Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Cornelia Schneider, Professor, Education, Mount Saint Vincent University

The education of children with disabilities is a complex issue more than 30 years after “inclusive education” appeared for the first time in an important 1994 United Nations statement.

Children with disabilities too often face varied forms of exclusion with minimal interaction with their non-disabled peers — as well as disrupted or curtailed classroom time with their peers because of delayed hiring practices for support staff or urgently needed supports that never arrive.

Teachers often struggle to keep up with the challenges.

They learn during teacher education how to adapt learning content and outcomes to the diverse learners in their classrooms. But in practice, approaches such as Universal Design for Learning often do not radically change the reality for children with disabilities.

Part of my recent research has examined classroom approaches that can disrupt teaching catered to an imagined average group of learners to better foster the meaningful participation of a broader ranger of students in regular classroom routines, including disabled students.

‘Alternative pedagogies’

Alternative approaches to modern western classroom teaching — “alternative pedagogies” — can be traced to 20th century educators like Maria Montessori in Italy, Célestin Freinet in France, Peter Petersen in Germany or Helen Parkhurst in the United States.

Read more:
How one small school in B.C. became a public elementary Montessori school

While the movements associated with these educators didn’t have the same roots, they had a common theme: seeking to address traditional forms of classroom learning that either didn’t engage students or foster their learning — and excluded some students. All these movements recognized children’s agency and gave children more control of their learning.

Recognizing student agency

“Week plan work” is a method that developed out of these movements, and is a mode of learning that recognizes student agency and independence. Students autonomously work on curricular content within a particular time frame — most often for one week. Educators (sometimes in collaboration with children) set a plan in which learning outcomes and steps to reach those outcomes are laid out.

This method is very common in countries like Germany and the Netherlands. It’s much less common in Canada, although there are some schools that use self-directed learning, corresponding to the same ideas and principles as the week plan work. A high school in Bedford, N.S., opened its doors a couple of years ago based on self-directed learning.

As a researcher with expertise in inclusive education and practices, I collaborated with a teacher, Harriet Johnston, in the Halifax Regional Education Centre school district in Nova Scotia to test if this method would work well in Canada. We implemented the “week plan work” method in her rural high school classroom in Grade 9 and 11 English language arts. Another goal was to contribute to a culture where experimenting with alternative teaching methods is normalized.

Week plan work method

The week plan in its current iterations goes mostly back to the French reformer Célestin Freinet. Practitioners have since adapted the method to their own context.

With this approach, each week, students receive an individualized folder with a plan of tasks and activities. They have to complete this plan by the end of the week, but they can prioritize and organize tasks in the order they wish. There are materials and activities for individual or collaborative work.

Read more:
Achieving full inclusion in schools: Lessons from New Brunswick

The teacher monitors and mentors students. At the end of the week, there is a debriefing session and folders are collected to assess the accomplished work.

Week plans can be adapted to each student’s learning level. In a class with a rather homogeneous group of learners, the week plan might look the same for every student. In classes with heterogeneous groups of learners, week plans can be differentiated. It can vary based on outcomes, or by interests, strengths and weaknesses of particular learners.

In German elementary classes I observed in the early 2000s, teachers assigned blocks of time for students’ week plan work. As I documented in this earlier study, students learned to become more autonomous and increasingly plan and organize independently.

Week plans and staff

Teaching with week plans inverts the regular teacher-centred model, where the educator teaches and supports each student — and it can become complicated and potentially overwhelming when there is “too much” diversity.

With week plans, the teacher has to “frontload” their preparation of students’ plans, with preparation being about creating the plans. Teacher-led instruction remains a part of the class, but isn’t the predominant strategy.

The teacher is a coach or mentor. Students can solicit help, or continue to progress individually and autonomously. This frees up the teacher to focus on one-on-one work with those who require it.

Week plan and students

For our week plan project in Nova Scotia, we invited Grade 9 and 11 students to participate in focus groups and reflect on their learning.

We have not yet published the outcomes of the study — only about the approach — but our preliminary findings suggest some of the ways that changing the approach to learning positively changes the experience for all students, not only students with disabilities.

What we heard was that many appreciated the approach, as it gave them more control over their learning. It activated engagement and curiosity, while students were still achieving the Nova Scotia curriculum outcomes. Some commented on how this prepared them for the requirements of university.

Our project was also positively received by an education assistant (EA) supporting a student with a disability in the classroom. The project gave the EA explicit direction on what the student had to work on, the time frame and the resources. This shows how the week plan method structures classroom life for the support staff.

On the other hand, there were students who didn’t like the approach, as they preferred the teacher to tell them what to do and when. This was useful knowledge for us, as many students are accustomed to direct instruction. The teacher was consequently able to do more “scaffolding” — breaking down instruction into smaller chunks or systems for tackling a project.

