Discourse and Difference: An Initial Examination of Aboriginal Education Policy in Ontario
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Ontario Ministry of Education's (OME) attention to Aboriginal education policy has aimed to, among other objectives, create capacity for teachers, principals, and school boards to address Aboriginal students' needs and learning styles in publicly-funded schools.The 2007 Ontario First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework (the Framework) identified Aboriginal student achievement (including closing the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal student achievement) among the primary objectives.The priorities outlined by the OME policy initiatives are certainly well-intentioned.My research has sought to interrogate the implications of the discourse across various policies related to Aboriginal education, including the critical and interpretive perspectives that emerge in these documents (Cherubini, 2010;2012; 2016).This note is an extension of the aforementioned policy studies and details a research-inprogress concerning the front matter of a more recent 2014 OME publication, Implementation Plan: Ontario First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework (the Plan).It entails an examination of the discursive frameworks in the document that, first, situates Aboriginal students in a position of difference, and second, that imply a level of responsiveness on behalf of the OME that is subject to further consideration.To proceed with their self-declared commitment to Aboriginal education, the statement on the first page of the Plan document indicates that "the ministry continues to advance the goals [of the 2007 Framework] through meaningful collaboration" with Aboriginal partners (2014, p.3).The declaration is positioned on the top of the page and is printed in a larger font and different type-set than the rest of the print matter throughout the document.Moreover, it is graphically represented so that it dominates the overarching OME vision statement for Aboriginal students in provincial schools directly below.The statement includes the same purposeful language that is consistently employed throughout the front matter of the document.Specifically, the statement alludes to the fact that the OME "continues to advance" the objectives of the 2007 policy Framework and hence, underscores the sustainability of their commitment to these goals.The language of 'advancing' implies that previous OME policy initiatives have been successful and are deserving of further commitment.In addition, by including "the meaningful collaboration" with First Nation, Métis, and Inuit partners in the scope of 'continuing to advance' previous policy directives, the language gives the strong impression that these partners have been key stakeholders in an inclusive and accommodating process of policy creation and implementation.This initial statement, that by its position on the first page of the document
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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 | 0.010 | 0.027 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.046 | 0.020 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 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".