Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs
<p>Founded in 2003, the <em> Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies </em> (JCACS) is an open-access journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (CACS).</p> <p>Fondée en 2003, la Revue de l'Association canadienne pour l'étude du curriculum (RACEC) est une publication d’accès libre de l'Association canadienne pour l'étude du curriculum (ACEC).</p>York University Librariesen-USJournal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies1916-4467<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ca/"> <img style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/2.5/ca/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons License" /> </a> <br />Copyright for work published in JCACS belongs to the authors. All <span>work</span> is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ca/">Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License</a>.Book Review: Perspectives on Arts Education Research in Canada, Volume 1: Surveying the Landscape
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40734
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Canadian arts educators recognize the dominance of American texts and curriculum standards in both teacher education programs and in public classroom settings. In <em>Perspectives on Arts Education Research in Canada, Volume 1: Surveying the Landscape</em>, the late Bernard W. Andrews (1950-2023) showcases curriculum ideas that consider the uniqueness of the Canadian experience in arts education and arts-based research. This and the subsequent volume are an important contribution to arts education research and curricula, in Canada and around the world.</p>Joan Harrison
Copyright (c) 2023 Joan harrison
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-316016510.25071/1916-4467.40734Surprising Taxonomies: A Book Review of Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart’s The Hundreds
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40820
<p style="font-weight: 400;">In this book review, the form and function of what the writing is doing in Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart’s <em>The Hundreds </em>is one of the many points of focus. Following the lines of posthuman, new materialist, and affect theories, the poems (what the authors refer to as <em>makings) </em>offer a fresh and lively engagement with academic scholarship. This is a scholarship interwoven with creativity presenting <em>an elsewhere of form</em> for the merging of academic and creative thought. Berlant and Stewart use engaging ideas to offer their book as an encounter and allow for interactive opportunities for their readers. While this is a concise book at 173 pages, it has no shortage of depth and creativity, concepts that the reviewer explores.</p>Adrienne Kitchin
Copyright (c) 2023 Adrienne Kitchin
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-316617210.25071/1916-4467.40820Book Review: Dance, Place, and Poetics: Site-Specific Performance as a Portal to Knowing
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40863
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Celeste Nazeli Snowber’s 2022 book<em> Dance, Place, and Poetics: Site-Specific Performance as a Portal to Knowing</em>cannot fully be captured in a review. The book combines dance videos, sound recordings, poetry and incredible photos. The author offers a refreshing and rejuvenating yet radical approach to a relational understanding of ourselves and others, both humans and non-humans. In this text, I walk the reader through the book. I summarize and highlight the main themes and trends as they relate to curriculum studies.</p>Carolina Bergonzoni
Copyright (c) 2023 Carolina Bergonzoni
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-317318010.25071/1916-4467.40863"Fuzzy Feet and The Skunk": Connecting Western and Indigenous Theories of Development and Learning Through Story
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40795
<p style="font-weight: 400;">This article looks at how Indigenous and Western perspectives on learning and development are interwoven and come into dialogue with one another to create supportive and inclusive classrooms for Indigenous (and all) students. We use a storytelling methodology to address this focus and offer a holistic approach to our analysis. Specifically, we provide a fictional story followed by an in-depth analysis to tease out how Indigenous students continue to experience racism and colonialism in schools and what theories of learning and development may offer in addressing these challenges. This article offers insight about how both practising teachers and teacher educators can build upon the wisdom of Indigenous ways of learning and Western educational practices to re-imagine inclusive classrooms that can support Indigenous (and all) learners.</p>Alicia HiebertNikki Yee
Copyright (c) 2023 Nikki Yee, Alicia D. Hiebert
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2024-01-012024-01-01202-3112610.25071/1916-4467.40795Improvisational Conversations: Teaching as an Interpretive Practice
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40770
