in education Volume 29, Number 2, 2024 Spring/Summer

Editorial

Valerie Triggs and Kathleen Nolan, University of Regina

This issue of in education spotlights important connections between educational practices and the shaping of sociocultural identities and matters of well-being as these relate to K-12 students, postsecondary students, teachers, teacher educators, and parents. A common ethics of relationality with self and other runs through this collection of diverse research texts that explore educational capacities to disrupt and challenge dominant or standardized structures of Euro-Western perspectives.

Through research articles, a knowledge synthesis study, an essay, and a book review, we are called, in this issue, to re-examine: current knowledge regarding the experiences of loneliness and belonging in Canadian school contexts; how standards, accountability, and high-stakes testing in K-12 classrooms redefine teaching and learning and the meaning of homework for teachers, students, and parents; possibilities for how centering a social justice lens to identity development and well-being in FSL teacher education programs in Canada may result in long term teacher retention; endeavours to enhance critical cultural and intercultural competence in teacher education programs in Denmark; ways forward in Indigenizing elementary school mathematics in Treaty 6 Saskatchewan; the significance of compassionate care for students in post-secondary settings; and the need for increased attention towards the well-being of students and educators. We are confident that the scholarly contributions in this issue will engage the reader in critical reflection on research grounded in well-being, relationality, and ethics for school-based professionals and students.

The first article in this issue, written by Thomas Falkenberg and Rebeca Heringer, reports on a knowledge synthesis study of Canadian K-12 students’ senses of loneliness and belonging. Through a scoping literature review, they identify thematic clusters of findings regarding students’ lived experiences. Their synthesis of current knowledge makes visible the structural factors that compound effects of loneliness and the school educational policies and practices that foster students’ sense of belonging.

Carolyn Clarke examines the ways in which standards and accountability through wide-scale testing reshape the nature of teaching, learning, and homework, and extend control over families’ lives and social identities in Newfoundland and Labrador. Using Foucault’s notions of the ways in which discourses construct and define reality, Clarke undertook case studies of the homework practices of Grade 3 children and the experiences of their families to reveal the ways in which responsibilities for test performance move from teacher to family, reconstructing children’s primary skills as individualistic test-takers.

In a consideration of long-term French Language teacher retention in Canada, Mimi Masson, Alaa Azan and Amanda Battistuzzi investigate the connections between teacher preparation models and their proposed necessity to develop teacher identities through a social justice lens. Their concern is for the ongoing construction of a critical intercultural competence in relation to the connection of teacher self-identity and language-learning, leading in time to an enhanced sense of well-being.

Also interested in cultural competence, Artëm Ingmar Benediktsson reports on a Danish study that explores the ways in which teacher educators’ endeavours to enhance students’ cultural competence emphasize a need for systemic changes that will enable a shift to a more critical multicultural approach. Benediktsson argues for greater institutional accountability in augmenting a cultural competence that moves beyond fixed stereotypes and generalizations, and toward creating space for critical discussion. According to this author, an emphasis on togetherness will foster a sense of community and unity amidst diversity. In alignment with other papers in this issue, Benediktsson challenges discriminatory discourses and a reliance on monocultural orientations that ignore social justice and equity.

Stavros Georgios Stavrou and M. Shaun Murphy write from Treaty 6 territory in Saskatchewan. Using a narrative inquiry approach, they investigate teachers’ understandings of Indigenizing elementary school mathematics. While acknowledging the plurality of ways that Indigenization is taken up, they articulate their own interpretation as a specific contextual process which is a Cree Indigenization.  Ethical relationality is key to their place-based education (PBE) perspective. The authors emphasize the importance of human relationship to place by bringing historical, social, and cultural realities to the fore.  Difficulties and successes regarding PBE and its connection to Indigenization and school mathematics are discussed in relation to the Cree identities of the teachers in this research project.

Challenging the absence of care and compassion in the fast-paced world of academia and post-secondary institutions, María J. Pighini draws on a feminist ethics of care and a pedagogy of listening to argue for a compassionate approach to working with graduate education students. In her essay contribution, Pighini explains this approach as an act of resistance. Beginning with challenging the early exclusionary stages of application and selection processes and then moving into addressing the vulnerabilities of student detachment from communities and structures that have nurtured them to this point, the author offers insight into the benefits of relational principles of care that involve active listening, walking alongside students, and the creation of cohorts to support feelings of belonging, rather than loneliness.

Finally, to close out this issue in a manner that bookends the opening of the issue with Falkenberg and Heringer’s article, Heather Phipps contributes a book review of Thomas Falkenberg’s 2024 edited collection, Well-Being and Well-Becoming in Schools, published by University of Toronto Press. Phipps shares how this edited book argues for the heart of education to be the flourishing and holistic well-being of all learners and educators. The book contributors draw from a variety of theoretical perspectives, both Indigenous and Western, to connect well-being and well-becoming to social and ecological justice for all.

Acknowledgements

We thank PhD student Nadiya Ekhteraeetoussi for her thoughtful and energetic copyediting work with this journal during the 2023/2024 season. We wish her much success as she continues her studies in the PhD program at the University of Regina.

We also extend deep appreciation to all those who served as peer reviewers for the articles in this issue, several of whom work within our own Faculty of Education. These scholars stepped forward to review and re-review on often very short timelines. They, along with the authors in this issue, demonstrated support and forbearance during our transition into this role as editors-in-chief. Since the journal experienced an extended period of time in 2023 without an editor-in-chief, several manuscripts have been in the journal system for well over a year. Yet, as one author shared, they were happy to wait with patience for the opportunity to publish in this well-respected Canadian education journal. We extend our sincere thanks to everyone involved for their support and patience!