This study explored preservice teachers’ (PTs’) perceptions of their preparedness to effectively integrate technology into mathematics teaching and the pedagogical strategies that contributed to developing their competencies in this regard. Their perceived preparedness was examined in terms of their knowledge within the TPACK domains and self-efficacy beliefs. Using a concurrent mixed method design, data were collected from 59 PTs in their last semester of study at a Canadian university. Quantitative data were collected through an online survey via three widely used instruments, namely: the TPACK survey, the Computer Technology Integration Survey (CTIS), and the Synthesis of Qualitative Evidence (SQD) Scale. Qualitative data obtained from three open-ended survey questions and follow-up interviews with six participants provided broader insights about PTs’ experiences and activities regarding technology integration into mathematics teaching. The results of descriptive statistics and thematic analysis indicated that PTs perceived their knowledge and self-efficacy beliefs related to integrating technology into mathematics teaching at a moderate to a high level. Correlation analysis also indicated positive relationships between the seven subscales of the TPACK domains and the confidence scale. Participants shared that while their respective programs’ ICT for Teaching and Learning course played an important role in developing their knowledge in the TK and TPK domains, activities such as coding processes, math games, dynamic mathematics software, and graphic calculators were effective tools that encouraged them to use technology in their teaching of mathematics (TPCK). Experiential learning, including practicum experiences, role modeling strategy, and collaboration with peers were identified by participants as effective pedagogical strategies that developed their preparedness to integrate technology into their teaching of mathematics. Some recommendations of this study for teacher education programs include providing math-specific technology courses; incorporating appropriate instructional design that connects the content course to curriculum to promote PTs’ active engagement in meaningful technology-rich learning activities; and using all six pedagogical strategies presented in the SQD model to prepare future teachers to effectively use technology in mathematics teaching.

This is a mixed methods multi-phase study that measured teachers’ sense of efficacy for teaching online at the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. As the pandemic persisted into the 2020-21 school year, the study was expanded to include a second phase that sought to understand teacher efficacy and experience of teaching online one year into the transition to emergency remote online teaching during the pandemic. The aim of this research was to better understand how to best support teachers as they adapted to online teaching and to use the data to build ongoing and professional learning support for effective online teaching. The study examined the impact of prior experience teaching online, experience teaching online during the pandemic, and access to online training on teacher self-efficacy as teachers adapted to online learning in the context of the pandemic. What became clear was that teaching remotely online under emergency measures is different from normal online teaching. The results of the study in the initial phase found correlations between teachers’ sense of efficacy for teaching online with using a learning management system (LMS) before transitioning online. Having had online training and access to virtual tech support were also associated with a higher sense of efficacy. In the second phase, teachers’ collaboration with colleagues to solve issues and learn affected teacher efficacy. The study also found that access to technical and pedagogical support resources impacted teachers’ sense of efficacy and experience teaching online. One outcome of this study is support for the argument distinguishing between emergency remote teaching and learning and online teaching and learning. Further, the findings emerge from this study support recommendations for dedicated teacher professional development that addresses the challenges and opportunities of designing and implementing emergency remote teaching and learning environments.

Dealing with feedback, managing uncertainty regarding writing expectations, and juggling multiple demands are all part of making progress with academic writing. Emotion regulation can enable an academic writer to manage these emotion-related experiences and contribute to writing productivity. A writing group might be particularly beneficial to provide emotion regulation support from others through interpersonal emotion regulation. The purpose of this research was to understand the emotion experiences of doctoral student writers while engaged in academic writing in a social context, the ways in which graduate students experience emotions related to their academic writing, how interpersonal emotion regulation is enacted in social writing contexts, and which intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies support academic writing productivity. To investigate these experiences, in the current collective case study research, four doctoral student writers were led individually through meme elicitation during an initial interview to explore their previous emotion experiences in academic writing. Subsequent multi-participant writing group sessions were offered online and video recorded to document the ways in which the participants and the group facilitator (the researcher) provided interpersonal emotion regulation in that context. During and after each writing group session, participants were invited to complete a brief questionnaire about their emotions and their experiences in the group. Final individual interviews provided participants the opportunity to recount their emotion experiences while writing in the group context. Findings indicate that these doctoral student writers experienced a wide variety of emotions in relation to their academic writing. Participants reported a desire to feel positive, activating emotions while they were engaged in academic writing. These same emotions, including happiness, contentment, and engagement, for example, were reported when they were most satisfied with their writing progress after a writing group session. These doctoral student writers used a variety of interpersonal emotion regulation techniques to support each other, most frequently empathic concern and validation. Participants found emotions to be an important factor in writing motivation. They reported using strategies such as breaking the task into smaller pieces, working for shorter time periods, and compartmentalizing their tasks when they were feeling unmotivated to write.

