Ontario Institute For Studies In Education Research Articles

Embedding Environmental Sustainability Education in a Master of Teaching Program: Reflections on Improvisation and Learning-by-Doing at OISE, University of Toronto

The aim of this paper is to share our story about introducing environmental sustainability education (ESE) in an initial teacher education (ITE) program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at University of Toronto, starting in 2018. In so far as narratives motivate reflection and action, the goal is to encourage readers to start a conversation with colleagues at their respective institutions (university or college) about how they might do something similar. Consideration is given to how this case fits what Neus (Snowy) Evans refers to as a “systems approach” to implementing ESE in ITE, even if more in retrospect and through improvisation than through foresight and technical prowess.

Contributors

Previous article FreeContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreELIZABETH BUCKNER ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of higher education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. She studies how global trends affect higher education, with a focus on privatization and internationalization. Her recent publications have appeared in Sociology of Education and Higher Education.ROSWITA DRESSLER ([email protected]) is an associate professor and director of Teaching Across Borders in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary (Canada). Her research interests include second-language teaching and learning in a variety of contexts, including K–12 settings and study abroad.COLLEEN KAWALILAK ([email protected]) is a full professor and associate dean international and chair of Educational Studies Adult Learning in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary (Canada). She holds a PhD in adult, community, and higher education. Her current research focuses on internationalization in higher education, fostering intercultural capacity, adult learning, and relationality as pedagogy and practice.TARO KOMATSU ([email protected]) is a professor in the Department of Education at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. He previously worked as an education specialist for the UNESCO Sarajevo office. His research focuses on education and social cohesion in postconflict contexts. Recent publications include Education and Peace, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education (Oxford University Press, 2017).LUANA MAROTTA ([email protected]) is a consultant in the Education Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Her work focuses on issues of teacher contracts and teacher sorting in Latin America.WILSON ALVES DE PAIVA ([email protected]) is a full professor at the Federal University of Goiás (Brazil). He holds a PhD in philosophy of education, with postdoctoral work in cultural identity at the University of Calgary, Canada. He develops research in the areas of philosophy of education, philosophy for children, culture and education, as well as multiculturalism.FRANCESCA SALVI ([email protected]) is a sociologist focusing on transitions between childhood and adulthood. She has worked prevalently in sub-Saharan Africa and Lusophone countries. Her research looks at how global discourses of teenage pregnancy are constructed in opposition to education and employment imperatives. Through her case study of Mozambique secondary schools, she argues for a disruption of the education-pregnancy binary.DAVID M. SCOTT ([email protected]ca) is an assistant professor and director of student experiences for the community-based program in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary (Canada). His research explores how educators interpret and pedagogically respond to officially mandated curriculum shifts.JANA STRAKOVA (jana.[email protected]cuni.cz) works at the Institute for Research and Development of Education, Faculty of Education, Charles University, Prague. Her research interests include education inequalities and education policy. She has been involved in numerous large-scale assessment surveys, both national and international.ARNOST VESELY ([email protected]cuni.cz) is a head of the Centre for Social and Economic Strategies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague. His research interests include educational policy and governance, public administration, and policy design. He has been involved in numerous research-oriented and practice-oriented projects in education policy. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 63, Number 3August 2019 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/704104 © 2019 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Uncovering the sequential patterns in transformative and non-transformative discourse during collaborative inquiry learning

Many universities are using computer-supported collaborative-inquiry-learning (CSCiL) environments to develop their students' skills in collaboration, problem solving, and critical thinking. Diverse states of discourse during CSCiL occur in sequences, but we do not yet fully understand which patterns are beneficial to learning and when exactly to foster them. This study used transition-rate analysis, entropy-analysis, and sequential pattern mining to analyze the chat message of 144 students of two-year colleges. The participants worked on tasks related to Ohm's Law in a simulation-based collaborative-inquiry-learning environment. The results revealed that students in groups who completed tasks successfully tended to ensure that everyone in their group had a shared understanding of the relationship between the variables before they moved on to the next step. In contrast, students in groups who did not complete tasks successfully were more likely to regulate the process without reaching a shared understanding.Gaoxia Zhu is a PhD candidate and research assistant in the Institute for Knowledge Innovation & Technology, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto with background in Educational Technology and Curriculum Studies. Her research interests include Knowledge Building, learning analytics, and CSCL.Wanli Xing is an Assistant Professor in Instructional Technology at Texas Tech University, USA with background in learning sciences, statistics, computer science and mathematical modelling. His research interests are educational data mining, learning analytics, and CSCL.Vitaliy Popov is a research associate in Jacobs Institute for Innovation in Education at University of San Diego. Dr. Popov areas of interest include: computer supported collaborative learning, mobile learning, learning sciences, learning analytics, and technology-enhanced learning across cultures.

