English-speaking Canadian Research Articles

Faculty Members' Experiences of Cyberbullying by Students at One Canadian University: Impact and Recommendations

This two-phase mixed methods study adopted online survey and individual interview questions to explore faculty members’ experiences of cyberbullying by students at one Canadian university. Foucault's (1994) power relations theory was used to explore the power dynamic that can exist in the student-faculty relationship. The study found that cyberbullied faculty members were commonly female, over 40 years of age, English-speaking Canadian citizens, and held fulltime rank. Cyberbullying occurred namely via email, end-of-term faculty evaluation sites, and public polling sites (e.g. Ratemyprofessor.com), while students' dissatisfaction with grades was the most common precursor. Consistent with prior bullying and cyberbullying literature, this study also found that cyberbullied faculty members experienced detrimental effects, persisting from a few days to more than one year. The under-researched focus of this study advances existing workplace bullying and cyberbullying research by illuminating both the harmful implications of student-to-faculty cyberbullying, and the support measures deemed necessary by targeted individuals.

Telling Our Stories: Screenwriters and the Production of Screen-Based Culture in English-Speaking Canada

Screenwriters are a vital part of the production of cultural products in the Canadian screen industry, but little has been written about how they perceive the environment in which they practice their craft. Situating our methodology within the general production culture framework, particularly in regards to industrial reflexivity, we present an analysis of 50 in-depth interviews with English-language Canadian screenwriters. As our subjects reflect on their experiences, a portrait emerges of the factors affecting the screenwriter’s role in the production of screen culture in English-speaking Canada. Their stories reveal a complex plot: one in which screenwriters, much like the characters they create, manoeuver through a landscape with its own boundaries, pitfalls, rewards, and consequences in their quest to attract elusive homegrown audiences.

Building a framework for global health learning: an analysis of global health concentrations in Canadian medical schools.

This study set out to explore the current state of global health concentrations in Canadian medical schools and to solicit feedback on the barriers and challenges to implementing rigorous global health concentration programs. A set of consensus guidelines for global health concentrations was drafted through consultation with student and faculty leaders across Canada between May 2011 and May 2012. Drawing on these guidelines, a formal survey was sent to prominent faculty at each of the 14 English-speaking Canadian medical schools. A thematic analysis of the results was then conducted. Overall, the guidelines were strongly endorsed. A majority of Canadian medical schools have programs in place to offer global health course work, extracurricular learning opportunities, local community service-learning, low-resource-setting clinical electives, predeparture training, and postreturn debriefing. Although student evaluation, global health mentorship, and knowledge translation projects were endorsed as important components, few schools had been successful in implementing them. Language training for global health remains contested. Other common critiques included a lack of time and resources, and difficulties in setting standards for student evaluation. The results suggest that these guidelines are appropriate and, at least for the major criteria, achievable. Although many Canadian schools offer individual components, the majority of schools have yet to develop formally structured concentration programs. By better articulating guidelines, a standardized framework can aid in the establishment and refinement of future programs.

Humor (re)positioning ethnolinguistic ideologies: “You tink is funny?”

AbstractThis article examines how essentializing ideologies of language and identity in Toronto's Portuguese ethnic market, constructed as monolingual and monocultural within the larger mainstream market of English-speaking Canada, provide the background for humorous sociolinguistic performances that playfully acknowledge, reproduce, and challenge ethnolinguistic stratification. After more than sixty years, the dominant spaces of the local Portuguese market continue to exclude most Portuguese-Canadian youth by rarely legitimizing the use of English, bilingual code-switching, or ‘broken’ or ‘Azorean’ Portuguese. By choosing YouTube as a space in which to engage audiences in ideologies of language and identity through performances of sociolinguistic caricatures, three young Portuguese-Canadian amateur comedians negotiate sociolinguistic boundaries with an ambivalent agency. The mocking performances are legitimized by the performers' in-group status and reveal, among other things, how a stigmatized variety of Azorean Portuguese and certain ethnolinguistic stereotypes can be reappropriated and reinforced relative to sociolinguistic hierarchies. (Language ideologies, ethnic humor, performativity, heteroglossia)*

The interplay of referential function and character primacy on referring expressions in children’s narratives

This study considered the linguistic forms used by 63 English-speaking Canadian children from kindergarten to second grade (ages 5;6–8;8) to introduce, maintain reference to, and reintroduce primary and secondary characters throughout their narratives The expected referring forms were used more frequently for the best-matching referential function: indefinites for introduction, pronouns and null forms for maintenance, and identifiables (i.e., definite and possessive NPs, and proper names) for reintroduction. Developmental changes in form–function mappings were present for both introduction and reintroduction. Many children were also influenced by the relative prominence of story characters in their use of pronominals. Nonetheless, function constraints exerted a much stronger influence on referential choice than did character primacy in all grades. By systematically exploring the interplay of referential function and character primacy on referring expressions, this study adds to existing findings on many levels. It also invites future research that manipulates various features of both primary and secondary characters.

