Access to health care remains suboptimal for Indigenous people in Canada. One contributing factor is the longstanding undersupply of Indigenous physicians. Despite awareness of this issue, underrepresentation in medical schools continues. In 2002, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry (SSMD) policies were modified to enhance access for Indigenous students. This article describes our school's continuing journey of policy and process revision, formative collaborations, early learner outcomes, and lessons learned towards this goal. In the first 10 years, SSMD matriculated 15 additional Indigenous students via this new stream. All candidates were successful in the undergraduate medical curriculum, licensing examinations, and residency match. The majority were attracted to primary care specialties, training programs affiliated with SSMD, and practices in southern Ontario. While the process and curriculum have revealed their potential, its capacity is not being maximized.
This article examines how a small group of high-socioeconomic status (high-SES) parents organized community opposition to the integration of a special-needs student into a grade 3 classroom in an urban elementary school in Ontario. Using data gathered in a participant observation study, this article shows hoiv parents came to believe that existing special education policy placed the individual needs of the special education student over the needs of the collective. It explicates parents' subsequent efforts to enter into a social discursive process to challenge the policy and ultimately co-construct unofficial integration guidelines specific to the local school. In forcing the school board to explicate special education policy and practice, the parents underscored the nature of schools as contested sites of policy negotiation and established themselves as players in the policy development arena. Furthermore, this article highlights the importance of both history and local context in policy development and implementation and suggests that special education initiatives are best conceptualized as nested in local communities. The article concludes with a suggestion for future research on special education policy and community responses to integration. ; Cet article porte sur les démarches entreprises par un petit groupe de parents de statut socio-économique élevé qui ont mené une opposition communautaire pour empêcher qu'un élève en difficulté soit intégré dans une classe de 3e année dans une école élémentaire en milieu urbain en Ontario. S'appuyant sur les données d'une étude participation observation, cet article démontre que les parents en sont arrivés à croire que la politique existante relative à l'éducation à l'enfance en difficulté mettait les besoins de l'élève en difficulté avant ceux de la collectivité. On explique les efforts des parents qui visaient à entamer un processus de discours social pour défier la politique et finalement pour participer à l'élaboration de principes directeurs officieux portant sur l'intégration et spécifiques à leur école. En obligeant le conseil scolaire à expliciter les politiques et les procédures concernant l'éducation aux élèves en difficulté, les parents ont fait ressortir la nature des écoles comme sites de contestation sur les politiques et ils se sont érigés en intervenants dans l'arène du développement de politiques. L'article souligne l'importance que jouent, au niveau local, l'histoire et le contexte dans le développement et l'implantation de politiques. On y propose que les initiatives en matière d'éducation à l'enfance en difficulté se conçoivent le mieux comme étant emboîtées dans les communautés locales. Une suggestion quant à la recherche sur les politiques touchant l'éducation à l'enfance en difficulté et les réactions communautaires à l'intégration vient conclure l'article.
Die vorliegende Diplomarbeit beschäftigt sich mit drei Aspekten des Englischunterrichts an Sekundarschulen in Frankreich: Sprachpolitik, Sprachpraxis und der Haltung gegenüber der englischen Sprache. Zu Beginn der Arbeit wird der theoretische Hintergrund behandelt und der landesspezifische Kontext durchleuchtet, in dem die Studie durchgeführt wurde. Anhand allgemeiner Stereotype zur Thematik "Englisch in Frankreich" (zum Beispiel: Franzosen und Französinnen wollen kein Englisch lernen) wurden die folgenden Forschungsfragen entwickelt: Welche Einstellungen haben Sekundarschüler_innen in Frankreich gegenüber der englischen Sprache und dem Englischunterricht? Welche Einstellungen haben Englischlehrer_innen in Frankreich gegenüber Englisch und wie nehmen sie die Sprachpolitik und die Sprachpraxis des Englischunterrichts wahr? Um diesen Fragen auf den Grund zu gehen, wurde ein Mixed-Methods-Ansatz für die Studie gewählt: 155 Schüler_innen wurden durch einen Fragebogen zu ihren Einstellungen gegenüber der englischen Sprache und Englischunterricht befragt und sechs Lehrer_innen wurden interviewt. Entgegen weit verbreiteter Annahmen zeigte die Studie, dass Schüler_innen sehr positive Einstellungen gegenüber Englisch und Englischunterricht haben und weder fürchten, dass Englisch einen negativen Einfluss auf die französische Sprache haben könnte, noch mit diesem Vorurteil vertraut sind. Lehrer_innen jedoch berichteten, mit negativen Einstellungen gegenüber Englisch vertraut zu sein und betonten, dass diese hauptsächlich in elitären Kreisen vorherrschend sind. Außerdem fand die Studie heraus, dass der Fokus des Englischunterrichts auf der mündlichen Sprachkompetenz liegt. Weiters zeigte die Studie, dass disziplinäre Probleme den Schulalltag beeinträchtigen und eine negative Auswirkung auf den Englischunterricht in Frankreich haben. Zuletzt zeigten die Interviews, dass Lehrer_innen unzufrieden mit dem Curriculum sind und sich wünschen, mehr in den Prozess der Curriculum Entwicklung involviert zu werden. Die Diplomarbeit endet mit Implikationen für weitere Forschung und unterstreicht die zentrale Erkenntnis, dass die allgemeine Einstellung zum Englischen in Frankreich positiv ist. ; This thesis deals with three interconnected aspects of English language teaching (ELT) in French secondary schools, namely language policies, language practices and language attitudes. Theoretical literature on the subject matter is reviewed and the French context, in which this study took place, is described at the beginning of this thesis. On the basis of common stereotypes regarding English in France (e.g. 'The French do not want to learn English), the following main research questions were designed: What are French Secondary school students attitudes towards and beliefs about English and English as a foreign language (EFL)? What are French EFL teachers attitudes towards English and EFL, as well as their perception of EFL classroom practices and policies? To answer these questions, a mixed-methods research design was developed. Therefore, a questionnaire was handed out to 155 secondary school students, and six EFL teachers were interviewed in Paris. The findings showed that, against common stereotypes, students in France consider English to be of high importance to them and neither hold negative attitudes towards English, nor are they aware of the existence of such. However, teachers are more aware of negative attitudes, which have mainly been found to be prevalent among elitist circles in France. Furthermore, the study found that the oral language competence is not only very important to educational inspectors, but also to the individual teachers interviewed. Moreover, disciplinary issues appear as a major obstacle to speaking English during class time and generally seem to be detrimental to education in France. Lastly, the interviews granted insight into the teachers dissatisfaction with curriculum designers, given that the hierarchical system leaves little space for individual teachers to voice their opinions. The thesis ends with implications for further research and highlights the key finding that general attitudes towards English in France are positive. ; vorgelegt von Salima Magdalena Vincke ; Zusammenfassungen auf Deutsch und Englisch ; Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Diplomarbeit, 2020 ; (VLID)4901688
