Lorayne Robertson

Using a Wider Lens to Shift the Discourse on Food in Canadian Curriculum Policies.

Abstract Healthy eating is important to overall health, but Canadian health agencies disagree on the degree to which lifestyle or society determines healthy eating. The authors review the literature and design a policy analysis framework that captures discursive elements of both arguments. They apply this framework to education policy, analysing the mandated health and physical education (HPE) curriculum policies of Canada’s provinces and territories. Findings indicate that, while there are regional differences, Canadian HPE curriculum policies generally position healthy eating simplistically as an individual choice, leaving gaps with respect to societal factors and nuanced individual factors. The authors conclude that Canadian HPE policies should be reviewed in light of the health risks associated with both a narrow, neoliberal emphasis on individual responsibility and an emphasis on food and activity surveillance. They recommend more critical health literacy approaches to help students understand natural body variability and the impact of social determinants on food choice.

Thanks for the Assignment!: Digital Stories as a Form of Reflective Practice

In this article we examine pre-service teachers’ digital literacy stories and post-assignment reflections for evidence of transformative pedagogy. The language arts course design employs both a new literacies approach (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006) and a multiliteracies pedagogical framework (New London Group, 1996). These frameworks are also applied to help us examine the pre-service teachers’ digital stories and reflections. The data consist of approximately 150 digital stories and written student reflections collected over three years. We are encouraged by the finding that the multimedia nature of the assignment appears to help pre-service teachers construct new understandings of literacies, particularly when the digital stories are shared as part of the adult classroom experience. We conclude that digital stories hold potential to encourage pre-service teachers to think critically about how they were taught relative to the teachers they wish to become.

Teachers as Moral Compasses: Exploring Critical Literacy through Digital Social Justice Book Talks

A classroom-based study aimed to scaffold preservice teachers’ critical literacy through an exploration of trade picture books. The paper discusses preservice teachers’ shifting views of critical literacy and the place of critical literacy in the language arts classroom. It also assesses the usefulness of digital book talks for engaging preservice teachers with social justice issues. The book talks provided novice teachers with opportunities to question and challenge assumptions, evaluate their own actions and attitudes toward accepted moral standards, and to engage in positive social action. The preservice teachers’ responses to the assignment suggest a number of ways in which teachers can effectively use new media to explore social justice and equity issues with young students.

Multiple Solitudes: Digital Curriculum Access in the Pan-Canadian Context

In this paper, the authors examine the potential and the reality of pan-Canadian digital curriculum policy access in the current web-enabled global landscape. The authors discuss theory related to the affordances offered by digital technologies for the sharing of research and policy, as well as theory relative to knowledge mobilization and communities of practice, both of which support collaboration and consultation for informed policy development. The authors present their findings from two investigations to test digital access to curriculum policies across Canada’s provinces and territories through their Ministry of Education websites. Through this analysis, the authors provide evidence of the current affordances and barriers related to digital access to curriculum policies and offer suggestions to facilitate knowledge mobilization around curricular responses to child and adolescent health issues.

Online Learning as the Catalyst for More Deliberate Pedagogies: A Canadian University Experience

Abstract This chapter explores issues of quality teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education courses from the perspective of teaching fully online (polysynchronous) courses in undergraduate and graduate programs in education at a technology university in Ontario, Canada. Online courses offer unique opportunities to capitalize on students’ and professors’ digital capabilities gained in out-of-school learning and apply them to an in-school, technology-enabled learning environment. The critical and reflective arguments in this paper are informed by theories of online learning and research on active learning pedagogies. Digital technologies have opened new spaces for higher education which should be dedicated to creating high-quality learning environments and high-quality assessment. Moving a course online does not guarantee that students will be able to meet the course outcomes more readily, however, or that they will necessarily understand key concepts more easily than previously in the physically copresent course environments. All students in higher education need opportunities to seek, critique, and construct knowledge together and then transfer newly-acquired skills from their coursework to the worlds of work, service, and life. The emergence of new online learning spaces helps us to reexamine present higher education pedagogies in very deliberate ways to continue to maintain or to improve the quality of student learning in higher education. In this chapter, active learning in fully online learning spaces is the broad theme through which teaching, learning, and assessment strategies are reconsidered. The key elements of our theoretical framework for active learning include (1) deliberate pedagogies to establish the online classroom environment; (2) student ownership of learning activities; and (3) high-quality assessment strategies.

Moving from research on preservice teachers to co-learning with preservice teachers

Knowledge mobilization of health science research on body image is important.Teaching about body image has been found to be a complex, social justice topic.This study uses two research approaches: consultation and collaboration.A survey of preservice teachers supports many earlier findings and adds new ones.Website design as co-construction has potential as a knowledge mobilization tool. This paper outlines a two-phase research project on body image with Canadian preservice teachers. The first phase was mainly quantitative in the form of an online survey sent to 236 preservice teachers to explore their perceived levels of efficacy for teaching about body image and health. The results support earlier findings that teachers, in general, have a low comfort level with teaching body image in its complexity, and those preservice teachers who have ability and experience with sports tend to see body size more simplistically as an area of personal responsibility. Phase 2 of this research was a knowledge mobilization project working with a sub-group of the same preservice teachers. While both research phases involved the preservice teachers, the first phase involved a minimal level of cooperation in the form of data extraction. In comparison, the second phase involved significantly more cooperation with the participants through co-learning and knowledge construction activities. Findings indicate that knowledge mobilization projects can be one form of cooperative research where researchers and practitioners can collaborate in meaningful ways. These findings also illustrate how a co-learning orientation to the knowledge mobilization project promoted knowledge creation and learning for both the researchers and the preservice teachers.

Recognizing the “Transformational” in Preservice Digital Literacy Assignments

The authors review and evaluate a Teaching Methods course in Language and Literacy, one which focuses on multiple literacies, including digital literacy and critical literacy. The course is offered in a laptop-based university program. In this article, the authors outline the context of the multiple literacies course, its resources and assignments as well as their instructional goals. Their qualitative data sources include student-created digital artifacts such as digital literacy stories and digital book talks. The researchers draw from cross-program data based on hundreds of student reflections and one-on-one interviews. The authors conclude that there are indications from their data analysis that suggest that digital literacy supports the development of “transformative elements” that can extend beyond the teacher training program.