A culture of silence: modes of objectification and the silencing of disabled bodies

Throughout history different practices have attempted to silence the experiences of disabled people. In this paper we explore some of these practices including the medical, familial, and self-subjugating practices English-speaking Canadian polio survivors experienced throughout their lives. We analyze participant’s experiences of silence and silencing through a Foucauldian lens, drawing on the three modes of objectification to explain the institutional and cultural discourses around polio subjects that acted upon and through the polio body to silence it. Participants’ oral history accounts demonstrate how sociocultural and medical practices effectively silenced survivors from speaking about their polio experiences. However, the trope of silence is also uprooted within oral history traditions. We will demonstrate how participants broke their silence and shifted their perspectives on polio and disability, and how this process contributed to their resistance of hegemonic conceptualizations of disability as defective.

Bad Girl par by Nancy Huston

protagonist, is an unpretentiously beautiful book, one attuned to the emotional possibilities of the exquisitely-trained human voice. Lawrence University (WI) Eilene Hoft-March Huston, Nancy. Bad Girl. Paris: Actes Sud, 2014. ISBN 978-2-330-03718-5. Pp. 264. 20 a. For those who have already read Huston’s works the literary rigor, analytical character development, and cross-cultural perspectives of this book will come as no surprise. Not only are the characters realistic; they are real. Real people.And into what genre can we place Bad Girl? Is it an autobiography or a narrative? A soliloquy? A monologue? Or is it an exorcism? Perhaps Bad Girl, with its discreet subtitle Classes de littérature, is all of the above. Let us call it a récit, a broken chronological recounting of the author’s life told to her foetal self, the not-yet-born Nancy Huston, whom she names “Dorrit”. Through the insightful reading of her own trajectory and with narrative expertise which comes from much practice, Huston allows us to see how she became who she is today: a voracious reader, a prolific writer, a bilingual, bicultural, bi-continental being. This English-speaking Canadian who has spent her adult life in France writes in magnificent French about trauma and exile, joy and empathy, closeness and great distances. Using “tu” throughout, Huston tells Dorrit of the experiences that await her. In the future tense she announces events, feelings, discoveries, and losses that lie ahead. Temporality has few boundaries here and along with the true chronology from the 1950s through the present there are fragments that skip about in time. Much of the storyline focuses on the instability of Huston’s family life, including multiple moves, her father’s erratic behavior and the ultimate betrayal from which she suffers when her mother leaves the family to pursue a life elsewhere. Hence the main title, for Huston imagines the abandonment to be her fault: “Oui, tu mérites tout le malheur qui t’arrive, bad girl, même si tu ne sais pas pourquoi” (251). Is this a term that carries so much weight that it must be left in the author’s native language? Perhaps. The basic story is punctuated with asides ranging from commentary on abortion to children’s songs and family games, interspersed with histories of past generations and tales heard told. These ever-present references to language and writing remind us that this is far more than the telling of the future to someone from the past. Let us not forget the subtitle Classes de littérature. From moving house to piano lessons, from the discovery of her own loveliness to relationships with men, from the divorce that shattered her world to the joys of her life as a writer, Huston considers her experiences to be her classes de littérature: “[É]crire reflétera ton besoin de gouverner seule” (207). People fail to live up to expectations. Words, on the other hand, carry in their very existence a strength upon which Huston draws to survive.And 272 FRENCH REVIEW 89.2 Reviews 273 the reader in all this? Far from being a self-indulgent self-exploration, this récit highlights the importance of literature in our lives. It shows us with elegance and gentle humor how we construct stories to make sense out of chaos and how this helps us chart our course. Metropolitan State University of Denver Ann Williams Jouannais, Jean-Yves. Les barrages de sable. Paris: Grasset, 2014. ISBN 978-2-24685197 -4. Pp. 204. 17 a. A long meditation about building sand castles and their analogy to military defense, the narrative moves amoeba-like into various genres. It represents serious inquiry, using citations of writers from ancient, medieval to modern times. The book reads at times like a personal journal, at times like a treatise, and at times like a novel. The text begins like a novel in which a father is supervising the playtime of his two young children on a beach as they build a dam in the sand against the Atlantic. Explaining the movement of tides, his thoughts wander to ancient writers and to Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic...

