Robert E. White

Action research in practice: critical literacy in an urban grade 3 classroom

This action research project on critical literacy in a high poverty area in Toronto, Canada becomes the practical backdrop for examining how critical literacy can be developed and applied in regular classroom situations. Educators identifying patterns within classrooms that prevent students from participating fully in all aspects of a democratic society may find models presented in this article useful for making curricula more inclusive.

Towards an Understanding of Social Justice in Our Schools: Globalization, Inclusive Leadership and the Transformation of Schooling

As a result of educational policies emanating from issues relating to increasingly globalized societies, schooling is becoming increasingly standardized, not only in terms of assessment and evaluation but also in terms of processes, policies, and procedures. At issue is the question of where should social justice fit within competing notions of greater order and control over the process of schooling. This chapter advocates the deinstitutionalizing of such “educational factories” in order to gain greater clarity about what some of the advantages are for creating more socially just schools. The focus is on the perspective of the school leader as the individual who is in a key position to support inclusive leadership strategies. Two issues, “zero tolerance” and traditionally understood “inclusive education” policies are discussed as representative of well-intended but exclusionary policies that do little to advance true inclusionary practices within schools. Truly inclusive educational practices represent a form of social justice that is much needed within the school edifice.

Canadian contexts in educational leadership: a hermeneutic approach to distributed leadership for teachers’ professional learning

Abstract Educational leadership in Canada has traditionally been conceptualized as a solo activity. However, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in the distributed character of leadership. Like any other theory or concept, distributed leadership has attracted praise as well as criticism. In this chapter, we conceptualize distributed leadership as concerted actions that happen in everyday practices in schools and through relationships among various partners such as principals/heads and teachers. The chapter is divided into four sections. In Section 1, we trace historical and theoretical antecedents of distributed leadership in general with respect to questions of representation, legitimation and praxis, with specific references to social impetuses. Section 2 considers Canadian educational contexts in terms of current conditions and trends in distributed leadership. The third section deals with the global perspective in terms of social, political and aesthetic forces. The fourth section speculates upon the future of distributed leadership in terms of utopian/dystopian possibilities. In this final section, we experiment with what philosophical hermeneutics may offer to a re-conceptualization of distributed leadership. Through Gadamer’s notion of praxis, we discuss concerted action of distributed leadership. We highlight the importance of this form of leadership in an era of unprecedented global interconnectedness, and how it may facilitate teachers’ professional learning and development.

The Qualitative (R)Evolution

Professor Connell offers a discussion on the dialectic between qualitative and quantitative research. This video clip can be viewed at:

Planning for Succession: Considerations and Implications for Educational Policy

Administrative Succession as it is viewed at the school system level is the major focus of this study. Data are drawn from senior administrators, principals and vice-principals in secondary schools in three separate and dissimilar locations. School districts in Central Canada , Eastern Canada and the United States are represented by three case studies. The researchers identify the impact and implications of succession on individual leaders, on institutions and on school districts within a local, national and international context. The purpose of this chapter is to identify some of the exemplary practices in principal rotation and succession events as orchestrated by each of these three school districts. Then, various disparate practices and procedures are drawn together for a potential policy model that may be applicable to future succession events, inclusive of transfer or rotation events. This chapter incorporates and amalgamates plans, policies and procedures that support and “allow” principals to succeed and flourish.

The anatomy of a corporate transaction: understanding corporate involvement in two Canadian school districts

The process of schooling in the post‐modern era is multi‐faceted, as neo‐liberal economic forces threaten to alter educational systems. Powerful influences are expecting school districts to provide an educational system responsive to the needs of private corporations, which may conflict with student needs. This research inquires into and strives to understand the nature of corporate involvement in two Canadian school districts. It identifies transactions between businesses and educational institutions and clarifies views held by business partners and public school educators towards corporate investment in schooling. This investigation did find that, while schools are in no immediate danger of being restructured by business interests and that students may be receiving enhanced educational experiences, checks and balances responsible for maintaining the integrity of educational institutions are weak.

What is Critical Literacy

“The world must be made safe for democracy,” represents an interesting view that seems to suggest that President Wilson felt that the world may not yet have been ready for democracy, or that democracy was too fragile a philosophy for immediate currency, or both. At any rate, this comment represents what we call “the voice from the margins.”

Democracy and its Discontents

While this volume is about democracy and its relationship to critical literacy, it is first and foremost, a book about critical literacy. However, it is important to begin a discussion that attempts to unpack the notion of democracy, albeit from a secular Westernized tradition. The influential scholars who grace the pages of this volume have informed the conversation by contributing their views, perspectives and opinions.

The Political Context

To this point, in this volume we have discussed some of the underpinnings related to engaging in research in general and to qualitative research in particular. We have introduced an orientation for inquiry, called the Five Contexts, by which to engage conceptually with a variety of research genres. The first two aspects of this orientation have included a discussion of the autobiographical and the historical contexts of performing qualitative research. We now move on to the third aspect of this orientation, the political context. This chapter introduces the political context of qualitative research, featuring video clips of an interview with Henry Giroux, who offers a reflection on this context and relates it to issues of qualitative research. The particular political stance that is offered in this chapter relates to critical inquiry.

The Postmodern Context

This chapter focuses on the work of Dr. Zygmunt Bauman, one of the world’s leading scholars on the topic of postmodernity. Although the term “postmodern” was originally intended as a temporary expression that would later be dispensed with in favor of one that more accurately describes our current circumstances, in a very postmodern-like way the very word “postmodern” has stuck like glue. Professor Bauman prefers “liquid” to the term “post-” as he feels that our current times are much more synonymous with the fluidity of water than with the concreteness of the previous, so-called “modern,” era. While “liquid modernity” seems to describe with greater accuracy the context within which societies currently live, we, the authors, have taken the liberty of continuing to use the term “postmodern” due to its more readily identifiable signature with the greater public.