I identify as a musician-music teacher, and my life experience of journeying to and through music provides a unique perspective, both in and out of the elementary music classroom. Growing up surrounded by music in my family has contributed to the way my story is grounded and how it has unfolded over time. In the classroom, I share my experiences with my students by retelling and reliving my story. Narrative inquiry supports sharing teacher perspectives, through a relational process. This research provides participants with an opportunity to share multiple perspectives on musician-music teacher narratives, offering a unique view into the stories of three elementary teachers (and myself as a co-participant) who work in the specialized field of music education. When musician-music teachers are provided the time to slow the day-to-day fast pace and reflect and express their story of journeying to and through music, what will we hear from their stories shared through a soundscape of experience? The synchronous nature of this collaborative research allows experience, analysis, and synthesis to become a place of understanding. Using the theoretical framework of the three-dimensional inquiry space of narrative inquiry supports an understanding of people, places, and events through temporality, sociality, and place (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). Original to this research is the conceptual framework, evoking a soundscape, which invites musician-music teachers to weave original music with poetry and lyrics, as they retell and relive their story, drawing on the creative process as transaction (Rosenblatt, 1978). There is much to learn from listening to musician-music teachers as they share their journeys through music and the experiences that have influenced a deepened connection to their practice. Hearing musician-music teachers’ stories expressed through interviews and the music they created allows for what is resounding in their teaching craft to become apparent. Evoking a soundscape provides a new layer to the sensitive recounting and retelling of a narrative, igniting the possibility for other musician-music teachers to musically inquire into their lived experiences as a means of deepening professional practice. Keywords: Narrative inquiry, musician-music teachers, songwriting, transaction, professional learning

Although mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) activities have the potential to foster student engagement, few studies have investigated the influence of such activities on undergraduate students’ engagement in College English learning in China, particularly in a newly developed, post-pandemic hybrid learning environment. This study adopted a mixed methods design to examine the influence of mobile learning on student engagement and explored students’ lived experiences of using MALL activities for English learning. For the study’s quantitative data collection, 206 students completed an online questionnaire that included questions regarding motivation and active learning strategies. Ten students participated in the photo-production visual method and semi-structured personal interviews. Findings show that MALL activities enabled a unique opportunity to enhance students’ active engagement and knowledge construction by multiple ways of information sharing and language practices. Easy access and effective ways of communicating on learning apps intrinsically motivated students to participate in language learning. Through mobile learning platforms, students were scaffolded by their instructor or more knowledgeable peers in a more instant, visual, specific, and affective manner. Collaboration among students was not exemplified among undergraduate learners and the challenge of self-regulation in using cellphones was uncovered. These findings are significant for educators and decision-makers to lessen the stereotype of cellphones for learning and recognize the benefits of making use of personal devices for catering to individual learners’ needs, fostering connections, elevating engagement, and increasing English skills. A new MALL model is put forward.

This study used appreciative inquiry (AI) as a methodological and theoretical framework and positive psychology theory to investigate international master’s students’ positive experiences, dreams, and expectations in their programs and institution to inform policies, programs, and practices. Although the literature describes international students’ mixed experiences in Canada, including developing critical thinking skills, making friends with other nationals, culture shock, and financial challenges, previous studies seldom focus on life-affirming conditions that enrich and improve such students’ schooling experiences. The first three stages of AI’s 4-D cycle—discovery, dream, and design—informed the study’s data collection methods (14 semi-structured individual interviews and three focus group discussions) to generate strength-based data for analysis, resulting in five key themes: (a) personal well-being and sense of belonging, (b) instructors’ pedagogical practices, (c) financial constraints and employment opportunities, (d) career development, and (e) policies. Based on its findings, the study makes six recommendations to inform international graduate student policy and practice: (a) allow international master’s students to study with their domestic counterparts, (b) increase international student diversity, (c) regularize socializing events for students and community members, (d) bridge the gap between theory and practice (hands-on experience), (e) work with all stakeholders to make international master’s students’ tuition fees more affordable, and (f) create on- and off-campus employment opportunities. Participants’ first-person accounts emphasize the need to include student voices in their own education and also shift the conversation from a deficit lens to a more positive discourse to balance the narratives around international students’ experiences.

