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The findings of this inquiry emerged from a research study conducted over two years in two schools investigating how teachers support learners from populations who have been historically underserved by a provincial education system in Canada. Emerging from a focus on how teachers in four rural middle school classrooms supported literacy acquisition through teaching in the content areas, this work revealed asset-based pedagogies made visible by teaching and learning routines that provided learners supportive spaces to grow. Each of these routines was developed by teacher participants to enable students to think, ask questions, make choices, assess their learning, and take risks as learners. The results of this study affirm what is known about how to support learners in culturally and economically diverse classroom contexts and afford new understanding about asset-based informed learning routines that can encourage students to take risks academically. As learning routines have not often been studied in relation to culturally relevant pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, or additive schooling theories, this study suggests a novel intersection with these asset-based pedagogies. This intersection offers fresh possibilities for understanding their enactment in classrooms.

This article presents a scoping review of literature on the impact of emergency remote education in low-income rural settings to contextualize the experiences in rural Nova Scotia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial literature reviewed included 37 articles across Western nations, the majority subscribing to an investigative methodology with participant interviewing, field observations, and in-depth reviews of literature as the most common sources of data collection. Due to the unprecedented nature of COVID-19, little is known about this topic. This review provides insights into the experiences of emergency remote education in low-income rural communities from the perspective of students, pre- and in-service teachers, and rural education stakeholders, and suggests a need for integrating pandemic-informed rural pedagogy into teacher education programs.

In this paper, we describe our 12-month inquiry into understanding adolescents’ experiences, as they engaged in writing that challenged them to construct knowledge by making claims grounded in evidence and reasoning.While engaged in the task of writing a research paper, participants’ perceptions of time were two-fold in that they consistently identified a lack of time and a lack of understanding about the time the research paper demanded.We argue enabling students to have more temporal control over their writing is related to fostering increased metacognition about writing as a process.

This article reports on findings from a qualitative research study investigating ways to support learners from populations who have been historically underserved by the Nova Scotia education system, particularly African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaq learners, and learners who experience poverty. Working with middle school teachers located in rural schools with a proven track record of enabling students to succeed and thrive, we spent two years in their classrooms observing and documenting pedagogical practices in the teaching of science and social studies. The results of this research not only complement what is known about how to support vulnerable learners in diverse school contexts, but also provide insights into how these teachers created conditions in which students felt able to take risks academically. The findings of this study show how the idea of academic risk-taking can complement, and expand, scholarship on culturally relevant pedagogy.

A significant number of high school students struggle to read textbooks and other course materials and to write successfully in content area courses such as mathematics and science (Kane, 2011). This paper investigates how pre-service teacher education can provide a strong literacy foundation for content area teachers. A pilot study, undertaken as part of an ongoing longitudinal study, examines how secondary pre-service teachers plan to infuse their teaching of secondary mathematics and science with literacy practices.  This paper inquires into the perspectives of six mathematics and science pre-service teachers who were interviewed after completing a course in content area literacy. Pre-service teachers emphasized their growing awareness of how literacy strategies can enhance student learning in their specific subject areas.

This research focuses on the introduction of yoga into two elementary classes. The yoga sessions were delivered over the course of three months, and included a breathing practice, followed by the reading of a children’s book, and then a yoga practice. Employing a narrative inquiry methodology, data were collected through three methods: student journals and related artifacts, classroom observations, and individual interviews. Using an inductive process and thematic coding, three common salient themes were constructed through the data collection: students’ understanding and experience of yoga, story and yoga, and yoga in the world. Relying upon the lotus flower as a metaphor, a discussion of these results is offered. This discussion focuses, primarily, upon the following six broad topics: mitigating challenges, consistency and routine, body and mind, being versus doing, yoga and story, and yoga in the world. This discussion and subsequent conclusion offer affirming evidence and potential applications related to the introduction of yoga into early elementary classrooms.

The primary focus of this qualitative study is an inquiry into three female teachers’ experiences as novice researchers. Over the course of an academic year I maintained a focus upon participants’ research experiences and their use of time as they conducted research studies. Delving into the temporal constraints that informed participants’ research experiences provided insights into competing demands shaping their understanding of research. In light of current performance accountability measures monitoring the ways teachers are using their professional time, this study provides new ways to consider the multiple challenges and gendered inequities female teachers are navigating in their efforts to professionally develop and learn.

Our study provides examples of how critical curricula and social justice education can be brought together to inform teacher education. Building upon our ongoing longitudinal study, which investigates the impact of an integrated LGBTQ awareness program, we focus in this article on five pre-service teachers who identified critical incidents in schools related to transphobia and gender construction, and who were concerned about the enduring gender binary that presents itself in schools. Their experiences highlight the ways in which gender surveillance, both overtly and covertly, reinscribes heteronormativity, and that homophobia, transphobia, and gender stereotypes need to be continuously challenged.

In this paper we describe the challenges we experience teaching an assessment course to pre-service teachers, as part of their studies in a bachelor of education program. As we teach the course, our intent is to explicitly model assessment practices that reflect a philosophy of success for all, rather than sort and rank. Rather than ranking students by achievement, our goal is to model how to tap into the learning potential of every student (Stiggins, 2005). Inquiring into moments that show how the teaching of a success for all philosophy is tension-filled in teacher education, we demonstrate the multiple and conflicting perspectives informing grades. We situate our discussion in the area of assessment in higher education and propose a series of actions, which may resonate with instructors in teacher education and higher education contexts.  

Critical challenges facing teacher educators at faculties of education is how to prepare teacher candidates to see schools situated in larger social contexts and support their ongoing learning as social justice advocates. Anti-oppressive work that challenges the marginalization of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Two-Spirited, Queering and/or Questioning (LGBTQ) youth is critical to this work. The purpose of this paper is twofold, first to understand the impact of the Positive Space program on teacher candidates’ reasons and abilities to act as allies and social justice advocates. Second, we explore the process of teacher candidates becoming knowledgeable, empowered, and action-oriented for, with, and as LGBTQ community members and the ways they challenge heteronormativity and the gender binary through the formal and informal curriculum.