Straddle by David Cavanagh

David Cavanagh. Straddle. County Clare, Ireland. Salmon Poetry / Dufour Editions. 2015. isbn 9781910669082 The little town in which I teach has sustained a Thursday-night open-mic poetry event for the last twenty-one years, and I have been a regular part of it for ten of those years. Most of what I’ve heard there, however good or bad, has had a certain open-mic quality to it, something in the way it is oriented toward its audience. I mean this as a compliment; I’m all for poetry that considers its audience, especially when I am in that audience. As a species, the open-mic poem aims to be accessible, engaging, witty, and—occasionally—poignant. This is the kind of poem David Cavanagh attempts— often successfully—to present in Straddle. As the title suggests, Cavanagh’s poems often engage with themes of border crossing, but rather than academic and obtuse poems on the perennially trendy topic of liminality , he offers poems that are accessible in their concreteness and specificity. The theme is often expressed in poems about living in the very porous borderlands of Frenchspeaking and English-speaking Canada. He also writes frequently about crossing back and forth across the US/Canadian border. If the poem “Crossing”—which reads in its entirety, “‘Anything to declare?’ / asks the border guard. / Oh my. Where to begin?”—is a little too pat and pandering, the theme is handled beautifully in the longer “Behind the Plate in Montreal, 1964,” which deftly weaves together a sense of separation by language and religion with a sense of community in sport. That the book is published by a press based in Ireland perhaps adds one more subtle border crossing to the mix. Cavanagh’s best poems achieve not only clarity but also a poignancy that derives from simple wisdom expressed with great vividness and grace: open-mic at its absolute best. These poems include “Neil Armstrong R.I.P,” “Skating on Mallettt’s Bay,” and “The Beautiful Men.” This last is perhaps the collection’s finest. In it Cavanagh, with great economy of language and precision of image, compares to their rugged pioneer ancestors those young fathers cultivating the new masculinity, the revised expectations of fatherhood. The wit lies in that these young men are not in contrast to the rough-and-ready pioneers but rather resemble them in their adventurous spirit of discovery: “The fields and far / mountains of gentleness they’ve fumbled for, / found.” The poem is simple, vivid, insightful, and completely accessible. World Literature in Review 72 WLT NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2015 I’m not among those who ardently bemoan poetry’s migration into academia. I think, in fact, the modern university has nobly stepped into the role once played by wealthy patrons of the arts and thus helped to keep literature alive in an economy indifferent to it. It is crucial, however, that we maintain poetic cultures outside of the university as well: the local open-mic as a remedy for total academic hegemony. Straddle is an example of this other tradition at its best. Benjamin Myers Oklahoma Baptist University Seamus Heaney. Selected Poems, 1988–2013. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2014. isbn 9780374535612 Farrar, Straus and Giroux has published Seamus Heaney’s Selected Poems in two volumes, the first including poems from 1966 to 1987, the second, 1988–2013. The strength of the poems in this second volume generally matches that of the first, with certain poems such as “The Rain Stick” and “Postscript” equaling anything in his entire body of work. Although one wishes for the greater fullness of a “complete poems,” thinking with fondness of some poems not included here, this collection nevertheless satisfies and serves to concentrate the muscular poetic force of Heaney. Heaney himself preferred a poetry that was “unfussy and believable” and “the virtue of an art that knows its own mind.” His poetry is restrained and essential yet not terse, cramped, or epigrammatic. His poetics is willing to include “buttermilk and urine” in the same line but eschews flourish and ostentation. Though rhythmically formal , often written in masterful iambic pentameter lines, his verse has the feel of careful , natural speech (as Eliot said it should...