Part 1. Introduction -- Chapter 1. School Policy Reform in Europe between Transnational Alignment and National Contestation (John Benedicto Krejsler) -- Part 2. National Cases -- Chapter 2. Danish school policy: remaining Nordic while going transnational (John Benedicto Krejsler) -- Chapter 3. England: Neo-liberalism, regulation and populism in the educational reform laboratory (David Hall) -- Chapter 4. School Reform Policy and Governance in Germany between National and Transnational Expectations – with outlooks to Austria and Switzerland (Bettina-Maria Gördel) -- Chapter 5. Transnational forces in Dutch educational policies and practices (Theo Wubbels) -- Chapter 6. French education policies and the PISA paradigm: the strong republican State absorbing external influences (Romuald Normand) -- Chapter 7. Changing School Policies in Italy: From Welfare Equity model to the New Public Management instrumentations (Paolo Landri) -- Chapter 8. Multi-scalar interactions and school policy: The trajectory of educational reform in Catalonia within the Spanish state (Antoni Verger) -- Chapter 9. School Policy and Reforms in Poland in the light of decentralisation – between democratisation and centralisation (Joanna Madalińska-Michalak) -- Chapter 10. Czech School Reforms: Between East and West (Petr Novotný) -- Chapter 11. Education policies and reforms in Slovenia and Croatia: shared history, diverging paths (Eva Klemenčič Mirazchiyski) -- Part 3. Discussions -- Chapter 12. Ever-morphing relations between the global, supranational and the national in schooling policy: A reflection on some European cases (Bob Lingard) -- Chapter 13. Europe as the exterior interiorized in the infrastructures of policy (Thomas S. Popkewitz) -- Chapter 14. How context matters in European school policy reforms (Lejf Moos).
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This book discusses national school policy reforms in a number of key European countries and shows how these are framed in transnational collaborations that meet with national particularities and contestations. It gives an overview of school policy developments that represents the diversity of Europe within a comparative framework. It takes point of departure in the fact that European countries in their school and education policies have been increasingly aligning with each other, mostly via transnational collaborations, the OECD, EU, and the Bologna Process. Even the IEA has been instrumental to motivate alignments by means of influential surveys, knowledge production and methodological development. This alignment in terms of common standards, social technologies, qualification frameworks and so forth have aimed at facilitating mobility of students, workers, business and so forth as well as fostering a European identity among citizens from Europes patchwork of small and medium-size countries, representing a patchwork of different languages, cultures and societal contexts. In national recontextualizations, however, alignments have been continuously contested according to the particularities of what has been possible educationally and politically in the different national contexts. Furthermore, the return of national(isms) as well as the rise of edubusiness and digitalization have been increasingly influential. This book thus concludes that increasing transnational alignments have to be observed with meticulous attention to different national contexts that matter greatly
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Highlighting the processes and missteps involved in creating and carrying out school desegregation policies in Chicago, Dionne Danns discusses the challenges of using the 1964 Civil Rights Act to implement school desegregation and the resultant limitations and effectiveness of government legislative power in bringing about social change. Dionne Danns is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Adjunct in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA.
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Improving the quality of school education is one of the key policy concerns in Korea. This paper examines whether providing schools with adequate autonomy and incentives can meet the policy goals by looking at a recent policy reform in Korea. In 2009, the Korean government granted autonomy to certain private high schools on the condition that no financial subsidies would be provided to the schools. Because the autonomous private high schools cannot receive a subsidy, they have a strong incentive to meet parental demands because schools failing to meet these demands will lose students and will have to close. Applying the value-added model to longitudinal data at the student level, I find that students entering these autonomous schools show faster growth in their academic achievement than their peers in traditional non-autonomous schools. These results suggest that providing schools with autonomy and incentives can be a useful policy tool for improving school education.
During spring f 003 Oregon endured the worst school budget crisis in the nation. To understand teacher experiences during this period, 90 teachers across the state were interviewed. Questions focused on teacher attitudes, personal/financial issues, working conditions, and changes in teaching, analyzed with simple statistics and qualitative descriptive methods. Teacher satisfaction declined; teachers were pessimistic about schools, angry about salary freezes, and wanted to retire immediately. Most expressed frustration with politics and dissatisfaction with working conditions. Almost all experienced salary loss, even when days were not cut. Teachers made many personal sacrifices and most experienced health problems. Working condition changes included class size increases, loss of specialists, longer working hours, and more special needs students with less help. Teaching changed to "no frills. "Loss of materials, supplies, time with students, and morale problems were common. Stable and adequate funding and teacher working conditions have not been addressed in policy.