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Improvisation is a phenomenon that is deeply embedded in the day-to-day lives of teachers and students. Yet, few educators take the time to consider improvisation as being necessary to reach meaningful understandings with students. This paper is a hermeneutic inquiry that positions curriculum as improvisation by engaging in a conversation that may expand others' understandings of what it is and means to be a teacher who is living well with others. Examining specific incidents that have undergirded my life as a jazz musician and educator, I offer reflections on teaching as being, at its core, an interpretive practice. Drawing further on Gadamer’s (2001) notion of genuine conversation, the history of jazz improvisation and my own lived experiences, I engage in a conversation about why I believe teaching is an interpretive practice akin to improvisation and genuine conversation.</p>Katelyn Jardine
Copyright (c) 2023 Ms. Katelyn Jardine
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-3273910.25071/1916-4467.40770Writing as Resurgent Presencing: An Urban Coyote Curriculum
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40735
<p style="font-weight: 400;">In this article, I contemplate the importance of writing to my wellbeing; I reflect on how urban Indigenous presence is enacted and theorized; and I consider an encounter with a coyote during a daily walk. These three narratives are brought together through a textual weaving or <em>métissage</em>. Through this interweaving, and by enacting place-based, relational storying, I undertake a curricular inquiry into <em>presence</em> and <em>presencing</em>. This contemplative inquiry emerges from a particular time and place: from deep in the second winter of the COVID-19 pandemic, from my positionality as an urban Indigenous person, and from my day-to-day existence as a scholar and human being.</p>Aubrey Jean Hanson
Copyright (c) 2023 Aubrey Jean Hanson
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-3405210.25071/1916-4467.40735Like Quicksand: Reflections on the Contribution of Care to the Educational Relationship
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40781
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Even before the pandemic subjected us to new realities and different teaching and learning environments, anxiety, fatigue, feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness were felt. Like quicksand, these states of ill-being overwhelm learners in their academic momentum. This phenomenon is certainly not only a consequence of the pandemic. In my role as a teacher and now as a professor, I have seen it come out of the woodwork and amplify at an alarming rate. However, my role as an academic is shaped and reshaped in response to these observations. Noddings (2003) argues that caring relationships are ends in themselves, not simply means to achieve learning outcomes; the contribution of an ethic of care in the educational relationship between learner and teacher is important. Do our educational intentions about the curriculum remain too rigid? Does our teaching practice include the possibility of hearing stressed voices, anguished words, tormented hearts? Are we listening to the human condition in our learners? Although everything may seem fine, the anxiety is real, and it is our responsibility to address it. This article is the result of a pedagogical reflection, from the lens of an educator in the pandemic era.</p>Dany Dias
Copyright (c) 2023 Dany Dias
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-3536710.25071/1916-4467.40781 A Collaborative Study Promoting the Integration of Oral Communication in Virtual Pre-Service Teacher Education
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40776
<p style="font-weight: 400;">The health protocols generated by the COVID-19 pandemic have limited opportunities for exchange and discussion in the classroom (Carpentier & Sauvageau, 2021) and among colleagues. Yet oral communication is an essential component in the learning process (Hattie, 2017). In the spring of 2021, as professors in the Faculty of Education at the Université de Saint-Boniface, we began a collaborative autoethnographic research project (Taylor & Coia, 2020) to showcase our professional evolution in the context of teaching in virtual mode. Our specific aim was to analyze our pedagogical choices in fostering oral skills in our students. Our vignettes thus focus on our objectives and questions regarding the use of oral expression in initial training activities, our successive pedagogical adaptations and our avenues for improvement. We believe that an emphasis on the oral in teacher education offers opportunities for the co-construction of knowledge, language, cognitive and pedagogical development, as well as contributing to the linguistic vitality of a minority group (Plessis-Bélair <em>et al.</em>, 2017; Swain & Watanabe, 2013). We sought to improve our pedagogical practices, and thus better train future teachers, by influencing their role in the teaching of oral language, regardless of their future teaching contexts.</p>Gail CormierMarie-Josée Morneau
Copyright (c) 2023 Gail Cormier, Marie-Josée Morneau
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-3688410.25071/1916-4467.40776School Well-Being and Social Relationships of College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40831
<p style="font-weight: 400;">During the period of progressive lockdown restriction easing, a self-administered online survey of subjective well-being was conducted among high college students who returned to college on May 18, 2020, and others who stayed at home. The 286 completed survey returns reflect the significant differences in the school experiences of the two groups, particularly in terms of social relations, which were affected by the principle of "social distance". The initial findings confirm the results of work already carried out on student well-being and reveal new elements to consider when measuring student subjective well-being.</p>Cendrine MercierAgnès FlorinOmar ZannaStéphanie Constans
