Social movement activism throughout the 1960s and 1970s provided space for feminist concerns in a variety of arenas. Women's movement activism and women's scholarship in history challenged the ways in which women’s experiences had been marginalized or omitted in school history programs and curricula. Women's organizations developed and broadened networks, created and published resources, and lobbied governments and institutions. Their widespread activism spilled into a range of educational circles and influenced history teachers in altering curricula to include women in course materials. Advocating for women, on a curricular or professional development level, however, was complicated because of entrenched neo-liberal systems in place within education institutions. Although the Ontario Ministry of Education and the Toronto Board of Education demonstrated clear support for a wide range of gender equity-based initiatives, they committed to implementing a 'piecemeal' approach to curricular change. The fundamental work to include women in history curricula relied heavily on grassroots networks that allowed for women’s experiences to leak into classrooms, and were responsible for bringing women’s voices into the history curricula. This study explores the initiatives of the Toronto Board of Education from 1968-1993, with particular analysis of women’s committees, teacher/librarians in resource centers, Affirmative Action representatives, individual teachers and administrators. Within the broader public sphere, the contributions of concerned parents, activists, small independent publishers, educational reformers, political leaders and women’s history organizations lent their voices to ideas about how the inclusion of women in history curricula should take shape in Toronto schools. Ministry gender equity policies and history course guidelines provided incremental and therefore politically safe responses to educational change. The Toronto Board's "add-on" approach to including women in course examinations avoided instituting major "top-down'" curricular change, which kept the integration of women’s history within classrooms on the periphery of most course work. The substantive grassroots activism and the commitment of women’s organizations and individual teachers, however, allowed women’s history to flourish within individual classrooms in Toronto and demonstrates the ways in which "bottom-up" initiatives can be a powerful force in curricular change.

Local and federal governments, public school boards, and higher education institutions have been promoting online courses in their commitment to accommodating public needs, widening access to materials, sharing intellectual resources, and reducing costs. However, researchers of education needs to consider the often ignored yet important issue of equity since disregarding the issue of inequity in online education may create suboptimal consequences for students. This dissertation work, therefore, investigates the issues of social justice and equity in online education. I argue that equity is situated between the tensions of various social structures in a broader cultural context and can be thought of as a fair distribution of opportunities to participate. This understanding is built upon the idea that individuals have different values, goals, and interests; nevertheless, the online learning context may not provide fair opportunities for individuals to follow their own learning trajectories. Particularly, online learning environments can reproduce inequitable learning conditions when the context requires certain individuals to assimilate mainstream beliefs and values at the expense of their own identities. Since identifications have certain social and political consequences by enabling or constraining individuals’ access to educational resources, individuals may try to be identified in line with culturally-hegemonic perspectives in order to gain or secure their access to educational resources or to legitimize their learning experiences. In this interview study, I conceptualize online courses within their broader socio-historical context and analyze how macro-level social structures, namely the concept of whiteness, can reproduce inequity in micro-level online learning practices. By questioning who has control over the conditions for the production of knowledge, values, and identification, I investigate how socially accepted bodies of thoughts, beliefs, values, and feelings that give meaning to individuals’ daily-practices may create inequitable learning conditions in day-to-day online learning practices. In specific, I analyze how those who are identified as non-White experience “double-bind” with respect to stereotypification on one hand, anonymity on the other. Building on this analysis, I illustrate how those who are identified as non-White have to constantly negotiate their legitimacy and right to be in the online environment.

This study explores the conceptions and practices of parent involvement in education that exist among Latin American families with students in Toronto Schools. The individual and collective life histories of 3 immigrant families from Latin America were collected in order to understand how parents and students conceive of parents’ role the education of their children. The findings of this research demonstrate that families’ conceptions are much broader and expansive than what is currently defined as parent involvement within policy and practice in Ontario and are informed by their educational trajectory in their home country and throughout the migration process and their ideas on education. This research serves to shed light on the experiences of Latin American families in their interactions with educational institutions and gives voice to their experiences, ideas and aspirations in their new home.

This study explores the conceptions and practices of parent involvement in education that exist among Latin American families with students in Toronto Schools. The individual and collective life histories of 3 immigrant families from Latin America were collected in order to understand how parents and students conceive of parents’ role the education of their children. The findings of this research demonstrate that families’ conceptions are much broader and expansive than what is currently defined as parent involvement within policy and practice in Ontario and are informed by their educational trajectory in their home country and throughout the migration process and their ideas on education. This research serves to shed light on the experiences of Latin American families in their interactions with educational institutions and gives voice to their experiences, ideas and aspirations in their new home.

This thesis is an exploratory investigation of how apprenticeship instructors in two of Ontario's colleges perceive and have experienced professional development over the duration of their careers and the role their employer-colleges, played in that professional development. As the primary agents for skills and knowledge transfer, the instructors of apprenticeship training provide a key role in preparing competent, skilled-trade workers for a complex and changing work environment. This research is relevant at this time because of the many changes to the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology since their inception in the mid-nineteen- sixties. The original mission of the colleges, to deliver occupation preparation programs has evolved to a much-expanded mandate to include degree granting. Other changes include a much more diverse student population with diverse needs, backgrounds and values. Have the apprenticeship instructors received the requisite training and development to deal with changes in technology, student needs, teaching and learning strategies and the evolving complexities of the college environment? This study contributes to the literature of professional development in the apprenticeship professoriate by examining the perceptions, attitudes and behaviours concerning professional development. The findings reveal that there are issues of physical location, discourse and methods of instruction, unique to apprenticeship training, which have a profound impact on the apprenticeship instructors' disposition and participation in professional development. Data were attained from a series of in-depth interviews, which revealed that the apprenticeship instructors are a dedicated and motivated group of educators who are committed to providing the highest quality of education to their students. However, the professional development offered or supported by the college-employers attracts very little, if any, participation by the apprenticeship professoriate. The findings indicate that changes to facilitate the active participation in professional development, creating a more inclusive environment between the apprenticeship instructors and other faculty members and restructuring the professional development programs to include review and evaluation of every faculty member's needs would create a more comprehensive and continuing enhancement of instructors' capabilities and student learning outcomes.