Michael B. Katz, 1939-2014: A Tribute

In the magical late 1960s, an amazing young scholar came, armed with a Harvard doctorate, to his first tenure-stream job at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), then in its second year as a new independent research and teaching centre affiliated with the University of Toronto. Our paths crossed; fortuitously, it was the summer of 1967, which coincided with the beginning of my Ph.D in U of T's history department. In one of those accidents that determine one's fate, my advisor Maurice Careless suggested that, since the focus of my research was to be the history of education, I should wander up to “that new place on Bloor Street” (OISE) to see about a course on the subject. There, the chair of the History & Philosophy of Education Department (H & P) steered me to Michael's new offering on the history of American education. Participation in this brilliant seminar was life changing. Embedded in intellectual, religious, cultural and social frameworks, and interpreting educational history to be more than the history of schools, his course led students to more questions than answers. I found both the course meetings and the readings riveting.

Major Trends in the Global ELT Field: A Non-Native English-Speaking Professional's Perspective

Twenty-nine years ago, as a young EFL university teacher full of dreams, I left China, going across the ocean to Canada to pursue my goal of getting a graduate degree in TESOL and Applied Linguistics. As the only graduate student from China in that prestigious Canadian graduate school, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) / University of Toronto, I encountered all kinds of challenges in addition to cultural shock during the first few months. The terminologies in the field were all very foreign to me. “Comprehensible input,” “UG,” “SLA” – I had never heard these terms. Even the daily interaction with Canadians was definitely not Small Talk to me. Whenever someone initiated a “small talk” with me, my heart started jumping fast. “Small talk” always felt like “stressful talk” as my English learning in China was based on grammar-translation, literature-translation and memorization. With persistence and good learning strategies, I overcame one barrier after another and became the first Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from mainland China to graduate from OISE. OISE is one of the leading institutions in ELT in the world where many well-known ELT scholars have taught and / or studied, like David H. Stern, Jim Cummins, Merrill Swain, Michael Canale, J. P. B. Allen, Alistair Pennycook, Bonnie Norton, Ryuko Kubota, Brian Morgan, and Angel Lin, to name a few. Today, I am able to teach graduate students, do teacher training, and work with adult English language learners. I also have had the opportunity to serve as President-elect of TESOL International Association and am serving as President in 2014-2015. I have been working with people in the field whose work I read and respect. My story is just one of many stories about the journey of non-native English-speaking ELT professionals. Together, we are making a difference in our professional lives and writing a new page in the ELT field.

Deepening Knowledge to Inspire Action: Including Aboriginal Perspectives in Teaching Practice

Deepening Knowledge Project, through Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), undertook research within the Initial Teacher Education program to explore the relationships between teacher candidates and Aboriginal content. Our research question was, "Which strategies used within OISE’s Central cohort are most powerful in increasing teacher candidates’ willingness and readiness to incorporate Aboriginal knowledges and pedagogies into their classroom practice?" Data consisted of surveys administered to approximately 70 teacher candidates at three key points in their program as well as two rounds of interviews with five purposively selected participants. We found that teacher candidates most appreciated the inclusion of First Voice perspectives, in-depth instruction on current and historical events, and a continuous examination of privilege as means to prepare them for incorporating Aboriginal content into their future practice. While most students reported feeling more confident and willing to include Aboriginal perspectives near the end of their program, there are three commonly stated questions, reported on preprogram surveys that lead to inaction on Aboriginal inclusion. Addressing these questions directly should help encourage more teachers to take up Aboriginal perspectives in their classrooms. Keywords: Indigenous knowledge; teacher education; teacher resistance

