In The Public Square: Recent Episodes
voicEd Radio
Conversations that seek to hold open the space for public discourse and dialogue related to public education.
Dr. Marc Spooner is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. Marc is, arguably, Canada's foremost authority (and critic) on Performance-based models of funding for Post-Secondary institutions and we were pleased to continue our exploration of this topic today on Hurley in the Morning.
Chris Glover is the Member of Provincial Parliament for the riding of Spadina-Fort York in Toronto. He serves as the NDP Critic for Colleges and Universities and so it is not surprising that he has some poignant (and important) things to say about the provincial government's plans to move towards a Performance-based Funding model for post-secondary institutions in the province.
Rick Kelly is the Founder of Just Us—A Centre for Restorative Practice. He joins us this morning to talk about his perspective on the Ontario government's plan to move towards a Performance-based Funding Model for Post-Secondary institutions.
Ann Weiler is an experiential educator for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board and her heart for quality arts education has her concerned about the Ontario government's move towards a performance-based funding model for the province's post-secondary institutions. What could this do to the availability of arts and humanities programs offered at colleges and universities? What could this do to the way young people approach arts education in their secondary years?
Follow Ann on Twitter: @aweninspiration
This week, the Ontario government re-introduced its plans to move to a Performance-based Funding model for the province's post-secondary institutions. Dr. James Skidmore is Director, Waterloo Centre for German Studies at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Skidmore joins me today to talk about the impact of the model and what it could mean for the look of Ontario's post-secondary systems, the people who teach there and the students who enrol.
Here's a link to the full government announcement:
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/59368/promoting-excellence-ontario-implements-performance-based-funding-for-postsecondary-institutions
Dr. Ken Saltman, Professor of Education Leadership, UMass is joined by Erika Shaker, Director of the Education Project at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. We continue to dig deeper into issues around the privatization and corporatization of the Canadian public education space.
How is the current COVID-19 crisis impacting students who are already marginalized by the traditional structures of schooling? Are there ways of rethinking our current approach to remote learning to embrace the principles of culturally relevant pedagogy?
Alison Gaymes is Centrally Assigned Principal for Principal Coaching, Equity & School Improvement with the Toronto District School Board.
Ramon San Vicente is a principal with the Toronto District School Board, educational activist, and author of various texts.
Both Alison and Ramon have a passionate commitment for exploring critical pedagogies and challenging oppressive practices in schools. Follow him on Twitter at @RamonSanVicent2.
Alison and Ramon recently co-authored an article for the Beyond the Numbers, the blogspace of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Read "Schooling for equity during and beyond COVID-19" at http://behindthenumbers.ca/2020/03/27/schooling-for-equity-during-covid-19/
Over the past few months, we’ve been exploring issues around our social commitments to public education, evidence that many governments have moved away from seeing education not as an investment, a cost centre, a market and, indeed, an industry. What’s at the heart of this apparent march towards privatization of public education? What can we, as a public do, to read the language that governments, corporations and even financiers are using when they talk about public education.
Dr. Ken Saltman is a Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at UMass. Dr. Saltman works at the intersection of sociology, philosophy and politics of education. He joins me today to dig a little deeper into the narrative that is being woven around our modern public education systems.
Monica Kristin Blair is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Virginia and a Jefferson Scholars Foundation Fellow. Blair’s dissertation is entitled, “From Segregation Academies to School Choice: The Post-Brown History of School Privatization."
Monica sheds light on the history of the privatization of public schools in the US and suggests some of the signs that we may want to be watching for in the Canadian context. We also talk about how we might open up spaces for the conversation about privatization of public goods.
Andréa Grebenc is Chair of the Halton District School Board. In this conversation, Ms. Grebenc shines a light on some of the aspects of public school funding that often go unnoticed and under-reported.
Ricardo Tranjan is a political economist and senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Recently, Ricardo released a calculator that would allow Ontario citizens to measure the impact that government cuts to class sizes and the introduction of mandatory e-learning would have on staffing at their local schools.
In this episode, we discuss the calculator against the backdrop of policy alternatives and the need for ongoing and robust debate about the future of public education.
Harvey Bischof is the president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, representing over 70 000 teachers and education workers across the province. In this conversation we talk about contract negotiations in a social media world, a narrative for mandatory e-learning and stories that inspire us to stand up for public education.
Stephen Hurley is joined by Mark Kingwell, Professor of Philosophy at University of Toronto and Joel Westheimer, University Research Chair in Democracy and Education at the University of Ottawa. The discussion includes changing notions of citizenship, the role of public institutions in promoting and nurturing that citizenship and the efforts to reclaim the public sphere.
Rachel Collishaw is an Ottawa-based educator and current President of of the Ontario History and Social Science Teachers Association (OHASSTA)
Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair in Democracy and Education at the University of Ottawa.
Both of our guests on this first episode of "In the Public Square" have a real heart for conversations about democracy, citizenship and the purpose of schools