Janice Aurini
Biographic Data
| ID | 300160 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Janice Aurini |
| GIVEN NAMES | Janice |
| FAMILY NAME | Aurini |
| SIGNATURE | AURINI J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Waterloo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4279-9813 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Barriers to Articulation: Resource Dependencies, Networks and Status Dynamics
Who owns your consent? How REBs give away participants’ agency
We draw on three illustrative vignettes to examine how REBs manage participants’ agency in the context of qualitative research. We ask: Who owns a participant’s consent? Central to informed consent is the principle of Respect for Persons , which privileges the autonomy of individuals to make decisions about what happens (or not) to them. Yet, REBs sometimes require researchers to get permission from organizations to conduct research on their curr…
The Micro-Foundations of Predictable Stability: How Multigenerational Achievement Informs Upper-Middle-Class Parenting
Using Robotics to Support the Acquisition of STEM and 21st-Century Competencies: Promising (and Practical) Directions
To enhance how educators use robotics to support the development of STEM and 21st century competencies, we report findings from focus groups and interviews with 133 elementary teachers and 46 elementary students, 19 video-recorded classroom observations, and a teacher survey from Ontario, Canada. We find that teachers use robotics in a variety of ways to support the development of cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal skills. Despite the po…
Reproducing or Reducing Inequality? The Case of Summer Learning Programs
Can summer programs, as remedial supplements to regular schooling, extend learning opportunities and other benefits to disadvantaged students? To frame this question, we compare logics from “social reproduction” and “partial compensation” perspectives, and then apply them to a large mixed method study of four kinds of summer programs in Ontario. Drawing on quantitative data on over 10,000 students and qualitative data from interviews with over 20…
Covid‐19 school closures and educational achievement gaps in Canada: Lessons from Ontario summer learning research
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic closed most Canadian public schools for six consecutive months between March and September. This paper explores possible impacts of that closure on student achievement. Longstanding research suggests that lengthy periods of time out of school generally create losses of literacy and numeracy skills and widen student achievement gaps. New American studies have attributed sizeable learning losses to the COVID-19 closures. …
Educational Status Hierarchies, After-School Activities, and Parenting Logics: Lessons from Canada
This article draws from American research on ''concerted cultivation'' to compare the parenting logics of 41 upper-middle-class parents in Toronto, Canada. We consider not only how parents structure their children's after-school time (what parents do) but also how the broader ecology of schooling informs their parenting logics (how they rationalize their actions). We find that parenting practices mirror American research. Upper-middle-class famil…
It’s Not Just Helping Your Kid with Homework Anymore”: The Challenges of Aligning Education Policy with Parents and Teachers
Education policy is intended to be adopted by stakeholders, yet high-level policies may not reflect reality at home or school. This article draws on interviews with 127 teachers and parents of children in Grades 1–3 to examine the degree to which they align with Ontario’s Ministry of Education parent engagement policy. We demonstrate how perceptions of parent engagement differ by role (teacher and parent), priorities (universalistic vs. particula…
What role does the 'parent-effect' play in child centered research? The case of photo-interviews of children's home reading practices
Drawing on a photo-interview study of home reading practices with 35 children (ages 5-8) we examine how the 'parent-effect' influences research with young children. Not surprisingly, we find that parents influence reading practices and access to literacy resources. However, it is also clear that children's reliance on parents affects data collection. Children who have more help from parents produce better photographs and a clearer narrative about…
Les effets des programmes d’été de littératie: Les théories sur les opportunités d’apprentissage et les élèves « non traditionnels » dans les écoles de langue française en Ontario
Selon des études américaines et réalisées au Canada anglais, les écarts au chapitre du rendement scolaire se creusent durant la période des vacances estivales lorsque les élèves ne fréquentent pas l’école. Néanmoins, les interventions scolaires en littératie peuvent réduire ces écarts. Le présent article présente les résultats d’une étude quasi expérimentale, effectuée dans huit conseils scolaires de district de langue française en Ontario, auprè…
Schools, Cultural Mobility, and Social Reproduction: The Case of Progressive Discipline