Relationship Between Chiropractic Teaching Institutions and Practice Characteristics Among Canadian Doctors of Chiropractic: A Random Sample Survey

ObjectiveThe objectives of this study were to determine if faction membership among Canadian doctors of chiropractic (DCs) is associated with differences in educational program characteristics among English-speaking Canadian and United States chiropractic colleges and to determine if those differences are expressed in terms of surveyed attitudes and behaviors regarding treatment efficacy, radiographic imaging, vaccinations, and interprofessional referrals. This study also aims to identify if educational programs may be a potential source of multiple professional identities. MethodsA randomly selected sample of Canadian DCs, stratified across the English-speaking provinces, was surveyed by mail. Survey items included school of graduation, self-categorization by chiropractic subgroup, perceptions of condition-specific treatment efficacy, use of plain film radiographic imaging, vaccination attitudes/behaviors, and patient referral patterns. Self-categorization by chiropractic subgroup included: the unorthodox faction (associates the chiropractic subluxation as an encumbrance to the expression of health) and the orthodox perspective (associates with musculoskeletal joint dysfunction, public health, and lifestyle concerns). For data analysis, chiropractic schools were divided into 2 groups according to location: English-speaking Canada and the US. The US was further clustered into liberal (“interested in mixing elements of modern and alternative therapies into the practice of chiropractic") and conservative categories (“chiropractors who believe in continuing the traditions of chiropractic"). ResultsOf 740 deliverable questionnaires, 503 were returned for a response rate of 68%. χ2 Testing revealed significant differences in self-categorized faction membership associated with the clustering of colleges based on ideological viewpoints (χ2 = 27.06; P = .000). Descriptive results revealed a relationship between school of origin and perceived treatment efficacy, use of radiographic imaging, and vaccination attitudes. No significant differences were found relative to interprofessional referral patterns. ConclusionChiropractic program attended is a significant predictor of orthodox vs unorthodox faction membership and professional practice characteristics for Canadian DCs. This suggests that the current chiropractic education system may contribute to multiple professional identities.

Canada and the End of the Imperial Dream: Beverley Baxter’s Reports from London through War and Peace, 1936-1960 by Neville Thompson (review)

Reviewed by: Canada and the End of the Imperial Dream: Beverley Baxter’s Reports from London through War and Peace, 1936-1960 by Neville Thompson Daniel Gorman Thompson, Neville – Canada and the End of the Imperial Dream: Beverley Baxter’s Reports from London through War and Peace, 1936-1960. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 394. In a 1931 BBC radio broadcast entitled “That Commonwealth Feeling,” the British diplomat, politician, and writer Harold Nicolson declared that the dominions had recently “began to emerge above our horizon as something unaccountable, as something forlorn and strange and powerful; as something mysterious, compelling, imminent”(Harold Nicolson, People and Things: Wireless Talks, London, 1931, pp. 145-6). The same year as Nicolson’s wireless talk, the Statute of Westminster gave the dominions legislative equality with the United Kingdom by granting them autonomy in foreign affairs, a symbolic “end” to the imperial relationship. Yet imperialism, or more accurately an attachment to Britons, British affairs, and things British, remained centrally important for many English-speaking Canadians for another generation. Indeed, as Neville Thompson demonstrates in this wide-ranging and elegantly written book, the “imperial dream” of a shared Anglo-Canadian identity and purpose survived, if in a diminished form and for fewer and fewer people, into the early 1960s. Thompson’s medium for tracking this development is the bi-weekly London Letters column written by the Canadian journalist and British Member of Parliament Beverley Baxter for Maclean’s magazine between 1936 and 1960. [End Page 837] Beverley Baxter had a Methodist upbringing in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Toronto. The British Empire exerted a strong imaginative pull for the young Baxter. After work selling pianos and service in Europe during the First World War, Baxter stayed on in London and successfully lobbied the most famous Canadian expatriate in Britain, Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aiken), for a job in journalism. He went on to make his fortune, and never again returned full-time to live in Canada. Baxter even published an autobiography in 1935, telling the story of how he had ascended to a position of influence in the imperial metropole. Canada and the End of the Imperial Dream is a hybrid, part biography of Baxter, part analysis of the high British political history which Baxter observed from the margins as a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1935 until his death in 1964. The books’ central themes are symbolized by the two figures represented in the cover photograph, neither of whom is Baxter. Instead, we see Beaverbrook, then British Minister of Supply, and Winston Churchill standing on the deck of HMS Prince of Wales in 1941 during the Allied conference off the coast of Newfoundland which resulted in the Atlantic Charter. Far from a case of false advertising, the cover depicts the two figures whose imperial visions Baxter spent his career advancing. Beaverbrook was the more direct influence, giving Baxter his start in journalism at the Daily Express. As Baxter wrote of himself and Beaverbrook when looking back on his career in his final London Letter in 1960, they had “beat the Empire drum on all possible and even impossible occasions” (p. 355). While they sometimes fell out over other political questions, Baxter and Beaverbrook always remained simpatico over the importance for Canada of the imperial tie. It was only the debacle of the Suez Crisis and the subsequent promise of entering the European Community that finally persuaded Baxter that the imperial dream was over. In his politics, Baxter was a journalistic weathervane. Always a conservative, he variously supported and opposed the successive grandees of the British Conservative party, from fellow Canadian Andrew Bonar Law through Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Harold Macmillan. The central message he propagated throughout the period, however, was that of closer imperial union. This meant the old Joseph Chamberlain vision of imperial preference, as well as during the Second World War an imperial war cabinet and overseas conscription for Canadians. Beyond such formal manifestations of imperialism, even then somewhat dated, what Baxter really wished to convey to Canadians was the allure of English sophistication and culture. It is tempting to see Baxter’s imperial arias as simple chauvinism...

