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This article recommends institutional changes to higher education related to time, learning, and risk that would better serve the contemporary student population and increase opportunities for life-long and interdisciplinary learning. To begin, the changing demographic of university students will be outlined, along with suggestions about how traditional institutional arrangements are no longer conducive to optimal learning environments. Next, a review of the history of the academic year will be provided, that will show a snapshot of post-secondary academic calendars in Canada. Relatedly, a discussion of the potential drawbacks and benefits to accelerated courses will be deliberated, as well as the role of risk in terms of how this shapes students’ course selection. Finally, an example of a pilot program at McMaster University, a large research-intensive university in Ontario, Canada, which is specifically designed to account for the pitfalls outlined above, will be discussed. Taken together, it will be argued that having full-course offerings on a year-round basis, providing various options for course lengths, and adjusting evaluations to reduce students’ conceptions of ‘risk’ will better adapt institutes of higher education for the twenty-first century.

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This article explores the impact of changes in teaching modalities resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of K-12 teachers, by gender, during the first year of the pandemic. Teachers from a random sample of K-12 schools in North Dakota and Minnesota were surveyed in April 2020, October 2020, and March/April 2021 about their current levels of stress and depression, as well as the frequency with which they experienced certain physical conditions. One-way analysis of variance and multiple regression were used to compare time points for each of the outcomes by gender. Female teachers were more likely to experience higher levels of stress than male teachers, while male teachers were more likely to experience higher levels of depression than female teachers, with spikes in stress and depression levels experienced by both males and females in Time 2. Additionally, physical symptoms were more likely to be experienced by female teachers, with Time 2 respondents overall reporting significantly higher proportions of physical symptoms than Time 1 or Time 3 respondents. Consistently experiencing heightened levels of stress and depression can lead to burnout for teachers. School districts need to monitor stress, especially among females, and depression, especially among males, to recognize the difference in experience for each gender in the teaching profession, as well as provide supports and resources to their teachers to help them in coping with these mental-health issues.

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Many kindergarten educators grapple with how best to teach reading in play-based kindergarten classrooms. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to ascertain the instructional strengths and needs of kindergarten educators as they teach reading in play-based programs. Fifteen kindergarten teachers participated in an online questionnaire and focus group conversations that explored their concepts of self-efficacy and professional content knowledge to gain an understanding of the tensions these educators expressed, and to compare and confirm these with existing literature. Educators felt quite confident that they were effectively weaving foundational reading skills with learning opportunities into authentic experiences throughout the day. They indicated that balancing competing priorities within their programs was a challenge, and that supporting multilinguals and deepening their understanding of how to effectively build oral language and phonological awareness in their students were areas where they wanted to build their professional content knowledge.

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This research investigated preservice teachers’ (PSTs) experiences with productive struggle in an online environment, and how it influenced their pedagogical knowledge. This action research study reports on secondary mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) who completed mathematical tasks in weekly synchronous Zoom sessions to develop their understanding of productive struggle. Vygotsky’s (1978) Social Constructivist Theory and the growth mindset framework (Boaler, 2016; Dweck 2006; 2008) provided the lenses through which the research was designed and analyzed. Findings show that presenting opportunities for PSTs to experience productive struggle informs their pedagogical practice, and that providing this experience in an online environment is possible. PSTs gained an increased understanding of the importance of collaborative work, asking purposeful questions, and the alignment between productive struggle and improved mathematical understanding.

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The current structure of formal education makes it difficult for teachers and students to hold meaningful conversations to support high-school youth’s meaning-making of critical social-justice issues. This paper presents data on three high-school youth’s knowledge and experiences with social justice issues during the pandemic. Specifically, the paper aims to explore how youth construct knowledge and counter dominant discourses through utilizing informal learning spaces, such as social media platforms, peer and family conversations, as well as personal encounters. In addition, and more importantly, an exploration of how formal education can incorporate social-justice issues into the curriculum is considered. The analysis of these high school youth’s interview conversations presents their diverging needs to learn about social-justice topics in both formal and informal learning contexts. The data also illustrates the power of their voices in a way that could inform future curriculum development. Discussions and implications highlight the possibility of creating such ethical spaces in formal education to engage in social-justice topics.

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The beginning years of a teacher’s career can be an overwhelming experience, and combined with being in an isolated, fly-in community, particularly during a pandemic, can be debilitating. This qualitative research is aimed to support and account for the story of a Black Afro-Caribbean, early career teacher (ECT) in a Northern Ontario First Nation (FN) community over a three-year teaching placement. The goals were to use her stories for reflection, inspiration, and guidance to support other ECTs, and to provide recommendations to teacher-education programs to lessen attrition and increase retention among ECTs in FN school placements. An autoethnographic method was used to identify key themes in her narratives to better understand her experiences of surviving and thriving. Although this ECT was significantly tested about her decision to become a teacher, support, empathy, resiliency, and governing one’s practice with clearly defined moral and ethical principles rooted in the belief that every child can learn helped her survive and thrive. The conclusion was that ECTs in FN school placements need, among other things, a willingness to be vulnerable and resilient.