Dedication of this Special Issue of Canadian and International Education to Joe Farrell

Dedication of this Special Issue of Canadian and International Education to Joe FarrellDecember, 2012Joe's life and work was multidimensional: he was not just a world class scholar and leader of comparative and international education, and a mentor for colleagues and students; Joe was also a Scout leader, a folk guitarist, and a loving father and grandfather who used to talk about his grandchildren often and passionately. Writing about all these aspects of Joe's life and work would require a voluminous book.We dedicate this special issue of Canadian and International Education (CIE) to Professor Joe Farrell who passed away on Saturday, December 8, 2012 as a result of a sudden case of septicemia. Over the course of his career, Joe made tremendous contributions to the field of comparative and international education. Joe was the founder of the Comparative, International, and Development Education Centre (CIDEC) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). He was a world renowned professor for more than four decades, and a great mentor of innumerable students, instructors, and fellow inquirers around the world. His award winning research on alternative schools in the developing world, educational planning, and equity in education has informed educational practice and scholarship worldwide.In this dedication, I reflect as editor of Canadian and International Education upon my own experiences with Joe Farrell. I've also asked Sarfaroz Niyozov, CIDEC Co-Director and author of one of the articles in this special issue; Melissa White and Grazia Scoppio, members of the Comparative and International Education Society of Canada (CIESC) executive and former doctoral students of Joe's, and Vandra Masemann, former colleague of Joe's and former CIESC President, to write about the personal impact he had on their lives.Reflections of Marianne Larsen, Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario, and Canadian and International Education EditorI first met Joe in the fall of 1999. I had completed my Masters in Comparative and International Education at the Institute of Education, University of London and was going to spend a year back home in Toronto before beginning my doctorate in England again in 2000. My supervisor, Bob Cowen, put me in touch with Joe to see if I could be a guest member of the CIDEC community over the course of the year. Joe was so warm and welcoming to me. He found an office space for me, invited me to present my research to the CIDEC community, and made me feel as though CIDEC was my academic home for the year. In March 2000, I went to the CIES conference in San Antonio and was delighted to see a panel comprised of Andreas Kazamias, Bob Cowen, Rolland Paulston, and Joe Farrell. They reflected on the state of the field of comparative and international education, and called for different approaches to the study of the international, such as the historical, sociological and philosophical. Joe pointed out the difficulty of trying to use comparative education to predict the future and the need to attend to narrative detail in our work. His words were inspiring to me as a new scholar in the field and are still to this day.Reflections of Sarfaroz Niyozov, Co-Director, Comparative, International and development Centre, OISE, University of TorontoLosing Joe was a personal shock equal to losing a family member. Joe has been a positive influence in my life since 1997, when I arrived at OISE from Tajikistan via Karachi (Pakistan). As I joined OISE, my advisor, noting my background and interest in international education and post-Soviet development issues suggested that I get in touch with Joe Farrell and David Wilson. So I became a member of Joe's comparative circle, attending classes, joining CIDEC discussions, and reflecting on the learning. Occasionally Joe would invite me to lunch and share his experiences of working in and with socialist countries such as his work in Chile and his meeting with early post-Soviet policy makers. …

Race, culture, and mental health/metissage, mestizaje, mixed “race”, and beyond

This special issue of Counselling Psychology Quarterly is dedicated to Dr. Suman Fernando who received the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Lifetime Achieve...

Firing Up Disability Studies: A Report from the Edges of the Human Community

This paper provides a report on first international Disability Studies Summer Institute hosted by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto, July, 2011. This report, reflective in character, narrates some ways that the Institute developed a critical understanding of “disability studies” that enabled attendees to re-encounter current conceptions of “problem” and of “people” and to re-think the relations between the two. This report discusses both keynote material and the experience of an evacuation because of a fire during the Institute. My aim is to reveal some of the ways disability is conceptualized, lived, and theorized as food for thought that can lead to further questions regarding the meaning of persons within the human community.

Integrating traditional healing practices into counselling and psychotherapy

This special issue of Counselling Psychology Quarterly (CPQ) is dedicated to Dr Joseph E. Trimble who received the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Lifetime...

