English for Academic Purposes Programs: Key Trends Across Canadian Universities

Because of the large number of post-secondary English for academic purposes (EAP) programs and the varying ways they are structured, it can be difficult to identify how a particular program fits within the overall landscape of university education. To identify general trends across Canada, the webpages for 74 EAP programs at 50 public English-medium universities were examined for key information related to each program. Data analysis included descriptive statistics as well as graphical representation. The results pointed to typical EAP programs that are independent units that offer non-credit courses with some credit options, have international tuition fees around $9,000 per semester, provide approximately 22 hours of instruction per week, and generally require IELTS scores over 5.0 or TOEFL iBT scores over 59 for entry. These results provide an avenue of comparison and indicate the need for future research to better understand how EAP programming is conceptualized in the Canadian context.

Perception et compréhension du concept de citoyenneté mondiale par des enseignants en formation : une comparaison Kazakhstan-Suisse

La citoyenneté mondiale est un concept récent, discuté dans de nombreuses instances scientifiques et officielles, mais peu étudié de manière empirique. Notre étude se propose alors de comprendre comment il est reçu par les étudiants au Kazakhstan et en Suisse. Nos données, recueillies par questionnaire en ligne et analysées de différentes manières (statistique descriptive, analyse lexico-métrique, analyse de contenu) en fonction des types de questions, permettent de mettre en évidence les tensions relatives à la visée universaliste du concept, mais aussi les différences d’appréciation notables de la citoyenneté mondiale en fonction des contextes de vie des participants. Cette étude exploratoire met en évidence la complexité de l’adaptation d’un concept international commun à un monde globalisé dans lequel des inégalités subsistent.

Internationalization Policies of Public Schooling and Neoliberal Discourses: A Stephen Ball Informed Analysis

This article examines the neoliberal underpinnings of current internationalization policies of public schooling in Canadian contexts. It goes beyond the existing institutional practices and approaches to internationalize K–12 public schooling and focuses more on the federal and provincial international education policies and strategies that govern the institutional practices. The article pays more attention to the neoliberal developmental contexts of these governmental policies. It employs Stephen Ball’s writings, particularly his views of policy as text and policy as discourse, to analyze the ways in which global neoliberalism and its public discourses on public education marketization, privatization, and expansion of policy communities relate to the development of current internationalization policies of K–12 public schooling as texts and as discourses in Canada. The analysis suggests that the global neoliberal ideology and its public discourses are the contexts that promote and legitimize the development of current market-oriented internationalization policy texts and discourses. These neoliberal discourses view public education as an internationally tradable commodity that the private sector may provide for international students and contribute to its policy development. In that context, current international education policies pay more attention to the recruitment of fee-paying K–12 international students with an increased role for the private sector in this process.

Complexity amidst Diversity: Exploring the Lives of LGBTQ International Teachers

This paper analyzes findings from research with 23 lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer international educators and their experiences working in non-Western countries. This study documents the participants’ struggles, challenges, and triumphs of teaching overseas. In-depth interviews, as the data collection method, focus on changes made to thrive in the new country context and barriers to job success. The data reveals four key themes: (1) shifting identities in the new location; (2) belonging as a spectral concept; (3) work ethic as personal security; and (4) queer initiatives and student engagement. The authors introduce the notion of “belonging-scape” to suggest that while LGBTQ international educators faced a series of hetero/cisnormative borders, their sense of belonging to the workplace and to the community was in constant flux. Recommendations for educational administrators to ameliorate challenges unique to LGBTQ international teachers conclude the paper.

Les élèves doués et talentueux au Canada : une étude comparative

Cet article propose une analyse des politiques provinciales et territoriales des dix provinces et des trois territoires canadiens au regard des élèves doués et talentueux, dressant un portrait comparatif du contexte dans lequel s’inscrit leur scolarisation. Y sont analysés les définitions et les domaines de la douance ainsi que les mesures pédagogiques proposées pour ces élèves. Les résultats de cette étude documentaire montrent d’abord un fort contraste entre les provinces ne reconnaissant pas cette catégorie et celles les reconnaissant. Chez ces dernières, un consensus sur la terminologie utilisée et la définition est observé. En ce qui concerne les mesures scolaires et extrascolaires, la grande majorité des provinces propose des mesures explicitement ou implicitement destinées aux élèves doués. Toutefois, celles-ci sont plus explicites et détaillées dans les provinces reconnaissant formellement cette catégorie d’élèves.

Rethinking and Reinventing Intercultural Education in Post-Secondary Institutions: A Critical, Anti-Colonial Approach

Critical and anti-colonial scholarship helps us imagine how intercultural education might begin to address the power imbalances inherent to issues of culture and epistemology. This paper reflexively dialogues anti-colonial theory with my own experiments of practically implementing these theories within the Intercultural Program (IP), an extracurricular program at a Canadian postsecondary institution, to demonstrate possibilities for shaping intercultural education towards ethical ends. Through curriculum, programming, and community-building that is cocreated with students, the IP aspires to shape intercultural education towards social justice and equity, opening spaces for engagement with nondominant epistemologies, and promoting the critical thinking necessary for evaluating the historical, economic, political, social, and ethical implications of students’ own and others’ positions. At the same time, the IP provides a helpful site for exploring the challenges of doing critical work in an internationalizing institution, and the need, perhaps, to move intercultural education away from internationalization within higher education.

Editorial

Editorial in English and French.

Grading in a Dilemmatic Space : An Exploratory Cross-cultural Analysis of Mathematics and Language Secondary Teachers

Numerous studies have shown that grading is a complex process that involves negotiating technical, social, and ethical factors. While previous research has primarily focused on the reliability, composition, and validity of teachers’ grades, few studies have examined grading practices across cultural contexts and teaching subjects. The purpose of this exploratory study was to analyze how culture and teaching subject influence teachers’ grading dilemmas. Based on individual and group interviews with 11 Canadian and eight Swiss teachers, and using a “dilemmatic space” conceptual framework, this article inductively identified five dilemmatic spaces across cultural contexts and teaching subjects. The paper concludes with a discussion of the cross-cutting dimensions across these five dilemmatic spaces and articulates implications for future research and practice.