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

• Published in: Educational policy (Los Altos, Calif.) Vol. 38; no. 7; pp. 1676 - 1712
• Main Authors: Farhadi, Beyhan, Winton, Sue
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• 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
• DOI: 10.1177/08959048241267953
• ISSN: 0895-9048

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.