A Study of the Perceptions and Worldviews of Mature Age Pre-Service Teachers Aged Between 31 and 53

This study presents the perceptions and worldviews of 17 mature age second-career pre-service teachers in career transition. The aim was to explore the experience of becoming a primary school teacher after a first career. The second-career pre-service teachers were enrolled on a full-time basis at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UT). The primary data were collected from 17 separate interviews of approximately 1 h; over two separate calendar years, which totalled a five-month interviewing period. The interviewees volunteered to be part of the study and were aged between 31 and 53 and enrolled in two high academic entry-level accelerated programmes for graduates. The interviewees had previous undergraduate degrees and numerous years’ experience working in a variety of other careers. The overall findings are that individuals who have been involved in well-established careers, present distinct perceptions of teaching, that are not only separate from traditional younger pre-service teachers, but remain as significant factors throughout their teaching programmes. It is argued that perceptions could in turn shape their pedagogy in ways that are either profitable or problematic to primary teaching.

Social Identities and Opportunities to Learn: Student Perspectives on Group Work in an Urban Mathematics Classroom

INDIGO ESMONDE is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) – University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St. W., Toronto, ON, Canada, M5S 1V6; email: iesmonde@oise.utoronto.ca. Her research interests include equity and identity in mathematics education, sociocultural theories of learning, and teacher education for social justice.

Imperialist Wars and Liberal Peace

TheAssociation ofMuslim Social Scientists of NorthAmerica (AMSS) heldits fourth annual Canadian Regional Conference in Toronto at the OntarioInstitute for Studies in Education (OISE) on 1 November 2008. This event,whichwas cosponsored by the Department ofAdult Education and CounselingPsychology (OISE) and the Women and Gender Studies Institute at theUniversity of Toronto, was coordinated by Jasmin Zine (Wilfrid Laurier)and Maliha Chishti (OISE). The keynote address was presented by AnnRusso (DePaul University).The theme of this year’s conference, “Imperialist Wars and LiberalPeace,” brought together a group of scholars to critically engage the natureof the new imperialist wars that are being waged on a smaller scale. Fromthe “war on terror” to the various forms of intra-state warfare, participantssought to address how a viable peace and prosperity can be achieved for amajority of the world’s people, rather than just for an elite minority.During the morning plenary session, “Imperialist ‘Obsession’ withHate: A Critique of the Film ‘Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against theWest,’” conference chair Shahrzad Mojab (OISE) questioned the means bywhich social institutions contribute to violence in our society. Shirley Steinberg(McGill) recalled receiving the film in her issue of the Chronicle ofHigher Learning. For her and other scholars on the panel, the ClarionFund’s distribution abroad in the film was a clear example of the rampantIslamophobia of the post-9/11 world. Referring to this as an “exoticizingand terrorizing” of the Islamic andArab peoples, she proposed a letter writingcampaign to mobilize against Islamophobia. Amir Hassanpour(Toronto) warned against the ideology of hate prominently displayedthroughout the film, highlighting the similarities with historic fascism.Jasmin Zine problemitized the discursive tropes employed by the film’screators, which served to “close minds, not open them.” To move past this“pedagogy of fear,” she called for a shift toward a pedagogy of hope rootedin anti-imperialist thought ...

Champion and Defender: the Other Side of the Word

The Ecumenical ReviewVolume 60, Issue 4 p. 385-393 Champion and Defender: the Other Side of the Word Suzanne McCarthy, Suzanne McCarthy Suzanne McCarthy was raised in the Plymouth Brethren tradition in Toronto, Canada and has been part of the Anglican community for the last twenty years. She attended Bible School in Vevey, Switzerland, and completed her undergraduate degree in classics and modern languages at the University of Toronto. She has a diploma in Bible translation from the Summer Institute of Linguistics and an MA. in Education from the Franco-Ontarian Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). She has taught elementary and secondary school French and is currently employed as a teacher for learning disabled and special needs children with a focus on integrating technology into their learning. She conducts independent research on the history of Bible translation.Search for more papers by this author Suzanne McCarthy, Suzanne McCarthy Suzanne McCarthy was raised in the Plymouth Brethren tradition in Toronto, Canada and has been part of the Anglican community for the last twenty years. She attended Bible School in Vevey, Switzerland, and completed her undergraduate degree in classics and modern languages at the University of Toronto. She has a diploma in Bible translation from the Summer Institute of Linguistics and an MA. in Education from the Franco-Ontarian Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). She has taught elementary and secondary school French and is currently employed as a teacher for learning disabled and special needs children with a focus on integrating technology into their learning. She conducts independent research on the history of Bible translation.Search for more papers by this author First published: 25 June 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6623.2008.tb00680.x Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume60, Issue4October 2008Pages 385-393 RelatedInformation