For example, she would go over the plan with a student and discuss which task could be first and how to order the rest. She checked in more often. Students could increasingly gain more comfort and autonomy with this approach.

Self-directed learning

How might such approaches grow? The pillars of inclusion in a school are often the principal and the special education teacher, or learning support teachers.

Optimally, effective leadership and support from educational leaders — in concert with learning opportunities and resourcing for teachers — encourages them to challenge the often-difficult reality of children with disabilities in the regular classroom and respect their right to participation and belonging.

Cornelia Schneider does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How alternative teaching models can foster inclusive classrooms – https://theconversation.com/how-alternative-teaching-models-can-foster-inclusive-classrooms-264938

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kevin Budning, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, National Security, Carleton University

Wednesday marks the 11th anniversary of the Parliament Hill shooting, when an Islamist-inspired extremist, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, stormed Canada’s War Memorial and Parliament Hill, killing one soldier and injuring three other people.

The shooting — the worst attack on Parliament Hill since a failed bomb attempt in 1996 — sent shock waves throughout Canada, as well as internationally. It not only exposed the glaring security vulnerabilities on Parliament Hill but also marked a new reality for Canadians: political violence, long considered a distant threat, had arrived at home.

Eleven years later, many of the lessons Canada should have learned have not yet been put into action. With a marked rise in political polarization and violent attacks, it’s past due for Canada to strengthen its efforts to protect elected officials.

Extremism in Canada

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) classifies three distinct types of extremism: religious, ideological and political. While faith and grievance-based violence continue to make up the lion’s share of incidents in Canada, the threat of politically motivated violent extremism has steadily increased in recent years.

CSIS defines such extremism as “the use of violence to establish new political systems or new structures or norms within existing systems.” This definition, however, is murky in practice, since many attacks target political institutions but are motivated by either an ideological or religious grievance rather than explicit political goals.

In the case of the Parliament Hill shooting, the perpetrator committed the attack in part due to his discontent with Canada’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Though religiously motivated, his actions had political intent.

Likewise, the 2014 shooting in Moncton, N.B. that left three officers killed and two others injured, along with the 2020 vehicle ramming at the gates of the prime minister’s residence in Ottawa, were both committed by far-right extremists. While CSIS correctly classified the attacks as ideologically motivated, they too were, at their core, political.

Regardless of an attacker’s motive — ideological, religious or political — elected officials are increasingly in the line of fire.

According to the Privy Council Office, former prime minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet faced 337 threats in 2024 alone, up from just three five years earlier.

The same report showed the number of death threats rose from zero in 2019 to 56 in 2022, and 26 in the first half of 2024. When including incidents directed at MPs across party lines, the true scale of the problem is likely much greater.

The global threat

Rising political violence is a global trend. In 2024, more than 2,600 acts of violence targeted local officials across 96 countries, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

Similarly, Freedom House, a non-profit organization aimed at strengthening democracy and protecting human rights, reported that nearly 40 per cent of countries experienced election-related violence in 2024. Politicians were attacked in at least 20 nations.

The motives behind these attacks were not monolithic; they ranged from a long list of grievances rooted in xenophobia, gender-based hostility, conspiracy theories, anti-authoritarianism, religious extremism and other perceived social or political injustices.

In the past several years, two British MPs, Jo Cox and David Amess, were killed; former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated; South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-Myung was stabbed; Slovakian President Robert Fico was seriously wounded in a shooting; and former Ukrainian parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy was shot dead.

The United States has been particularly affected by political violence, with at least 300 cases recorded since the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol. According to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, plots against government targets in the past five years are nearly triple what they’ve been in the past 25 years combined.

The most notable include two failed assassination attempts on U.S. President Donald Trump in 2024, and the killing of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and fatal shooting of right-wing commentator and political activist Charlie Kirk this year.

Read more:
How Charlie Kirk became a pioneering MAGA political organizer on campuses

A call to action

The Parliament Hill shooting anniversary reminds us that the threat of political violence has not diminished over the past decade — it’s grown.

Despite the implementation of some security measures — such as combining three disparate security services into the Parliamentary Protective Service, expanding the armed security presence on Parliament Hill and offering the installation of security systems and mobile panic buttons for elected officials — MPs still lack sufficient protection.

Instead of being reactive in the aftermath of any future tragedies, Canada must make proactive investments to safeguard people and institutions likely to be targeted.

That means enhancing screenings before meetings, increasing access to safe rooms, bolstering security at public events, improving emergency response planning and using protective details and physical security judiciously — that is, erring on the side of caution rather than waiting for threats to escalate.