Canada supports developmental efforts in Ghana through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). This dissertation investigates how Canada partners with Ghana to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for education by 2015. The study focuses on achieving equity and access to education in Ghana, and examines how far Ghana’s policy and Canada’s aims and objectives (through CIDA) for adressing these developmental issues converge or diverge. The principal methodology for accomplishing this study includes literature review and a content analysis of CIDA programmes and documents related to education in Ghana. The study concludes that CIDA programmes and operations in education in Ghana have a clear focus on issues relating to equity and access to education, and complement governmental efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for Education in Ghana. The thesis ends with recommendation for further study on using spirituality and indigenous knowledges to enhance and provide holistic education in Ghana.

Scholars suggest that when students use information and communication technology to complete and present identity texts about their own cultural background, such as self-authored literature, artwork, and multi-media texts, they learn about themselves and others and they can improve literacy skills and proficiency with technology (Chow & Cummins, 2003; Cummins, 2006). In this exploratory case study five middle-school students attending a diverse inner city school, and each representing a different demographic, were asked to complete an identity text project. In question was whether they would consume or critically deconstruct the negative hegemonic discourses they might encounter in the process. Results indicated that student response to these discourses was inconsistent, that students minoritized as black were especially vulnerable to them, and that student-led constructivist projects like this should be preceded by effective inclusive schooling and media literacy pedagogy to help ensure student engagement with multi-literacies is enhanced as intended.

The no borders movement has been an important site of anti-imperialist resistance, and as such it provides a valuable point of entry into problematizing the contradictions that constitute the relations of consciousness, praxis and ideology. By tracing the recent history of no borders activism in relation to the intensification of neoliberalism, and the prevalence of diffuse models of power, the analysis illustrates the ways in which critical praxis has been limited by the current milieu. Working from an anti-racist feminist perspective I utilize examples drawn from no borders activism to demonstrate the very real limits of informal and incidental learning in social movements. The analysis argues against the supplanting of consciousness with subjectivity as a way to avoid the problems associated with structuralist analysis. Instead, I have suggested that critical education for social action requires a dialectical engagement with the social relations that we live in, contest and transform.

This thesis examined what means a group of elementary school principals in multicultural communities used to support and imporve the language learning of English Language Learning (ELL)students. In this thesis, multicultural communities are defined as urban schools which have a majority of students whose mother tongue is not English. Although they are challenged to value and honour the diversity of their school communities, these principals must also ensure that their teachers meet the mandated rigors of the Ontario curriculum, and that the students attain desired levels of achievement as defined by the Ontario Ministry of Education. In an increasing number of schools in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) ELL students form a majority of the student population; yet this reality is barely acknowledged in provincial educational policy or in the professional education of Ontario's school principals. Nor has the educational research adequately addressed the challenges of educating ELL students over the past thirty-five years. The research literature on the characteristics, activities, and behaviour of effective school principals rarely mention their knowledge of other cultures and languages or their expertise related to ethnic and racial diversity. Semi-structured interviews were used to capture the responses of ten elementary school principals of multicultural school communities. The findings indicate that principals who were successful in leading multicultural school communities and improving the literacy achievement of ELL students had a deep understanding of literacy development; cultural needs of the community; and ESL issues. Although much of the leadership framework is similar to principalship in non-multicultural school communities, principals identified a number of leadership competencies that are particular to a diverse community. The findings have implications for the courses which prepare principals for these schools; the professional development of senior administrators; and the choice of personnel suitable for leadership roles in multicultural communities.

This thesis is an exploratory investigation of how apprenticeship instructors in two of Ontario's colleges perceive and have experienced professional development over the duration of their careers and the role their employer-colleges, played in that professional development. As the primary agents for skills and knowledge transfer, the instructors of apprenticeship training provide a key role in preparing competent, skilled-trade workers for a complex and changing work environment. This research is relevant at this time because of the many changes to the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology since their inception in the mid-nineteen- sixties. The original mission of the colleges, to deliver occupation preparation programs has evolved to a much-expanded mandate to include degree granting. Other changes include a much more diverse student population with diverse needs, backgrounds and values. Have the apprenticeship instructors received the requisite training and development to deal with changes in technology, student needs, teaching and learning strategies and the evolving complexities of the college environment? This study contributes to the literature of professional development in the apprenticeship professoriate by examining the perceptions, attitudes and behaviours concerning professional development. The findings reveal that there are issues of physical location, discourse and methods of instruction, unique to apprenticeship training, which have a profound impact on the apprenticeship instructors' disposition and participation in professional development. Data were attained from a series of in-depth interviews, which revealed that the apprenticeship instructors are a dedicated and motivated group of educators who are committed to providing the highest quality of education to their students. However, the professional development offered or supported by the college-employers attracts very little, if any, participation by the apprenticeship professoriate. The findings indicate that changes to facilitate the active participation in professional development, creating a more inclusive environment between the apprenticeship instructors and other faculty members and restructuring the professional development programs to include review and evaluation of every faculty member's needs would create a more comprehensive and continuing enhancement of instructors' capabilities and student learning outcomes.