Coeditor's Foreword

Coeditor’s Foreword Laura U. Marks (bio) The Features section of this issue contains papers first presented at the conference "Terms of Address: A Symposium on the Pedagogy of Film and Video Exhibition," organized by the Center for Media and Culture in Education of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto and held in Toronto, March 7 and 8, 2003.1 The city is the site of the Toronto International Film Festival and scores of media arts festivals, venues presenting curated programs, and single-screening events. It was a highly appropriate setting for this investigation into the processes of media presentation and an exquisitely conceived event. The coordinators, Richard Fung and Roger Simon, both of OISE, took great care to limn framing questions and attract knowledgeable, thoughtful participants so as to guarantee a stimulating and fruitful forum. The attendees, who numbered about one hundred, included curators, programmers, filmmakers and video makers, teachers, and activists. We discussed and debated with intense focus, aware that this brief gathering of people with common interest and expertise in the critical practice of film and video presenting was a rare event. The few recent precedents include "Show the Right Thing: A National Conference on Multicultural Film and Video Exhibition," held at New York University in 1989 and organized by B. Ruby Rich, Coco Fusco, and Yvonne Rainer; and the Tate Modern's symposium in 2001, "The Moving Image as Art: Time-based Media in the Art Gallery." Other than such occasions, curators and programmers are mostly on their own in the attempt to develop a thoughtful practice. "Terms of Address" inherited the critical, activist spirit of "Show the Right Thing." The highly developed discourse on politics of identity in the succeeding fourteen years, assumed as common property by most of the presenters, permitted a relatively nuanced [End Page ix] discussion. The focus was on the pedagogical potential of media presentation, independent film and video being privileged as intellectual objects no less significant than written scholarship although not as well integrated into intellectual discourse. The coordinators posited five aspects of film and video presentation: "(1) the provision of information; (2) the provocation of insight; (3) the soliciting of pleasure; (4) instantiation of cultural memory in the form of images, sounds, and gestures; and (5) the formation of social settings in which identities, communities, discourses and solidarities are reconfirmed or put in question."2 In this spirit the conference devoted time to three curated programs, as well as paper sessions and the keynote address by curator and scholar Hamid Naficy. The four paper sessions were designed to elicit considered discussion of particular aspects of curating and programming practice. "Programming and Curating: Are They Different Projects?" compared the institutional location and mode of selection of these two arguably different practices. "Metaphors and Models of Contemporary Practice" allowed us to reflect on the effect of order, juxtaposition, and performative framing. In "What Is at Stake in Film and Video Presentation? Histories, Identities, Politics," speakers discussed the roles of curating and programming in the constitution of communities, whether established or emergent, and in building alliances among communities. "Context, Space, Audience" approached the flow of audiences among different institutional spaces, from cinema to classroom to community group to Internet. We chose to publish papers from "Terms of Address" that reflected on concerns common to curators and programmers of independent media within and outside pedagogical contexts. Three papers address the curator's struggle both to shape the meaning of a program through context and argument, and to yield to the emergence of unforeseen meanings. Stefanie Schulte Strathaus of the Berlin Kino Arsenal reflects subtly on the effect of context on the reception of a curated program, arguing that the curator defer to the nonverbal intelligence of the work, in "Showing Different Films Differently: Cinema as a Result of Cinematic Thinking." Curator and education scholar Karyn Sandlos, in "Curating and Pedagogy in the Strange Time of Short Film and Video Exhibition," describes the unique pedagogical experience that a curated program can elicit and compares it to the deferred knowledge of the psychoanalytic encounter. My paper, "The Ethical Presenter," appeals to the emergent knowledge of the audience and...