Philosophy in Schools: Then and Now

It is twelve years since the article you are about to read was published. During that time, the philosophy in schools movement has expanded and diversified in response to curriculum developments (see Cam 1993, 1997, 1998; Kennedy 2013; Sprod 2001; Wartenberg 2009, 2013; Worley 2011), teaching guides (see Cam 1994, 2006; Freakley, Burgh & MacSporran 2008; Goering, Shudak & Wartenberg 2013; McCall 2009; Wilks 1996), web-based resources, dissertations, empirical research (Daniel & Michel 2000; Leckey 2001; Garcia-Moryon, Rebollo & Colom 2005; Reznitskaya 2005; Russell 2002) and theoretical scholarship (Davey Chesters 2012; Hand & Winstanley 2008; Haynes & Murris 2012; Kennedy 2006; Kohan 2014a, 2014b; Lone 2012; Lone & Israeloff 2012; Shapiro 2012; Sprod 2001). Philosophy and philosophy of education journals regularly publish articles and special issues on pre-college philosophy. There are more opportunities for undergraduate and graduate philosophy students to practice and research philosophy for/with children in schools. The Ontario Philosophy Teachers Association (OPTA) (founded in 1999) reports that in English-speaking Canada there are over 28,000 senior high school students studying philosophy in over 440 schools, and philosophy is now a Teachable Qualification (for an overview see Pinto, McDonough & Boyd 2006). In the USA, the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO) was founded in 2009 to create a network of pre-college philosophy teachers. With the loss of its founders—Matthew Lipman (1922-2010), Ann Margaret Sharp (1942-2010) and Gareth Matthews (1929-2011)—the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) is developing a digital archive in P4C. My original article was inspired by the design (1999) and pilot (2000) of a new philosophy elective for the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). This initiative garnered considerable interest from the P4C community because many believed that (a) the decision to offer a VCE philosophy elective reflected the effectiveness and popularity of P4C in elementary schools, and (b) the new philosophy elective would establish P4C as an essential prerequisite for the study of philosophy in senior secondary school and at university. In my view, enthusiasts overlooked an important difference in the conception of philosophy informing the new philosophy elective: it introduced students to the theoretical or academic discipline of philosophy, whereas P4C conceived of philosophy as a wisdom tradition—otherwise known as the art of living.

Preliminary Bibliography: Actor Training in English-Speaking Canada

In an effort to provide as broad a foundation as possible, the fol‐ lowing bibliography traces writings that address both contem‐ porary and historical approaches to actor training in Canada. In order to provide some structure to this list, the resources herein are divided into three categories. “Contemporary Actor Train‐ ing in Canada” consists largely of accounts of specific Canadian actor‐training facilities and their practices, discussions regarding the application of acclaimed theatre practitioners’ methodologies in Canadian contexts, and theoretical approaches to devising new practices for training Canadian actors. The second section, titled “Historical Actor Training in Canada,” presents resources that provide snapshots of particular historical moments of Canadian actor training both in regards to individual theatre companies and their productions, and to the broader state of professional actor training in Canada. Finally, “Newspaper Articles on Actor Train‐ ing in Canada” is principally an account of somewhat less formal reporting on larger Canadian theatre and opera companies: their young companies, their training programs, and the various ways in which these curricula became possible. While this document is certainly not an exhaustive list of resources, it is my intention that its contents should provide a broad and diverse foundation from which to reflect on the development of actor‐training practices in English‐Speaking Canada.