Drawing on a case study of Progressive Discipline (PD), this paper asks: How does greater discretion, flexibility and parent involvement affect the application of school policy? What are the consequences of these conditions? PD is part of a suite of changes that caters to students’ individualized academic and social needs while formalizing increased parent involvement. Drawing on forty-four interviews with school staff members, we find that PD ha…
Schools, Cultural Mobility and Social Reproduction: The Case of Progressive Discipline
Summer Learning Inequality in Ontario
Education policy should be informed by research that distinguishes school-based learning from learning that occurs during non-school time. American studies find that socio-economic disparities in learning tend to widen over the summer months, the longest continuous stretch of non-school time. This paper analyzes the first large-scale Canadian study of summer learning. We collected data on literacy growth for a non-random sample of 1,376 Ontario c…
Patterns of Tight and Loose Coupling in a Competitive Marketplace: The Case of Learning Center Franchises
The concept of coupling-the relationship between the environment, administrative goals, and instructional practices of education organizations-is a staple in New Institutional research. Yet processes of coupling have remained elusive. Drawing on ethnographic research of the ''Ontario Learning Center'' (OLC) franchise, along with interviews of franchise owners and representatives, this article examines an ideal-type, tightly coupled organization. …
Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School
P rivilege takes us into the world of St. Paul's, an exclusive boarding school, to examine the new American elite.In this well written ethnography, Khan returns to his alma mater as a teacher and researcher and discovers a transformed institution.Gone are the minority student dorms and (overt) expressions of old money and connections.In its place, the school prides itself on its racial diversity, the inclusion of women, and scholarships that allo…
Exploring School Choice in Canada: Who Chooses What and Why
A variety of policies fall under the banner of “school choice,” each aiming to facilitate educational options beyond a standard public school. This paper pursues three empirical questions. First, at what rates do Canadian parents choose various school options and engage in different forms of choosing? Second, what demographics predict these choices? Third, what educational attitudes and behaviours predict choosing? Data come from a 2005 national …
Does Market Competition Encourage Strategic Action in the Private Education Sector
This article examines whether market forces encourage private education entrepreneurs to strategically outsmart the competition in ways that improve the quality of their programs or service delivery. Based on interviews with eighty private education entrepreneurs, we find that market competition does not inform how they understand their role in the wider education sector or how they made sense of their actions. Instead entrepreneurs tie their pro…
Peter Demerath, Producing Success: The Culture of Personal Advancement in an American High School
Crafting Legitimation Projects: An Institutional Analysis of Private Education Businesses
Institutional analyses of education systems typically assume that they secure legitimation through a process of almost unproblematic adoption of standard templates. A qualitative analysis of two forms of private education businesses reveals, however, that they routinely shed some of the most sacred schooling scripts. Despite this, these businesses are flourishing. This analysis finds that education organizations can actively craft a "legitimation…
Choice without markets: Homeschooling in the context of private education
Homeschooling is enjoying new‐found acceptance in North America. Drawing on a variety of secondary sources and our own data from Ontario, Canada, we find that homeschooling is growing steadily, and is becoming an increasingly legitimated form of education. To understand these changes, we review prevailing sociological explanations that focus on the rise of neo‐liberal ideology, and pressures of class reproduction and human capital requirements. W…
Educational Entrepreneurialism in the Private Tutoring Industry: Balancing Profitability with the Humanistic Face of Schooling
S'appuyant sur une étude de deux ans sur les entrepreneurs en tutorat privé en Ontario, cet article se penche sur la légitimité croissante de l'entrepreneurialisme éducatif. Cette légitimité transforme la nature de l'éducation en préconisant des solutions commerciales aux « problèmes »éducatifs et la croyance que la compétition et la débureaucratisation encouragent la responsabilité, l'efficacité et la réceptivité du client. L'industrie du tutora…
The Transformation of Private Tutoring: Education in a Franchise Form
Janice Aurini, Scott Davies, The Transformation of Private Tutoring: Education in a Franchise Form, The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Summer, 2004), pp. 419-438
Choice without markets: Homeschooling in the context of private education
Homeschooling is enjoying new‐found acceptance in North America. Drawing on a variety of secondary sources and our own data from Ontario, Canada, we find that homeschooling is growing steadily, and is becoming an increasingly legitimated form of education. To understand these changes, we review prevailing sociological explanations that focus on the rise of neo‐liberal ideology, and pressures of class reproduction and human capital requirements. W…
