Tag Archives: education research

BC Teachers Strike Debate on Global BC Morning News Show

This morning on the Global BC Morning News Show, Sophie Lui and Steve Darling interviewed a variety of people on key issues related to education in British Columbia, in the context of the current labour dispute between the teachers and the BC government.

Segment 1
Topic: Cost of education to both parents and teachers (for example, money spent on supplies, possibility of corporate sponsorships as possible solution to alleviate the funding problem?)
Guest 1: Lisa Cable (Parents for B.C. Founder)
Guest 2: Harman Pandher (Burnaby School Board Trustee, Surrey teacher & parent)

Segment 2
Peter Fassbender, BC Minister of Education

Segment 3
Jim Iker, President of British Columbia Teachers Federation

Segment 4
Topic: Class size & composition
Guest 1: E. Wayne Ross (UBC Professor, Faculty of Education)
Guest 2: Nick Milum (Vancouver School Board Student Trustee)

Segment 5
Topic: Future of education, fixing the system & avoiding future strikes?)
Guest 1: Charles Ungerleider (UBC Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Education)
Guest 2: Dan Laitsch (SFU Associate Professor, Faculty of Education)

Class size affects more than education

Class size and composition are key issues in the current labour dispute between the British Columbia Teachers Federation and the BC government.

In 2002, the ruling BC Liberals unilaterally stripped away provisions in the teachers’ contract that governed the makeup and number of students in each class. The teachers sued the government over their actions, twice. And the teachers won both times. The government is currently appealing their loss and refuses to follow the courts order that class size and composition conditions be restored.

The teachers and the government’s negotiators have been at the table for many months, with little or no progress. Last week the BCTF started rotating, district by district one-day strikes around the province. The government responded by cutting teachers pay by 10% and, in a bizarre and confusing move, locking teachers out for 45 minutes before and after school and during lunch and recess.

Amongst other things, the BC Minister of Education, Peter Fassbender, has been misrepresenting the implications of research on class size. See my previous blog about that, which led to an interview with CBC Radio’s Daybreak North program that was broadcast this morning. You can listen to 5 minute interview here and here:

Critical Education issue: 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

Call for Manuscripts: Berkeley Review of Education

Call for Papers 2010-2011

The Berkeley Review of Education (BRE) is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal that engages issues of educational diversity and equity from various cognitive, developmental, sociohistorical, linguistic, and cultural perspectives. Published online and edited by students from the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, the BRE encourages submissions on research and theory from senior and emerging scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers. For more information about the BRE, please visit the journal’s website at http://escholarship.org/uc/ucbgse_bre.

The State of Public Education (Special Issue)

The Berkeley Review of Education (BRE) invites submissions to a special issue on the theme “The State of Public Education.” The special issue will discuss crucial matters of the economic, political, and social dimensions of public education in relation to the state during the current fiscal crisis and beyond. The BRE particularly welcomes empirical research that addresses concerns in elementary, secondary, and higher education.

Special Issue Submission Deadline: September 15, 2010

Critical Focus

Understanding issues of diversity and equity to be central, yet highly contested, themes in educational research, the BRE seeks to foster critical awareness and analysis of these issues in educational processes and practices in and out of school settings. The BRE therefore invites original submissions that highlight the role of language and literacy in the sociocultural and political contexts of education; examine the interplay among cognitive, social, and developmental processes in human knowledge and experience; and limn the role of policy within schools and the broader sociopolitical context.

Interdisciplinary Scope

The BRE seeks to capitalize on the theoretical and empirical contributions of scholars from diverse fields and disciplines. To that end, the BRE encourages submissions that foster critical communication spanning a broad
range of disciplines including, but not limited to, anthropology, cultural studies, disability studies, ethnic studies, family studies, gender and sexuality studies, information studies, linguistics, psychology, sociology,
and women’s studies. The journal invites submissions that re-imagine what a critical approach to education might look like from within and among the traditional and alternative theoretical paradigms entailed in multiple fields of inquiry.

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should be submitted online through the “submit article” link on the BRE website, http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucbgse/bre. Authors should consult the BRE Submission Requirements on the website before submitting manuscripts. Queries may be addressed to the editors at bre_editor@berkeley.edu.

All papers are subject to a double-blind peer review process, and authors will be notified about their submissions in a timely manner. Authors retain the copyright to the articles they publish in the journal. However, the BRE does not publish material that has been previously published and does not accept papers that have been simultaneously submitted elsewhere for publication (see BRE Policies).