Schoolteachers' Freedom of Expression : mapping the legal terrain in Canada and the policy debate in Brazil
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The paper examines the scope of freedom of expression for schoolteachers in publicly funded non-denominational schools in Canada, as a frame to reflect upon a policy debate in Brazil. In that country a vocal movement – School without Party – pushes for legislation to counter alleged practices of teacher indoctrination. Building upon the discussion of principles derived from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, legal precepts embedded in Canadian provincial legislation, and broad normative expectations on teachers’ role and position in Canadian society, selected case law is explored and four dimensions related to the issue are sketched: 1) the extended sites of control for teachers’ expression due to their professional identity; 2) the interdiction to engage in discriminatory or hate speech, which cause harm; 3) the value attached to cognitive dissonance and the space given to addressing sensitive topics in curricular speech and classroom materials; and 4) the possibilities for teacher engagement, on school property or during work hours, in political advocacy in the education field, especially when it involves reproach of government policy. The analysis concludes that the binomial of trust/responsibility seems to guide the interpretation of teachers’ freedom of expression in Canada, in stark contrast with the premises and practices adopted by School without Party in Brazil. Recognizing the value of debating parameters for teachers’ expression, the paper argues for an approach based on constructive dialogue and responsible teaching, grounded in the Brazilian constitutional principles and the broad notion of preventing harm, instead of the problematic assumptions and tactics embraced by School without Party.
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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 | 0.007 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.032 | 0.022 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".