Crafting Legitimation Projects: An Institutional Analysis of Private Education Businesses
Institutional analyses of education systems typically assume that they secure legitimation through a process of almost unproblematic adoption of standard templates. A qualitative analysis of two forms of private education businesses reveals, however, that they routinely shed some of the most sacred schooling scripts. Despite this, these businesses are flourishing. This analysis finds that education organizations can actively craft a "legitimation…
Exploring School Choice in Canada: Who Chooses What and Why
A variety of policies fall under the banner of “school choice,” each aiming to facilitate educational options beyond a standard public school. This paper pursues three empirical questions. First, at what rates do Canadian parents choose various school options and engage in different forms of choosing? Second, what demographics predict these choices? Third, what educational attitudes and behaviours predict choosing? Data come from a 2005 national …
Patterns of Tight and Loose Coupling in a Competitive Marketplace: The Case of Learning Center Franchises
The concept of coupling-the relationship between the environment, administrative goals, and instructional practices of education organizations-is a staple in New Institutional research. Yet processes of coupling have remained elusive. Drawing on ethnographic research of the ''Ontario Learning Center'' (OLC) franchise, along with interviews of franchise owners and representatives, this article examines an ideal-type, tightly coupled organization. …
Educational Entrepreneurialism in the Private Tutoring Industry: Balancing Profitability with the Humanistic Face of Schooling
S'appuyant sur une étude de deux ans sur les entrepreneurs en tutorat privé en Ontario, cet article se penche sur la légitimité croissante de l'entrepreneurialisme éducatif. Cette légitimité transforme la nature de l'éducation en préconisant des solutions commerciales aux « problèmes »éducatifs et la croyance que la compétition et la débureaucratisation encouragent la responsabilité, l'efficacité et la réceptivité du client. L'industrie du tutora…
Educational Status Hierarchies, After-School Activities, and Parenting Logics: Lessons from Canada
This article draws from American research on ''concerted cultivation'' to compare the parenting logics of 41 upper-middle-class parents in Toronto, Canada. We consider not only how parents structure their children's after-school time (what parents do) but also how the broader ecology of schooling informs their parenting logics (how they rationalize their actions). We find that parenting practices mirror American research. Upper-middle-class famil…
Summer Learning Inequality in Ontario
Education policy should be informed by research that distinguishes school-based learning from learning that occurs during non-school time. American studies find that socio-economic disparities in learning tend to widen over the summer months, the longest continuous stretch of non-school time. This paper analyzes the first large-scale Canadian study of summer learning. We collected data on literacy growth for a non-random sample of 1,376 Ontario c…
The Micro-Foundations of Predictable Stability: How Multigenerational Achievement Informs Upper-Middle-Class Parenting
Covid‐19 school closures and educational achievement gaps in Canada: Lessons from Ontario summer learning research
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic closed most Canadian public schools for six consecutive months between March and September. This paper explores possible impacts of that closure on student achievement. Longstanding research suggests that lengthy periods of time out of school generally create losses of literacy and numeracy skills and widen student achievement gaps. New American studies have attributed sizeable learning losses to the COVID-19 closures. …
Schools, Cultural Mobility and Social Reproduction: The Case of Progressive Discipline
What role does the 'parent-effect' play in child centered research? The case of photo-interviews of children's home reading practices
Drawing on a photo-interview study of home reading practices with 35 children (ages 5-8) we examine how the 'parent-effect' influences research with young children. Not surprisingly, we find that parents influence reading practices and access to literacy resources. However, it is also clear that children's reliance on parents affects data collection. Children who have more help from parents produce better photographs and a clearer narrative about…
The Transformation of Private Tutoring: Education in a Franchise Form
Janice Aurini, Scott Davies, The Transformation of Private Tutoring: Education in a Franchise Form, The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Summer, 2004), pp. 419-438
Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School
P rivilege takes us into the world of St. Paul's, an exclusive boarding school, to examine the new American elite.In this well written ethnography, Khan returns to his alma mater as a teacher and researcher and discovers a transformed institution.Gone are the minority student dorms and (overt) expressions of old money and connections.In its place, the school prides itself on its racial diversity, the inclusion of women, and scholarships that allo…
