Carla L. Peck

Unreached and Unreasonable: Curriculum Standards and Children's Understanding of Ethnic Diversity in Canada.

Abstract In recent years, Canadian schools have developed new policies and practices in their approaches to both diversity policy and curriculum development. Public schools once intended to homogenize a diverse population have been transformed to institutions designed to foster tolerance and respect for diversity. Curricula previously organized around subject content are now framed as standards for student achievement. This article traces the development of contemporary curriculum standards with regard to diversity and examines those standards in the context of a study of grade 7 students’ understanding of diversity in New Brunswick. It presents evidence to suggest students are falling far short of expectations outlined in standards documents. While the sparse and fragmentary nature of student understanding should be of concern, this article also identifies key areas of concern about the development and implementation of the standards themselves. We argue that expecting teachers to teach toward, and students to attain, the standards might be unreasonable in light of these concerns.

'But we didn't live in those times’: Canadian students negotiate past and present in a time of war

Abstract This article examines the ways in which students reason about past and present in relation to questions of ethnic identities and loyalty to the state in a time of war. In digitally recorded discussion groups of three, they studied documents from the largely German–Canadian town of Berlin, Ontario, which, responding to images of the German enemy, changed its name to ‘Kitchener’ in 1916. It examines how students make sense of the documents; how they use traces of the past to explore issues in the contemporary world; and what patterns of difference emerge in respect of their own ethnic identities and immigration histories. It concludes that, even with well-selected historical materials, most students need attentive guidance in the difficult tasks of drawing meaningful interpretations from them.

Multicultural Education, Diversity, and Citizenship in Canada

Multiculturalism in Canada refers exclusively to a concern with cultural diversity, thus addressing issues of immigrant integration, cultural identity, racism, religious diversity, and linguistic diversity. These issues have been part of a discussion of Canadian identity that began at the time Canada officially became a country in 1867. From the outset, cultural diversity has been an important part of Canadian policy. Initially the concern was how to bring together the so-called ‘two founding nations’ (the British and French colonizers), assimilate other immigrants, and administer the relationship between the State and the original peoples of the land. Education has always been seen as a key to ensuring that cultural diversity was managed properly. What has changed over time is the value and meaning that Canadians have attached to cultural diversity. In this chapter we will outline the historical underpinnings of multiculturalism, discuss contemporary meanings of multiculturalism as it has been expressed in educational policies, and provide some examples of the practice of multicultural education in schools and classrooms.

Enriching Ethical Judgments in History Education

Abstract This article explores the relationship between the philosophy of ethics, history education, and young people’s historical ethical judgments. In the last two decades, “ethical judgments,” which focus on making decisions about the ethics of historical actions, has been acknowledged as a second-order historical thinking concept in history education. Despite the expectation that history students should make reasoned and critically thoughtful historical ethical judgments, this aspect of history education is under-emphasized and under-theorized. In addition, the limited research available indicates that history teachers’ and students’ ethical judgments are often oversimplified because they focus on the conclusion about the rightness or wrongness of an action over the thought processes involved in arriving at a justified position. Using refugee migration as an example of historical and contemporary controversy, we consider how the philosophy of ethics could enlarge the “ethical” in ethical judgment and offer history education a rich conceptual lens through which to explore making ethical judgments in, and about, the past. We argue that the kinds of questions, concepts, and lines of argument ethicists explore could better inform students’ historical ethical judgments by illuminating the contested landscape upon which ethical judgments rest.

Global Citizenship Education in North America

To begin to consider the context of global citizenship education in North America, it is important to look at some key characteristics of the continent. In this chapter, we will emphasize the relationship between North America’s multicultural population and multicultural policies and the content and pedagogy connected to global education. We will start with some key characteristics of the North American context and will link the history of multiculturalism and global education. Then we will look specifically at global citizenship education (GCE) trends within North America. Our focus in this chapter is on the theoretical and empirical literature on global citizenship education in elementary and high schools (and not including higher education) in Canada and the USA as well as some reflections on some of the issues arising principally from English-language literature from Mexico. We conclude with an argument for the importance of mobilizing around a critical approach which is already occurring but that requires more work in curriculum, pedagogy, and research.

'Don't Even Think about Bringing That to School': New Brunswick Students' Understandings of Ethnic Diversity.

Canada is a country with a long history of substantial ethnocultural diversity. Questions about the reasonable accommodation of immigrant groups, the preservation of official language minority rights, and the fostering of Aboriginal rights permeate political and social discourse in Canada. Effective citizenship requires people who understand the subtle differences between and among groups in Canada, and are able to wrestle intelligently and respectfully with difficult questions inherent in these issues. This article reports on a study designed to map the conceptions of ethnic diversity held by grade 6 students in the eastern Canadian province of New Brunswick with a particular focus on the three areas outlined above. Overall, students demonstrated quite superficial understandings of ethnic diversity being able to identify some practices and beliefs as ‘cultural’, but with little knowledge of specific cultural groups or practices or the role of language as a vehicle for cultural enhancement and preservation.

Key Contexts and Challenges

A quarter century ago, Benedict Anderson (1991) published what came to be a seminal book on understanding nationalism and nation states, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Anderson argued that nations were not primarily bounded territories but ‘imagined communities’, created in the mind and heart through the mediation of a number of institutions and processes including schools, public monuments and historical sites, and patriotic ceremonies. It is evident from the case studies in this book that the process of imagining and reimagining communities continues but is not necessarily limited to the context of nation states. China, it appears, is very focused on incorporating the people of Hong Kong and Macau (SARs), as well as their numerous ethnic minorities, into one national imagined community. The EU, on the other hand, is focused on imagining a ‘post-national’ community of communities.1 While the EU moves to a supranational understanding of citizenship, some in the UK imagine devolution of the federal nation state into smaller, more traditional entities. Consistent with Anderson’s original analysis, this reimagining is being fostered through formal schooling, other public institutions such as museums, galleries and historic sites, and cultural ceremonies and traditions.