-
Recent Posts
- Critical Education Special Issue – Call for Submissions CRITICAL HUMANISM AND PROBLEMS OF CHANGE
- Global Talks Thursday (Dec 10, 2020): Dialogue on Curriculum and Instruction in Relations to the Pandemic/Online Education
- Call for Papers: The Labour of COVID section of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labour
- ICES Seminar: THE REGIMES OF TRUTH OF (GLOBAL) CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
- CFM Deadlined Extended: Contemporary Educator Movements: Transforming Unions, Schools, and Society in North America
Recent Comments
- E Wayne Ross on The Courage of Hopelessness: Democratic Education in the Age of Empire [Video]
- George Rammell on The Courage of Hopelessness: Democratic Education in the Age of Empire [Video]
- Shannon M on BC elementary school bans touching at recess #NoMoreTag #bced #yteubc #occupyeducation
- SD61 Board Meeting, June 17, 2013: The Record Off The Record: It Sounds So Nice | Lined Paper on BC schools face total budget shortfall of $130 million #bcpoli
- Monday Memo – June 3, 2013 | Surrey Teachers Association on BC Teachers Federation scores landmark victory in academic freedom and freedom of expression #bcpoli
Archives
- August 2023
- December 2020
- May 2020
- March 2020
- January 2020
- August 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- September 2016
- July 2016
- May 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- October 2015
- June 2015
- April 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- May 2014
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
Categories
- Academic freedom
- Adjuncts
- Administration
- BC Education
- Budgets & Funding
- CAUT
- CFPs
- Civil Liberties
- Commentary
- Conferences
- Contracts
- Corporate University
- Critical Education
- Disputes
- Environment
- Equity
- Ethics
- Faculty
- Free speech
- Governance
- Government
- Idle No More
- Job cuts
- K-12 issues
- Layoffs
- Legal issues
- Organizing
- Privatization
- Protests
- Publishing
- Research
- Salary/Economic Benefits
- Strikes & Labor
- Student Movement
- Student Speech
- Students
- Talks and seminars
- Teachers
- Tenure & Promotion
- Testing
- Textbooks
- Uncategorized
- Unions
- University Presidents
- Violence
- Working condition
Meta
-
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Global Talks Thursday (Dec 10, 2020): Dialogue on Curriculum and Instruction in Relations to the Pandemic/Online Education
Posted in Uncategorized
Seminar: Challenges and Tensions in Curriculum Management: Theory and Practice
Challenges and Tensions in Curriculum Management: Theory and Practice
Public Seminar Sponsored by
Institute for Critical Education Studies
July 13, 2016
12:00pm
Scarfe 2108
2125 Main Mall
University of British Columbia
Carolina Castro, Héctor Gómez, and Fernando Murillo, co-authors in the recently published book Desafíos y Tensiones en la Gestión Curricular: Teoría y Práctica [Challenges and Tensions in Curriculum Management: Theory and Practice] in Chile, will present their contributions to the discussion of curriculum design, development and implementation in the contexts of schools and higher education.
The book, co–edited by Gómez and Castro, gives voice to a variety of perspectives and experiences in schools and higher education. In this regard the authors ask: How is curriculum managed? Who is involved in the process and how? What authority do curriculum managers have, and how is power distributed in order to influence and make decisions on the curriculum? What effective spaces for innovation exist? How are perennial and new issues considered in the management of curriculum?
Curriculum Design and the Teaching Role: An Outstanding Relationship. Reflections From Research at a Hospital-Based School
Carolina Castro
Bachelor in Education – Primary School Teacher, Master of Arts in Education and Curriculum. Head of the Curriculum Unit at Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez in Santiago, Chile.
Professional Formation Beyond the Know-How: Considerations and Challenges for a Post-Competence Curriculum Management
Fernando M. Murillo
Bachelor in Education – TEFL, Master of Arts in Education and Curriculum, UBC PhD student in Curriculum Studies
Teacher Education in Chile: Curriculum design and its Complex Discourses.
Héctor Gómez
Bachelor in Education – Teacher of History and Social Sciences, Master of Arts in Education and Curriculum, UBC PhD Student in Curriculum Studies
Some BC and Alberta schools dump percentage grading
Should schools move away from grading students? Yes!
Of course, it’s a time “honoured” tradition to use grades as the key means of sorting students to meet the demands of business. But, if you’re more more interested in motivating students to learn and less interested in treating education like a commodity, there’s really little room to debate the point.
School boards in Ridge Meadows, BC and Battle River, AB have decided to stop giving percentage grades to their students.