Copyright (c) 2023 Cendrine Mercier, Agnès Florin, Omar Zanna, Stéphanie Constans
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-38510210.25071/1916-4467.40831Students’ Perspectives of Transdisciplinary Financial Literacy Education in Ontario
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40694
<p style="font-weight: 400;">In increasingly uncertain economic times, education curricula around the world are changing to include the topic of financial literacy for students. This article reports the findings of a financial literacy study that examined the perspectives of students on their experiences with transdisciplinary teaching and learning of personal financial literacy. In this study, 344 post-secondary students reflected on their educational experiences in Ontario secondary schools by completing a quantitative survey composed of questions and self-assessments related to personal financial literacy curricula. While students felt that personal financial literacy education was important, they felt that there was a need for more knowledge and understanding in secondary school. Further, survey data identified variations in the personal financial literacy education students received that was linked to the stream (advanced or general) students were enrolled in. The findings are discussed, with particular attention to how students’ perspectives can inform policy and curriculum design moving forward.</p>Murdoch Neil MathesonChristopher DeLucaIan Alexander Matheson
Copyright (c) 2023 Murdoch Neil Matheson
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-310311910.25071/1916-4467.40694Towards Indigenous Feminist Financial Literacy Education
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40741
<p style="font-weight: 400;">In this article, we demonstrate how current approaches to financial literacy education might benefit from the inclusion of Indigenous feminist perspectives. We argue that Indigenous feminisms can add a unique critical view of financial literacy education that may help to address shortcomings in ongoing conversations and practices in the field. In consideration of this, we offer a framework to change the mindset of educators from one of <em>financial literacy</em> to one of <em>financial consciousness</em>.</p>Levon Ellen BlueLaura Elizabeth Pinto
Copyright (c) 2023 Levon Ellen Blue, Laura Elizabeth Pinto
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-312013810.25071/1916-4467.40741Revisioning Financial Education: Shortcomings and Opportunities for Transformation
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40733
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Early, comprehensive and contextually relevant instruction in financial literacy for youth has been found to positively influence financial behaviours as well as psychosocial outcomes such as stress management and feelings of self-efficacy. Yet, financial literacy resources and secondary school curricula have several key limitations, such as piecemeal delivery, which hinder their potential to promote positive and lasting habits. With a focus on the Canadian context, we first assess the potential benefits and limitations of financial literacy education. We then present and assess a newly released financial education curriculum package from Western Canada, analyzing its proposed delivery framework and possibilities for implementation elsewhere.</p>Lara PaulSarah Knudson
Copyright (c) 2023 Lara Paul
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-313915910.25071/1916-4467.40733Growing Snowflakes—Unity in Difference
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40880
<p style="font-weight: 400;">An image of a snowflake adorns the cover of this issue. It also serves as a guiding metaphor for our editorial discussion. The twelve articles in this issue have been gathered over two years and come from varying perspectives on a variety of topics pertinent to the study of curriculum. Each article was developed using a distinct research practice. Like snowflakes, each article is unique, nuanced with individuality. And yet, like snowflakes, there are recognizable patterns that repeat across the articles of this issue. As we read about issues of colonial alienation of First Nation communities, COVID restrictions, financial literacy gaps and student distress, we observe recurring psychological and social processes. And these processes show fascinating parallels to the molecular dynamics of snow crystal formation! For example, we see the impact of the environment on the process of learning. We see the benefit of an interactive, adaptive, relational pedagogy centred on care. And we see the value of viewing things from a different perspective, through a different taxonomy. The metaphor of the snowflake shows us richness in diversity, and it also reminds us that a genuine conversation will reveal unity across difference.</p>Holly Tsun HaggartyPauline Sameshima
Copyright (c) 2023 Dr. Holly Tsun Haggarty, Dr. Pauline Sameshima
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-31810.25071/1916-4467.40880Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, Scientist and Artist
https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/40881
<p>A description of this issue's contributing artist and his work.</p>Holly Tsun Haggarty
Copyright (c) 2023 Holly Tsun Haggarty
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2023-12-312023-12-31202-391010.25071/1916-4467.40881