History of education in Canada: historiographic “turns” and widening horizons

This paper explores major historiographic “turns” in history of education with a focus, although not exclusively, on English-speaking Canada. It addresses the transformative intellectual impact of the turn toward social history on the history of education, the impact of cultural history and the linguistic turn, the reception of Michel Foucault, and the state of the debate in history at-large today and its implications for the history of education. It also attempts to contextualise the intellectual trends permeating the writing of the history of education in light of developments in education, and signals new directions in historiography influencing history of education. Given the limitations of space, rather than engaging in a historiographical analysis of individual historians of education, the paper traces broad trends, while highlighting the contributions of a significant few.

The provision of bioinformatics services in Canadian academic libraries

Introduction – This article describes the level of bioinformatics services offered by academic libraries across Canada. It also assesses faculty use of bioinformatics resources and the need for library bioinformatics services at one academic institution, Concordia University. Methods – To assess the level of bioinformatics services at Canadian universities, a survey was sent to life and health sciences librarians at English-speaking Canadian universities comparable to Concordia University. To assess faculty use of bioinformatics and the need for bioinformatics instruction, another survey was sent to faculty of the Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics at Concordia University. Results – Approximately one-quarter of librarians surveyed provided services such as online research guides for bioinformatics resources, workshops, or online tutorials. Individual consultations with students were infrequent. The majority of the libraries where bioinformatics services were offered were at universities with a medical school. The faculty survey indicated that Concordia Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics researchers are heavy users of bibliographic and bioinformatics databases, using at least one of these databases on a daily basis. Most faculty members learned how to use bioinformatics databases on their own and regularly teach the use of these databases to their students or colleagues. Nevertheless, faculty at Concordia seem to be open to some form of collaboration with the library for the provision of bioinformatics services. Discussion – Although librarians can participate in the teaching of bioinformatics database skills, library services in bioinformatics at Canadian university libraries are still in the embryonic phase. Librarians should be trained in the use of these databases to increase their confidence and expertise and to help them market these skills to faculty and students.

An Investigation of School-Level Factors Associated With Science Performance for Minority and Majority Francophone Students in Canada

AbstractMinority Francophone students in predominantly English-speaking Canadian provinces tend to perform lower on large-scale assessments of achievement than their Anglophone peers and majority Francophone students in Quebec. This study is the first to apply multilevel modeling methods to examine the extent to which school-level factors may be differentially associated with achievement for minority Francophone students compared to majority Francophone students. Forty-four percent of the variance in science achievement among Francophone schools was explained by the model. After taking into consideration gender as well as student- and school-level socioeconomic status, French-language schools in Ontario and New Brunswick had, on average, lower PISA 2006 science achievement scores compared to schools in Quebec. Findings indicate that differences in performance between linguistic minority and majority Francophone students could not be reduced to differences in socioeconomic status or to the school resource ...

Student Affairs and Services Staff in English-Speaking Canadian Postsecondary Institutions and the Role of CACUSS in Professional Education

This study examined student affairs and services staff members’ perceptions of their work relative to items developed from the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services’ (CACUSS’s) mission statement (CACUSS, 1989). Using data collected from student affairs and services staff members at English-speaking postsecondary institutions from across Canada, I investigated if differences existed based on professional association affiliation, respondent’s employment status, and number of years worked in the field. A number of statistically significant differences based on respondent characteristics were found. These findings suggest CACUSS is modestly successful in educating the field toward the premises for practice espoused in the association’s mission statement.