The Vancouver Sun recently ran a story on the Ridge Meadows Schools (Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows BC) that have adopted an alternative approach to student assessment in which elementary teachers are no longer required to give letter grades to students.
Rather than assigning As, Bs or Cs to kids from grades 4 to 7, teachers can instead use the conference model to assess how well children are grasping course material, as well as their learning style, readiness to progress and comprehension of overall concepts. The standard reporting system does not assign letter grades for students in kindergarten to Grade 3, but under the new system, students in all elementary grades will be invited to participate more fully in their evaluations by completing self-assessments and setting future learning goals.
The alternative system will engage students while providing more meaning to parents than a simple letter grade, said Ridge Meadows school trustee Susan Carr, who has two children in the school system.
Ridge Meadows school trustees were unanimous in their support for the new approach, which was developed over the past two years by a district committee. The Ridge Meadows News reported that “Committee members noted the feedback from parents who have been involved so far is “through-the-roof positive.”
In Alberta, the Battle River School District’s has adopted an alternative grading system that replaces percentage grades with categories.
Under the assessment model, students are marked with an achievement level that indicates they are within a percentage range. A student scoring between zero and 50 per cent would be at the “beginning” level. A “developing” student is within the 50-66 per cent range, “achieving” is between 67 and 83 per cent and “excelling” ranges from 84-100 per cent. (The Edmonton Journal)
Camrose, AB parents don’t seem to be has uniformly positive about Battle River’s decision as about 150 recently protested the move.
Today on CBC Radio’s The 180 with Jim Brown, Sandra Mathison, a UBC education professor and member of the Institute for Critical Education Studies discussed the issue of grading students and provided some sharp counter-point to Michael Zwaagstra, a high school teacher who is affiliated with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (a Fraser Institute clone that is primarily funded by right-wing outfits like the Donner Foundation).
The Frontier Centre and Zwaagstra’s views on education get a lot of play on the editorial pages of Vancouver’s daily papers, both of which prominently embrace and espouse neoliberal public policy, which places the interests of corporate capital and their shareholders over the interests of people.
It was interesting to hear Zwaagstra shift to center when confronted with Mathison’s counter-point.
Get the podcast of this episode of The 180 with Jim Brown here.
New issue of Critical Education launched: Embracing Change: Reflection on Practice in Immigrant Communities
Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to read articles and items of interest.
Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,
Sandra Mathison
Stephen Petrina
E. Wayne Ross
Co-Editors, Critical Education
Institute for Critical Education Studies
University of British Columbia
Critical Education
Vol 3, No 7 (2012)
Table of Contents
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/182260
Articles
——–
Embracing Change: Reflection on Practice in Immigrant Communities
Gresilda Anne Tilley-Lubbs, Jennifer McCloud
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Critical Education, education research, immigrant communities, journals, publications
CFP: “Teach for America and the Future of Education in the US”
Call for Submissions
Critical Education Special Series
“Teach for America and the Future of Education in the US”
Guest Editor: Philip E. Kovacs, University of Alabama, Huntsville
Founded in 1990 by Princeton graduate Wendy Kopp, Teach for America (TFA) has grown from a tiny organization with limited impact to what some supporters call the most significant force in educational reform today. Indeed the organization has recently been embraced by both the president of the National Educational Association and U.S. Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan as a force for tremendous good.
Critics argue otherwise, pointing to data that is mixed at best while questioning the almost $500 million annual operating budget of the non-profit, a significant portion of which comes from U.S. taxpayers. In light of questionable results and practices (such as using non-certified TFA recruits to work with special education students in direct violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) organizations are working to end TFA’s “highly qualified teacher” provision in 2013, an effort TFA is aggressively trying to thwart.
In an effort to provide assistance to those organizations working to maintain the integrity of the teaching profession, the Critical Education seeks research on TFA’s practices, procedures, outcomes, and impacts. We are looking for empirical and theoretical pieces written in a style that congressional staffers can easily access and understand. We are not interested in pieces that sacrifice intellectual rigor for ease of reading, but we are also wary of overly theorized pieces that alienate readers outside of the academy.
In addition to full-length manuscripts (5,000-8,000 words), we are also soliciting short accounts of TFA’s impact in specific cities to be presented as “field reports.”
Proposals of no more than 200 words due by September 15, 2012.
Notice of acceptance of proposal by October 1, 2012
Final Submission due by February 1, 2013.
For more information on submission contact Philip Kovacs at: pk0001@uah.edu
Critical Education is an international peer-reviewed journal, which seeks manuscripts that critically examine contemporary education contexts and practices. Critical Education is interested in theoretical and empirical research as well as articles that advance educational practices that challenge the existing state of affairs in society, schools, and informal education.
Posted in Uncategorized