reached $256,829,094. That is an increase by nearly $15 million compared to last year. This represents about 5% of total district revenues provincially, but the bulk of gains are concentrated in just 10 districts in…

The purpose of this mixed-methods research study was to explore how prevalent impostor phenomenon (IP) is among education leaders in the province of Alberta, and to determine what can be done to support these leaders. This study explored the extent to which educational leaders experience impostor phenomenon, and how those experiences varied by…

This fact sheet reports on education funding in British Columbia (BC). Funding for public education significantly increased in 2017-18 and is projected to continue to increase in line with increasing student enrollment. However, government spending on K-12 education as a proportion of total public spending continues to decline. An increase in…

This book takes a comprehensive look at community engagement strategies in education to demonstrate the diverse nature of school-community relations and their value to promote their effective development. The author brings twenty years of experience in various educational settings in Ontario and California to examining community involvement…

Recent curriculum policy changes in British Columbia (BC) require that educators in all subject areas--including music--embed local Indigenous knowledge, pedagogies, and worldviews in their classes. Yet facilitating such decolonizing cross-cultural music education activities requires knowledge that music educators may not currently possess. We use…

After the completion of a difficult round of negotiations, Prairie Spirit School Division (PSSD) and the Prairie Spirit Teachers' Association (PSTA) convened a committee to investigate causes of teacher workload intensification. The committee perceived an increase in the amount and complexity of teachers' and administrators' workload but required…

Objectives: Developing the skills to positively manage social transgressions is of particular salience to those in the teaching profession. The Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance (MBEB) program is a professional development program for K-12 teachers to build mindfulness and related prosocial skills such as empathy, compassion, and forgiveness.…

This article reveals the multifaceted ways in which policy enactment was expressed as praxis in the context of assessment reform in Ontario, Canada. The research explores the way in which the Growing Success assessment policy was interpreted variously by different educators occupying senior roles within the district office in a single school…

Neoliberal discourse dominated education policy for decades and fueled reform movements with lasting effects. Through a critical lens this qualitative case study explored policy direction, the influences that shaped multiple years of reform initiatives and the impact of these changes in one Canadian province. Data sources including policy…

Purpose: This article presents a conceptual synthesis of the international literature on inclusive education while expanding upon, and incorporating, the articles in this special issue. The authors present their 3P model (philosophy, policy and praxis) and relate each paper in this special issue to different aspects of their model.…