Geographies of Online Education in Ontario during COVID-19: A Critical Policy Analysis

Keywords: geographies of education, critical policy analysis, K-12 education, online learning, COVID-19
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 78

Abstract

In this presentation, I offer findings from a study conducted with Dr. Sue Winton on Ontario secondary school teachers’ policy enactment during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research was critically-oriented and showed how discretion and decision-making was impacted by contextual factors, of which my focus here is geography. Within the context of neoliberal educational reforms, I describe the evolution of online education in Ontario preceding and during COVID-19 as well as proposals to make full-time remote learning a permanent feature of public schooling. Through critical policy analysis, I explore the contradictions between popular discourse that positions online education as an option that will liberate students from the time and space of traditional schooling, and a reality in which digital and physical infrastructures, and the geographic distribution of resources and privilege intensify educational inequality. Drawing from data collected through a series of three 1-hour long focus groups with a total of 31 teachers, I highlight the stake of local scale in enacting policy directives from Ontario’s Ministry of education and school boards as the crisis evolved as well as its constitution as a site of relations, across which provincial, national, and international scales correspond. Finally, I consider the future of public education under disaster capitalism, in which reform orients the public toward profit and democracy toward economic markets.