Perceptions of gender roles vary in different cultures, influenced by social location and time. Migration to countries that promote liberal values can impact how men and women perceive their gender roles, their interpersonal relationships with family members, and their day to day activities. Informed by a postcolonial-feminist theoretical perspective, this qualitative study aimed to understand South Asian immigrant women’s perceptions about gender roles in the context of family and society, prior to migration, and after immigration to Canada. A unique aspect of this study is that it explored how participants negotiated their gender roles and identity and exercised their agency prior to migration and post immigration. Four major themes emerged in response to the interview questions: 1) immigration and resettlement challenges; 2) gender roles and a patriarchal society in the native country; 3) perceptions of gender role/women’s role in the Canadian society; and 4) negotiating of gender roles, agency and empowerment. The results of the study indicate that immigration experiences were diverse and should be analyzed through many intersecting lenses including gender, class, social status, and education level to highlight unique challenges experienced by women as opposed to a monolithic representation of women from the East. The study contributes to the literature on South Asian immigrant women by using an interpretation that is based on the knowledge produced by the participants, and by acknowledging their voices as a central focus. Women in this study show that they are agents of change and are not weak and voiceless as depicted through Western discourses.

African refugee-background (ARB) students achieve high standards of success, yet their lived experiences are frequently absent from educational literature in Canada. Current and past research has focused on their academic deficits, their vulnerabilities, and their maladjusted behaviour, neglecting the positive attributes they bring to their host countries. Using specific data collected from semi-structured interviews with eight male and female ARB high school graduates between the ages of 18-25, this qualitative study employed a critical race paradigm to explore factors that ARB high school graduates identified as being helpful in their academic success. The study sought to challenge the deficit views on ARB students’ education by highlighting the perspectives of academically successful ARB students in a secondary school setting. The findings from the ARB students’ narratives highlighted three major themes: (a) success extends beyond the classroom and it cannot be normalized, (b) success is multifaceted and attainable by all, and (c) intrinsic motivation and resilience is a coping strategy for academic success. Additionally, the findings indicated that ARB students used a variety of coping strategies to overcome the negative and stressful environments in their high schools. Disseminating their narratives of success provides real-life examples for other refugee-background students to emulate, in pursuit of their own academic success, amidst the educational and societal barriers that they encounter. These findings add to the limited amount of research on ARB students’ academic success and may provide alternative strategies on refugee education for

This mixed-methods study explored a postsecondary transition program’s effect on the development of self-efficacy for post-secondary studies and the likelihood to apply to post-secondary studies among students with exceptionalities. The study also examined how their perceptions of change in self-efficacy compared to their non-exceptional peers in the program. Participants included Grade 11 and 12 students with and without exceptionalities who were at risk of non-completion of their secondary school diploma from 2 participating boards of education at a college in Ontario, Canada. Students participated in a series of pre- and post-program completion surveys and were further invited to participate in a personal follow-up interview to explore the impact of their experience in the program on their plans for postsecondary education. Secondary school teachers working in a supportive role with students in this program were also interviewed to explore their perceptions of change in the students over the duration of the program. Findings demonstrated that students both with and without exceptionalities benefitted from the program through a number of elements that resulted in increased self-efficacy to succeed in postsecondary education, and an increased likelihood to apply to a postsecondary program in the future. Findings, however, indicated that the two groups of students did not share the same perceptions of how the program might have contributed to their increased self-efficacy. Following program completion, students with exceptionalities were more likely to describe their personal mastery experiences in a postsecondary academic program and their process of metacognitive skill development, whereas their peers without exceptionalities were more likely to describe a positive experience on a college campus as the primary contributing factor for their increased academic self-efficacy. The study further discusses the elements that contributed to the change experienced by the students with exceptionalities and offers a visual framework for the elements involved in the development of academic self-efficacy for students with exceptionalities. Interpretations and suggestions as to how these insights could inform future policy and practice are discussed.

Employing a critical feminist perspective, I conducted a sociocultural analysis of the lifelong learning of Dutch neo-Calvinist women who immigrated to Canada shortly after World War II. The purpose of the research was a critique of the institutional ruling relations (schooling, religion, family, workplace) that shaped and influenced the trajectory of these women’s lifelong learning. More specifically, the inquiry included an interrogation of their Canadian schooling experience, in the context of an immigrant family life, their pillarized Dutch culture, and Calvinist religiosity. In choosing a life history methodology, the scope of the research broadened where one’s life story was juxtaposed to a theory of context. Applying this methodology, I critically analyzed structures, operations, and contestations of power in lifelong learning institutions through an exploration of the multiple contexts that shaped the lives of immigrant women. It is within that relationship that the critical feminist was possible. The life histories were not a description of the mainstream but rather were positioned to dialectically interrogate the meaning and significance of the past as it influenced the present and future. Applying a dialectic method to the participants’ life histories, 7 tensions were raised that made visible ruling relations relevant to the participants’ everyday experiences and brought awareness to the underlying contextual and ideological assumptions related to their trajectory of lifelong learning. Employing a critical feminist perspective, I examined how 3 neo-Calvinist immigrant women interpreted and negotiated the ambiguity created by cultural contradictions experienced in a Canadian context. As a researcher who herself has been shaped by this specific immigrant experience, a key attribute of life history methodology was its capacity for the researcher self to be visible in the research.