The Comparability of English, French and Dutch Scores on the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue (FACIT-F): An Assessment of Differential Item Functioning in Patients with Systemic Sclerosis

ObjectiveThe Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy- Fatigue (FACIT-F) is commonly used to assess fatigue in rheumatic diseases, and has shown to discriminate better across levels of the fatigue spectrum than other commonly used measures. The aim of this study was to assess the cross-language measurement equivalence of the English, French, and Dutch versions of the FACIT-F in systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients.MethodsThe FACIT-F was completed by 871 English-speaking Canadian, 238 French-speaking Canadian and 230 Dutch SSc patients. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the factor structure in the three samples. The Multiple-Indicator Multiple-Cause (MIMIC) model was utilized to assess differential item functioning (DIF), comparing English versus French and versus Dutch patient responses separately.ResultsA unidimensional factor model showed good fit in all samples. Comparing French versus English patients, statistically significant, but small-magnitude DIF was found for 3 of 13 items. French patients had 0.04 of a standard deviation (SD) lower latent fatigue scores than English patients and there was an increase of only 0.03 SD after accounting for DIF. For the Dutch versus English comparison, 4 items showed small, but statistically significant, DIF. Dutch patients had 0.20 SD lower latent fatigue scores than English patients. After correcting for DIF, there was a reduction of 0.16 SD in this difference.ConclusionsThere was statistically significant DIF in several items, but the overall effect on fatigue scores was minimal. English, French and Dutch versions of the FACIT-F can be reasonably treated as having equivalent scoring metrics.

Keeping track of characters: Factors affecting referential adequacy in children’s narratives

This study considered the adequacy of references used by children to introduce, maintain, and reintroduce characters in complex narratives involving multiple characters. Sixty-three English-speaking Canadian children from kindergarten to second grade ( M age 7.0 years) told two multi-episode stories from wordless picture books. Analyses considered differences in referential adequacy both within-children and between grades. There was an unexpectedly large difference in adequacy levels across stories, mostly because of an overuse of pronouns in one story. Maintenance was the easiest referential function, whereas reintroduction proved more difficult than introduction only for the story with consistently lower adequacy levels. Participants across grades were affected by referential function and by story in analogous ways. The kindergartners did nonetheless obtain lower adequacy levels than the two higher grades due to a higher use of pronouns and because they were less able to clearly refer to characters even when they were using the same linguistic forms. Participants in the three grades successfully used a diversity of linguistic forms for their character references across referential functions. Together, these findings have important implications for referential cohesion in young school-aged children. First, they invite caution when drawing conclusions regarding developmental changes based on a single story. Second, they suggest that reintroduction may be particularly sensitive to story features that make referencing more demanding. Finally, they underscore the importance of considering reference within the broader textual context in order to produce a detailed account of referential abilities.

“Anglo-Conformity”: Assimilation Policy in Canada, 1890s–1950s

In the late nineteenth century Canada started to receive large waves of non-British migrants for the very first time in its history. These new settlers arrived in a country that saw itself very much as a British society. English-speaking Canadians considered themselves a core part of a worldwide British race. French Canadians, however, were obviously excluded from this ethnic identity. The maintenance of the country as a white society was also an integral part of English-speaking Canada’s national identity. Thus, white non-British migrants were required to assimilate into this English-speaking Canadian or Anglocentric society without delay. But in the early 1950s the British identity of English-speaking Canada began to decline ever so slowly. The first steps toward the gradual breakdown of the White Canada policy also occurred at this time. This had a corresponding weakening effect on the assimilation policy adopted toward non-British migrants, which was based on Anglo-conformity.

Please Pass the Crumpets … er, Croissants: Teaching Québec in Victoria, British Columbia

In Sanctioned Ignorance (2013), based on his doctoral thesis in comparative literature (University of Alberta), Paul William Martin provides an overview of “the teaching of the literatures of Canada.” Framed by Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of “the market of symbolic goods” and based on fieldwork which consists of in-depth interviews with professors in French and English university departments and an examination of university calendars, his work offers a fascinating “snapshot” of the teaching of our literatures. Over several pages, Martin investigates and comments upon the unique program that I run at the University of Victoria: the undergraduate degree in comparative Canadian literature, jointly offered by the departments of English and French. This highly specialized undergraduate degree concentrates on classic literary texts from English-speaking Canada and French-speaking Québec (with subfields in Québec cinema and Québec history and various courses on culture and literature: Cartier and Champlain; graphic novels; Métis, migrant, and Amerindian writing; fine art; and so on). In this article, I propose the advantages of such a program to the future of the study of Québec in Canada, examine the challenges I have faced in maintaining this program over the past twenty-five years, and reflect on the teaching of the literature and culture of Québec in an anglophone university in the city that is identified as being “more British than the British”: Victoria, British Columbia.