This study investigated relationships between individual learner differences and the learning of two English structures that differed in their grammatical difficulty. Using a quasi-experimental design, 66 secondary-level learners of English as a foreign language from three intact classes were provided with four hours of instruction on two L2 structures –one considered relatively easy to learn (i.e., past progressive) and the other relatively difficult to learn (i.e. passive construction). The participants were pretested on their knowledge of both structures and posttested immediately after the instruction. Learners’ progress was measured via written grammaticality judgment tests (GJT) and oral production tasks (OPT). The instruments to measure individual learner differences included a computerized language aptitude test, an L1 metalinguistic awareness test, a motivation questionnaire, a backward digit span test, and a learner retrospection questionnaire. The results revealed that aptitude and motivation were the two variables that significantly contributed to learners’ gains with respect to the ‘passive’ and that L1 metalinguistic awareness explained significant variation in learners’ gains regarding the ‘past progressive’. These relationships were observed with learners’ performance on the written but not oral measures. A detailed analysis of the aptitude test components revealed that the grammatical inferencing subtask was significantly related to L2 gains on the ‘passive’ – again only with respect to learners’ performance on the written GJT. The results also revealed that learners with different aptitude profiles (i.e., low, medium, high) benefited differently from instruction on the two target features. High aptitude learners performed better than low aptitude learners on the ‘passive’ as measured by the GJT posttest. With respect to the ‘past progressive’ only learners in the medium aptitude profile group improved significantly on the written GJT. These findings confirm that language aptitude holds a role in language learning but that there are other factors (i.e., motivation and L1 metalinguistic awareness) that also contribute to L2 progress. These results also provide evidence from a classroom-based study that the grammatical difficulty of what is to be learned is a factor in determining what cognitive abilities L2 learners rely on in their efforts to learn a new language.

This dissertation examines how teachers understand and use their own bodies in their everyday practice of teaching. Using a poststructural theoretical framework and an ethnographic and arts-based research methodology, I demonstrate how discourses of the body shape experiences of teaching and teachers’ lives. This work is significant not only because it has direct implications for teachers but also because teachers’ bodies are rich and complex sites for theorizing and thinking critically about contemporary practices and discursive understandings that shape our lives. I call the research methodology that I used in this study “embedded performed ethnography”. This methodology involved in-depth ethnographic interviews, creative writing, and dramatic performance with twelve teachers in Ontario. By drawing on three distinct but interrelated fields: critical physical education, feminist and queer curriculum theory and Fat Studies, my research demonstrates the richness and complexity of teachers’ professional lives and the impact that dominant discourses of the body have on educational spaces. I use three key concepts to analyze the experiences and writing of the research participants. First, I use the concept of ‘biopedagogy’ to examine the ways in which teachers’ bodies are subject to regulation and policing in schools. Next, I use the concept of ‘performance’ to examine how participants use their bodies to construct and reproduce dominant notions of health in the classroom. Lastly, I use ‘affect’ as a concept to address the complex and complicated moments that occur on and through a teacher’s body in the classroom. I work with the everyday experiences of teachers in the classroom to explore how particular teaching moments illustrate and connect to the broader discourses and practices of the body that shape our lives.

While recent research trends in science education have focussed the collective attention at utilizing the science curriculum as a means towards positive social change, such efforts have largely been predicated on understandings of the nature of knowledge and truth as socially constructed entities. Through this lens of social constructivism, knowledge is said to bear the signature of individuals and institutions in power, and therefore extant knowledge is considered to be the vehicle for further oppression of disadvantaged groups. There are at least two ways in which this argument is deeply flawed—social constructivism accords to itself epistemic positions it denies others, and an intellectually honest application of its principles leads to a position where there is no way to distinguish between better or worse positions on issues. In contrast, the principle of social realism takes a ‘middle path’, acknowledging the social reality of knowledge construction but disavowing the relativism of social constructivism. Through this epistemological foundation, implications arise for curriculum theory—how is it that we may discriminate forms of knowledge for in/ex-clusion into the school curriculum? In this study, I consider the curriculum changes in the Ontario elementary science anxd technology curriculum. I ask two key questions: (i) What are the effects of the curriculum revisions on the knowledge content of the science curriculum? and: (ii) What are the characteristics of science pedagogy in fulfilment of these curriculum changes? I develop instruments to analyze curriculum documentation, and classroom pedagogy. The major findings of this project include: (i) the curriculum revisions have added environmental knowledge expectations with varying degrees of disconnection from the scientific content knowledge; (ii) knowledge expectations removed to accommodate environmental expectations constituted important scientific principles; (iii) environmental pedagogy in science classrooms reflected the disconnection between science and environmental knowledge, most obviously in the upper grades where the degree of boundary maintenance between knowledge forms was strongest; (iv) this disconnection between environmental and scientific knowledge forms inhibited the cumulative modality of knowledge (re)production. A discussion of results and the general principles of the importance of knowledge concludes the project.