Canada should also strengthen its intelligence and law enforcement communities to counter the evolving threat. This includes:

• Expanding open-source intelligence capabilities to better execute the goals laid out in Canada’s national strategy on countering radicalization to violence;
• Enhancing co-ordination with municipal police forces and hate-crime units;
• Ensuring the legal consequences for political violence and intimidation serve as genuine deterrents;
• And learning best practices from countries like Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, which ranked highest on the 2024 Peace Index.

Protecting Canada’s elected officials from political violence is essential, but it must never compromise a fundamental tenet of democracy: the public’s access to their leaders. Striking this balance will likely remain the greatest challenge for decision-makers, and one they simply cannot afford to get wrong.

Kevin Budning does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 11 years after the Parliament Hill shooting, is Canada doing enough to tackle political violence? – https://theconversation.com/11-years-after-the-parliament-hill-shooting-is-canada-doing-enough-to-tackle-political-violence-265932

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Catherine Reeve, Post doctoral fellow, Mount Saint Vincent University

From getting extra cuddles to vigilant protection, many expectant parents claim their dogs behave differently during pregnancy — sometimes even before the person knew they were pregnant themselves.

Dogs have shared our lives for around 35,000 years, and in that time, they’ve become remarkably attuned to us, picking up on our behaviour, communication, emotions and even our mental and physical health.

Pregnancy, meanwhile, brings about all sorts of physical, emotional and lifestyle changes. For dogs, that might mean fewer walks or play sessions, shifts in their owner’s mood or scent and even changes to the home environment. It’s no wonder, then, that dogs might respond to a pregnancy with changes in their own behaviour.

But how common are these reports? And what kinds of behaviour changes do owners actually notice? Are there any factors that seem to be related to whether dog owners report that their dogs’ behaviour changed when the owner became pregnant?

As a researcher in the field of dog behaviour and human-animal interactions, I wanted to explore this phenomenon further to help us understand how attuned dogs may be to the people they live with, and the depth of the human-animal bond. So my research team and I were the first to systematically document this phenomenon.

Surveying dog owners

We surveyed 130 people who owned a dog while pregnant with questions about their pregnancy, their dogs’ behaviour and their relationship with their dog.

More specifically, we first asked participants about their dogs’ behaviour before they became pregnant. We presented them with five behaviour categories: attention seeking, guarding with familiar people, guarding with unfamiliar people, fear/anxiety towards the owner and fear/anxiety towards other dogs.

Each category contained a list of behaviours that characterized that category, and we asked participants to select any behaviours their dog typically displayed within that category. For example, the attention seeking category contained behaviours like “”cuddling you” and “sniffing you,” whereas the guarding around familiar people category contained behaviours like “moving between you and a familiar person” and “growling at a familiar person.”

Then, we asked participants if they believed that their dogs’ behaviour changed during their pregnancy. If they answered yes, we asked them if they believed their dogs’ behaviour changed before they were aware they were pregnant. We then presented them with the same five categories of behaviours described above and asked them to select those behaviours they believe their dog displayed during their pregnancy.

What we found

Nearly two-thirds (64.5 per cent) of our participants reported that their dogs’ behaviour changed when they became pregnant. A further 26.9 per cent of participants reported that they believed their dogs’ behaviour changed before they were aware that they were pregnant.

When we compared owners’ reports of their dogs behaviour during pregnancy compared to before pregnancy, four out of the five categories of behaviours showed significant increases during pregnancy: attention seeking, guarding with familiar people, guarding with unfamiliar people and fear/anxiety towards other dogs.

Attention seeking had the greatest increase, with 67.1 per cent of participants reporting more attention-seeking behaviours during pregnancy compared to before pregnancy.

When we analyzed whether pregnancy variables or dogs’ behaviour before pregnancy could help predict which dogs’ behaviour would change later, we found that owners who described their dogs as more protective around unfamiliar people before pregnancy were also more likely to report changes in their dogs’ behaviour during pregnancy.

Conversely, participants who reported that their dogs showed more fear/anxiety towards other dogs were less likely to report that their dogs’ behaviour changed during pregnancy.

Why it matters

This study was the first to systematically show that many dog owners believe their dogs’ behaviour changes during pregnancy. While our findings rely on owners’ perceptions, and we know people aren’t always spot-on when interpreting their dogs’ behaviour, these insights are still valuable. They help reveal whether this is a common enough experience to explore further, and they remind us that what owners believe about their dogs can shape how they care for them.

Understanding which behaviours are most often reported can also help expectant owners better prepare both themselves and their dogs for the transition ahead. That might mean keeping to a predictable walk schedule (with a little help from friends or family), setting up calm retreat spaces and rewarding relaxed behaviour.

Pregnancy dramatically changes the lives of expectant parents, and many dog owners see their dogs change with it. Understanding what dog owners notice about their dogs’ behaviour can help families support themselves and their dogs through this transition, strengthening the bond that has evolved over thousands of years.

