Curriculum Reform in Ontario: ‘Common Sense' Policy Processes and Democratic Possibilities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This book explores Ontario's overhaul of the secondary school curriculum, as executed under Premier Harris.The reforms comprised part of a larger policy shift branded by Harris' government as the Common Sense Revolution.In this case study, Laura Pinto analyses and critiques curriculum policy production using historical documents and interviews with policy actors, and particularly focuses on how closely the process succeeded or failed to reflect the ideals of a critical democracy.Three key themes emerge: the importance of a critical-democratic framework (Chapters 1, 8, and 9), the difficulties associated with neoliberal and neoconservative methods of policymaking (Chapters 3, 4, and 7), and the impact of neoliberal and neoconservative approaches on power structures and civic engagement (Chapters 5 and 6).This investigation has useful applications for anyone involved in developing educational policy.Much of the discussion centres, not on the particularities of developing curriculum, but on the characteristics of and strategies for achieving a critical-democratic policy formulation process.Following a Preface, the book is divided into nine chapters.In the Preface, Pinto provides a brief overview of the book's key points and organisational structure, as well as her methodology and rationale.The last section of the book includes a brief timeline of policy formulation events, which are usefully broken down into ten phases, notes from each chapter, a comprehensive list of references, and an index of key terms.One of the most powerful aspects of this book is Pinto's deft use of a critical-democratic framework to highlight some of the missteps of the Conservatives, and to present some of the policy-related issues that arise out of a neoliberal preoccupation with efficiency and speed.For Pinto, a critical democracy is characterised by personal agency: a lived set of democratic values that echo the work of John Dewey and Paolo Freire.She describes critical democracy as a framework that prioritises agonistic debate, time, inclusion of voices from marginalised groups, and a focus on issues of social justice.Pinto sets the stage for the analysis in the first two chapters, which nicely contrast the principles and values of critical democracy with those values embodied by a neoliberal and neoconservative approach.In Chapter 1, she sets the backdrop for democracy that is entrenched in the process of curriculum formation, and not simply in the curriculum.The counterpoint to the criticaldemocratic process is found in Chapter 2, which traces the path of the Common Sense Revolution as it unfolded across Ontario in all areas of policy reform.In an organised, at-a-glance chart (p.29-33), Pinto gives an overview of the promises made by the government, a list of how these
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".