THE GOOD LANGUAGE LEARNER.Neil Naiman, Maria Frölich, H. H. Stern, and Angie Todesco. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 1996. Pp. xiii + 240.

It was only about a year ago, in a reckless moment of shelf-purging, that I reluctantly placed my original offset copy (circa 1975) of The Good Language Learner into the paper-recycling bin. Many of us fondly remember that big orange-covered prepublication volume, dog-eared, battered, and stuck together with tape. Now, almost two decades after the first publication of The Good Language Learner (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1978) this reissue appears as part of Multilingual Matters' “Modern Languages in Practice” series. It is the first time this series has featured a reprint of “classic” (p. vii) volumes of interest to foreign language researchers and teachers.

Technology and pedagogy for collaborative problem solving as a context for learning

This workshop, sponsored jointly by CSCW'92 and the Centre for Applied Cognitive Science at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), was organized to bring together researchers with interests in the emerging area of Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (CSCL). It was held at OISE on the weekend preceding CSCW'92 and was attended by 27 participants from academia and industry.

Conference on Knowledge across Cultures

This conference was organized by the Ontario Institute for Studies inEducation (OISE), Toronto, Canada. Approximately 166 participants,representing various disciplines and different countries, attended theeight plenary and twenty concurrent sessions. Its purpose was to bringtogether Eastern and Western knowledge through culture via an exchangeof ideas and deliberations, an exposition of theories, and an examinationof the contributions of various cultures-mainly China's-to humancivilization.The papers presented and the discussions that ensued were extremelyenlightening and concentrated on the following issues: a) the contributionsmade to knowledge by specific cultures (mainly Chinese, Indian,and Muslim); b) knowledge transferreed from the West to the East doesnot consider the attributes of the East; c) the East is responsible forfinding ways to adapting its cultures to imported knowledge; and d) socialscience knowledge is better generated when social science researchersabandon natural science methodologies (i.e., realism and positivism) andrecognize that the social sciences should be based on qualitative research.There were a few papers on the above-mentioned themes that wereoutstanding. Abdul Rahman, in his "Spheres of Life: Inheritance, Creativity,and Society," emphasized the holistic nature of knowledge. Thisknowledge does not underestimate or neglect the contributions of differentcountries (races) in developing the present (current) civilization.Abdul Rahman indicated that the lack of a holistic view of knowlege atpresent has also led knowledge to be fragmented ...

A Framework for Planned Educational Change: Application to the Assessment of Program Implementation

Continuing inquiry into processes of educational change are essential if school improvement efforts are to surpass their current levels of modest impact. Indeed, such impact is likely to depend directly on the sophistication of such inquiry, especially as carried out within a planned change framework. Whereas considerable data are available describing change processes under typical conditions, prescriptive orientations toward research about educational change are not well developed. Dill and Friedman (1979) contend that this framework lacks a unifying theory. They also claim that The research literature on planned change does not define 'treatments' with sufficient clarity to permit them to be replicated and dissected (p. 421). This paper contributes to a unifying theory for planned change presently used to guide a long-term research program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).' It also applies the resulting conception to the problem of assessing program implementation; in so doing, we outline a procedure for defining educational treatments in replicable terms.

Computer-assisted mathematics instruction for community College students

The Individualization Project of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and several Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATS) jointly are developing a curriculum for upgrading mathematics skills. The project uses the computer facilities of the OISE and the National Research Council of Canada for on-line diagnosis and instruction of mathematics skills. The Computer-Assisted Learning system software was designed at the OISE and implemented with a view toward independence from any specific computer; therefore all system programs are coded in widely standardized languages. The authoring language, CAN -4 which is interpreted by the system programs, allows the curriculum designer and student a large degree of flexibility in the instructional process. The mathematics curriculum material is designed as a set of generative modules keyed to behavioral objectives prerequisite for first year CAATS students. The project's goal is to provide the student with the most efficient means of instruction suited to his individual needs. Advanced assessment techniques requiring an online computer system provide valid decisions which can reduce the student's time required for mastery of the curriculum. Reports on the performance of each student and course are used by the project staff to improve the system and the teaching/learning process.