E-Learning for the Public Good? The Policy Trajectory of Online Education in Ontario, Canada

Our critical historiography of e-learning policy in Ontario, Canada, traces the policy’s trajectory through three settlements (2006-2022) and shows how successive governments have mobilized neoliberal discourses of personalization, access, and choice to justify new arrangements with private actors,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEducational policy (Los Altos, Calif.) Vol. 38; no. 7; pp. 1676 - 1712
Main Authors Farhadi, Beyhan, Winton, Sue
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.11.2024
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
CAI
Commodification
Computer assisted instruction
Discourse analysis
Distance Education
Distance learning
Education history
Electronic Learning
Government spending
Historiography
Inequality
Interdependence
Internet
Learning
Marginality
Neoliberalism
News media
Online instruction
Poverty
Private schools
Privatization
Public schools
Social processes
Canada
Ontario Canada
policy historiography
educational policy
e-learning
education privatization
policy settlement
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Summary:Our critical historiography of e-learning policy in Ontario, Canada, traces the policy’s trajectory through three settlements (2006-2022) and shows how successive governments have mobilized neoliberal discourses of personalization, access, and choice to justify new arrangements with private actors, within a broader sociopolitical context that includes increased privatization and commodification of public institutions, cuts to public spending, and imagines individuals as rational subjects driven to maximize their economic potential. This context exacerbates challenges students marginalized by schooling already face. Findings from our critical discourse analyses of government documents and news media reports also demonstrate that online learning in Ontario is neither personalized nor customizable but instead is centralized, standardized and, by design, operates independent of rather than interdependent with community. Further, our findings highlight the interdependence of schools – online and in-person – with social processes that create and perpetuate inequality, including gendered and racialized poverty, locally and abroad.
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ISSN:0895-9048
1552-3896
DOI:10.1177/08959048241267953