Catherine Reeve receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. Do dogs behave differently during an owner’s pregnancy? Many dog owners think so – https://theconversation.com/do-dogs-behave-differently-during-an-owners-pregnancy-many-dog-owners-think-so-266552

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ann-Kathrin McLean, Assistant Professor, School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Royal Roads University

Thirty beluga whales are at the risk of being euthanized at the now-shuttered Marineland zoo and amusement park in Niagara Falls. Marineland said in a letter to Canada’s Fisheries Minister Joanne Thompson it will have to euthanize the whales if it doesn’t receive the necessary financial support to relocate them.

The park has come under intense scrutiny recently due to the ongoing struggle to relocate its remaining whales amid financial struggles, a lack of resources and crumbling infrastructure.

Canada passed the Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act in 2019 that prohibits whales, dolphins and porpoises from being taken into captivity. However, the law does not apply retroactively, meaning whales already held in facilities such as Marineland were allowed to remain there.

Marineland, which opened in 1961 in Canada, was once a massive tourism attraction that drew up to 1.2 million visitors annually to see its choreographed aquatic shows. But the park has been closed to the public since the end of summer 2024 after years of controversy and lawsuits.

The park’s reputation has unravelled over the years following a string of beluga whale deaths and other allegations of animal mistreatment.

Marineland’s decline is emblematic of the broader debate over zoo tourism and the ethics of keeping animals in captivity for entertainment.

Understanding zoo tourism

There are 23 accredited zoos in Canada. Accreditation is assigned through Canada’s Accredited Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA), a not-for-profit organization that ensures the health and welfare of captive wildlife with a mission of “inspiring a future where wildlife and people thrive together.”

Zoo tourism is an industry that is both economic and culturally significant in Canada. Roughly 1,520 people are employed in zoos across Canada, which attracted nearly four million visitors in 2020.

But even accredited facilities are not immune to ethical and welfare concerns. In 2022, the B.C. SPCA opened an investigation into the Vancouver Aquarium and Greater Vancouver Zoo following allegations of animal cruelty. Marineland, another accredited zoo, has also appeared to struggle with providing adequate care for its animals in recent years.

The ethics of zoo tourism have come under increasing scrutiny as a result of incidents like these. Critics argue animals and marine life in zoos and parks should not be viewed solely as sources of human entertainment, but as beings that deserve ethical stewardship.

Conservation, education-focused facilities

Zoo tourism must shift to providing educational and research opportunities to shape the way people think about zoo tourism. Across Canada, several facilities are redefining what ethical captivity can look like.

Ecological reserves and conservation parks such as the BC Wildlife Park and the Raptors Centre are examples of educational conservatories for animals.

The BC Wildlife Park in Kamloops was recently biosphere-certified, a designation that recognizes its commitment to sustainability, wildlife conservation and alignment with the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals.

Further north, the ethos of the Yukon Wildlife Preserve is firmly rooted in the principles of animal welfare and ecological conservation. Established in 2003 on the site of a former game farm, the preserve focuses on the rehabilitation and preservation of animals that are native to the region. Its mission includes cultivating “reciprocal, respectful relationships between people and the natural world.”

Reciprocity between species is a concept that most people are not thinking about when visiting a zoo or aquarium. The relationship between visitors and animals is starting to get re-examined in the public consciousness.

As this concept gains traction, institutions like the Yukon Wildlife Preserve are working to ensure encounters between visitors and wildlife contribute to animal welfare, education and ecological understanding.

Toward a more ethical future for zoo tourism

We cannot undo the past but we can influence the future of animal welfare and conservation. Efforts are already underway to redefine how wildlife is experienced and protected.

In British Columbia, the Fish & Wildlife Compensation Program recently acquired a 274-acre property dedicated to creating a humane habitat for rescued grizzly bears. In Victoria, the Parkside Hotel & Spa is part of an initiative to raise funds to support dolphin rescue and rehabilitation work worldwide.

Innovations like hologram zoos being piloted in Ontario, Australia and China demonstrate how technology could replace live animal performances.

Public attitudes are shifting as people become more aware of ecological protection and animal welfare. What has clearly fallen out of public favour are animals trained to perform in captivity for their food and our entertainment.

The transformation of aquariums and zoos will not happen overnight. But continued investment in ecological education and public involvement can help create a more balanced relationship between humans and wildlife. A balanced approach to zoo tourism will require conservation efforts by experts in the field of research, education and animal well-being.

Ann-Kathrin McLean is affiliated with Tourism and Travel Research Association Canada (TTRA).

Moira A. McDonald is affiliated with Tourism and Travel Research Association Canada (TTRA).

Carina Yao and Thomas Worry do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Marineland’s decline raises questions about the future of zoo tourism – https://theconversation.com/marinelands-decline-raises-questions-about-the-future-of-zoo-tourism-266672