This study explored how a video club could be used to help develop teacher’s professional vision by investigating how teachers’ professional vision changed over time. In addition, the role of the facilitator was studied to determine how it contributed to the development of professional vision. The facilitation techniques appear to be the reason why the expected growth in professional vision did not occur. While video clubs are a valuable way of embedding professional development with artifacts from the classroom, care must be taken with the facilitation techniques employed.

This study investigates how 4 newly admitted Chinese international graduate students participate in classroom discussions at a Canadian university. This qualitative research provides rich descriptions of their backgrounds and classroom participation, as well as their voices related to their classroom experiences. Framed by Language Socialization Theory, the study examines the classroom contexts where the students are socialized, particularly the social relations in the classroom that influence the 4 students’ participation. The study also investigates the role of the 4 students’ agency in the negotiation of access and participation in classroom discussions, as well as their identity formation in classroom communities. The findings of this research highlight the co-constructed and bi-directional nature of language socialization. The 4 students’ classroom experiences are not only shaped by their educational, cultural and social backgrounds, but are also jointly constructed by local contextual factors in Western classrooms. Pedagogical implications are also discussed.

This study investigates the morphosyntactic competence of advanced ESL learners and native speakers of English. Using the framework of the Government and Binding approach (Chomsky,1981, 1986), the study tests the predictions made by the evolved Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 2009), namely that the grammars of advanced L2 learners are unreliable(where reliability means converging to the L2 grammar), non-convergent to the L2 grammar, and characteristic of patches (where patches are extragrammatical principles independent of the normal syntactic processes). The participants of the study were tested on three tasks (timed grammaticality judgment task, a correction task, and a preference task). The findings of the study indicate that the difference between the morphosyntactic competence of the advanced ESL learners and that of native speakers is gradient rather than categorical.

The pressing environmental crisis compels educators to question the purposes and practices of formal education and to adopt environmentally-informed transformative approaches to education. Critical place-based learning refers to a wide variety of approaches to teaching and learning that take the local context as the starting point for curriculum that fosters a critical stance towards the status quo. There is a need for more research that brings together environmental and critical learning goals in the early years. In this qualitative case study, I explored critical place-based learning and teaching in kindergarten. I explored the parallels between critical place-based learning and a Reggio Emilia-inspired emergent curriculum approach. I considered how teacher researcher collaboration served to support teacher professional development. This study demonstrated the possibilities, benefits, and challenges, of critical place-based learning in the early years. I conclude with some recommendations for facilitating critical place-based learning in the early years.

Recently Ontario included critical literacy in the Language Arts curriculum. I plan to investigate what impact critical literacy will have on Canadian schools. I will present ideas in a critical narrative framework; drawing on pre-existing data-sets of experiences I gathered teaching in an urban Ontario school board for the last six years. I will also review research by other academics working in critical literacy, student engagement, and democratic education. I plan to investigate the effectiveness of using critical literacy-based activities with students deemed “at risk” in our school system. I will also explore the impact of critical literacy on the relationships between students, teachers and administrators. I believe this process will allow me to reflect, interpret and explore my experiences, as well as encourage others to draw their own opinions about the impact of teaching critical literacy in Ontario schools.

This study investigates how 4 newly admitted Chinese international graduate students participate in classroom discussions at a Canadian university. This qualitative research provides rich descriptions of their backgrounds and classroom participation, as well as their voices related to their classroom experiences. Framed by Language Socialization Theory, the study examines the classroom contexts where the students are socialized, particularly the social relations in the classroom that influence the 4 students’ participation. The study also investigates the role of the 4 students’ agency in the negotiation of access and participation in classroom discussions, as well as their identity formation in classroom communities. The findings of this research highlight the co-constructed and bi-directional nature of language socialization. The 4 students’ classroom experiences are not only shaped by their educational, cultural and social backgrounds, but are also jointly constructed by local contextual factors in Western classrooms. Pedagogical implications are also discussed.

This study explored how a video club could be used to help develop teacher’s professional vision by investigating how teachers’ professional vision changed over time. In addition, the role of the facilitator was studied to determine how it contributed to the development of professional vision. The facilitation techniques appear to be the reason why the expected growth in professional vision did not occur. While video clubs are a valuable way of embedding professional development with artifacts from the classroom, care must be taken with the facilitation techniques employed.