Does Market Competition Encourage Strategic Action in the Private Education Sector
This article examines whether market forces encourage private education entrepreneurs to strategically outsmart the competition in ways that improve the quality of their programs or service delivery. Based on interviews with eighty private education entrepreneurs, we find that market competition does not inform how they understand their role in the wider education sector or how they made sense of their actions. Instead entrepreneurs tie their pro…
Educational Entrepreneurialism in the Private Tutoring Industry: Balancing Profitability with the Humanistic Face of Schooling
S'appuyant sur une étude de deux ans sur les entrepreneurs en tutorat privé en Ontario, cet article se penche sur la légitimité croissante de l'entrepreneurialisme éducatif. Cette légitimité transforme la nature de l'éducation en préconisant des solutions commerciales aux « problèmes »éducatifs et la croyance que la compétition et la débureaucratisation encouragent la responsabilité, l'efficacité et la réceptivité du client. L'industrie du tutora…
The Transformation of Private Tutoring: Education in a Franchise Form
Janice Aurini, Scott Davies, The Transformation of Private Tutoring: Education in a Franchise Form, The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Summer, 2004), pp. 419-438
Choice without markets: Homeschooling in the context of private education
Homeschooling is enjoying new‐found acceptance in North America. Drawing on a variety of secondary sources and our own data from Ontario, Canada, we find that homeschooling is growing steadily, and is becoming an increasingly legitimated form of education. To understand these changes, we review prevailing sociological explanations that focus on the rise of neo‐liberal ideology, and pressures of class reproduction and human capital requirements. W…
Crafting Legitimation Projects: An Institutional Analysis of Private Education Businesses
Institutional analyses of education systems typically assume that they secure legitimation through a process of almost unproblematic adoption of standard templates. A qualitative analysis of two forms of private education businesses reveals, however, that they routinely shed some of the most sacred schooling scripts. Despite this, these businesses are flourishing. This analysis finds that education organizations can actively craft a "legitimation…
Does Market Competition Encourage Strategic Action in the Private Education Sector
This article examines whether market forces encourage private education entrepreneurs to strategically outsmart the competition in ways that improve the quality of their programs or service delivery. Based on interviews with eighty private education entrepreneurs, we find that market competition does not inform how they understand their role in the wider education sector or how they made sense of their actions. Instead entrepreneurs tie their pro…
Peter Demerath, Producing Success: The Culture of Personal Advancement in an American High School
Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School
P rivilege takes us into the world of St. Paul's, an exclusive boarding school, to examine the new American elite.In this well written ethnography, Khan returns to his alma mater as a teacher and researcher and discovers a transformed institution.Gone are the minority student dorms and (overt) expressions of old money and connections.In its place, the school prides itself on its racial diversity, the inclusion of women, and scholarships that allo…
Exploring School Choice in Canada: Who Chooses What and Why
A variety of policies fall under the banner of “school choice,” each aiming to facilitate educational options beyond a standard public school. This paper pursues three empirical questions. First, at what rates do Canadian parents choose various school options and engage in different forms of choosing? Second, what demographics predict these choices? Third, what educational attitudes and behaviours predict choosing? Data come from a 2005 national …
Patterns of Tight and Loose Coupling in a Competitive Marketplace: The Case of Learning Center Franchises
The concept of coupling-the relationship between the environment, administrative goals, and instructional practices of education organizations-is a staple in New Institutional research. Yet processes of coupling have remained elusive. Drawing on ethnographic research of the ''Ontario Learning Center'' (OLC) franchise, along with interviews of franchise owners and representatives, this article examines an ideal-type, tightly coupled organization. …
Summer Learning Inequality in Ontario
Education policy should be informed by research that distinguishes school-based learning from learning that occurs during non-school time. American studies find that socio-economic disparities in learning tend to widen over the summer months, the longest continuous stretch of non-school time. This paper analyzes the first large-scale Canadian study of summer learning. We collected data on literacy growth for a non-random sample of 1,376 Ontario c…
Les effets des programmes d’été de littératie: Les théories sur les opportunités d’apprentissage et les élèves « non traditionnels » dans les écoles de langue française en Ontario
Selon des études américaines et réalisées au Canada anglais, les écarts au chapitre du rendement scolaire se creusent durant la période des vacances estivales lorsque les élèves ne fréquentent pas l’école. Néanmoins, les interventions scolaires en littératie peuvent réduire ces écarts. Le présent article présente les résultats d’une étude quasi expérimentale, effectuée dans huit conseils scolaires de district de langue française en Ontario, auprè…
Schools, Cultural Mobility, and Social Reproduction: The Case of Progressive Discipline
Drawing on a case study of Progressive Discipline (PD), this paper asks: How does greater discretion, flexibility and parent involvement affect the application of school policy? What are the consequences of these conditions? PD is part of a suite of changes that caters to students’ individualized academic and social needs while formalizing increased parent involvement. Drawing on forty-four interviews with school staff members, we find that PD ha…
Schools, Cultural Mobility and Social Reproduction: The Case of Progressive Discipline
What role does the 'parent-effect' play in child centered research? The case of photo-interviews of children's home reading practices
Drawing on a photo-interview study of home reading practices with 35 children (ages 5-8) we examine how the 'parent-effect' influences research with young children. Not surprisingly, we find that parents influence reading practices and access to literacy resources. However, it is also clear that children's reliance on parents affects data collection. Children who have more help from parents produce better photographs and a clearer narrative about…
It’s Not Just Helping Your Kid with Homework Anymore”: The Challenges of Aligning Education Policy with Parents and Teachers
Education policy is intended to be adopted by stakeholders, yet high-level policies may not reflect reality at home or school. This article draws on interviews with 127 teachers and parents of children in Grades 1–3 to examine the degree to which they align with Ontario’s Ministry of Education parent engagement policy. We demonstrate how perceptions of parent engagement differ by role (teacher and parent), priorities (universalistic vs. particula…
Educational Status Hierarchies, After-School Activities, and Parenting Logics: Lessons from Canada
This article draws from American research on ''concerted cultivation'' to compare the parenting logics of 41 upper-middle-class parents in Toronto, Canada. We consider not only how parents structure their children's after-school time (what parents do) but also how the broader ecology of schooling informs their parenting logics (how they rationalize their actions). We find that parenting practices mirror American research. Upper-middle-class famil…
Covid‐19 school closures and educational achievement gaps in Canada: Lessons from Ontario summer learning research
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic closed most Canadian public schools for six consecutive months between March and September. This paper explores possible impacts of that closure on student achievement. Longstanding research suggests that lengthy periods of time out of school generally create losses of literacy and numeracy skills and widen student achievement gaps. New American studies have attributed sizeable learning losses to the COVID-19 closures. …
Using Robotics to Support the Acquisition of STEM and 21st-Century Competencies: Promising (and Practical) Directions
To enhance how educators use robotics to support the development of STEM and 21st century competencies, we report findings from focus groups and interviews with 133 elementary teachers and 46 elementary students, 19 video-recorded classroom observations, and a teacher survey from Ontario, Canada. We find that teachers use robotics in a variety of ways to support the development of cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal skills. Despite the po…
Reproducing or Reducing Inequality? The Case of Summer Learning Programs
Can summer programs, as remedial supplements to regular schooling, extend learning opportunities and other benefits to disadvantaged students? To frame this question, we compare logics from “social reproduction” and “partial compensation” perspectives, and then apply them to a large mixed method study of four kinds of summer programs in Ontario. Drawing on quantitative data on over 10,000 students and qualitative data from interviews with over 20…
Who owns your consent? How REBs give away participants’ agency
We draw on three illustrative vignettes to examine how REBs manage participants’ agency in the context of qualitative research. We ask: Who owns a participant’s consent? Central to informed consent is the principle of Respect for Persons , which privileges the autonomy of individuals to make decisions about what happens (or not) to them. Yet, REBs sometimes require researchers to get permission from organizations to conduct research on their curr…
The Micro-Foundations of Predictable Stability: How Multigenerational Achievement Informs Upper-Middle-Class Parenting
Barriers to Articulation: Resource Dependencies, Networks and Status Dynamics
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Law (8 works) · Pedagogy (8 works) · Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities (7 works) · Social science (7 works) · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Public relations (5 works)