Glossary of Terms
Academic Integrity: the commitment of the educator and student regarding academic honesty through teaching, learning, and assessing
Adhocracy: a malleable organization that is free of official policies, procedures, formalities, and is open to change
Andragogy: the art and science of adult education
Assessment: the process of gathering information about students’ learning in order to understand their competencies and their achievement of the learning outcomes
Authentic Assessment: customized, constructive, workable assessments that involve teacher-student interactions
Authentic Education: an experiential form of learning that transcends the scope of the traditional method, and proceeds at an individualized pace
Bloom’s Taxonomy: Named after Benjamin Bloom, this taxonomy uses a set of three, hierarchical levels: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor, and is one of the most recognized learning theories in the field of education
Cognitive Apprenticeship: the use of coaching with authentic teaching practices and activities
Competing Values Framework (CVF): a check/balance structure that helps to gain insight into self-awareness in an organization
Conation: the willingness to carry out a task or activity
Conceptual Metaphor: an imaginative view that uses rhetorical tools to develop an understanding of the nature of meaning, truth, logic, rationality, and objectivity
Constructive Alignment: a method of organizing learning outcomes, tasks, activities, and assessments in a systematic way that connects units to the overall content of the course
Constructivism: the theory that knowledge is constructed from perceptions about our society, leading to mutually agreed-upon conventions
Critical Literacy: the process of finding reliable sources, trustworthy data, and creating sound arguments
Critical Pedagogy: a politically-conscious method of teaching and learning that focuses on power, oppression, social justice, and democracy
Critical Thinking: the ability to form a skeptical and unbiased analysis by providing factual and empirical evidence that advances knowledge and learning
Critical Writing: the ability to analyze a topic or a potential issue, observe its strengths and weaknesses, and find potential solutions and alternatives for additional analysis
Curriculum: the course of learning experiences that are planned with specific goals and learning outcomes in a school setting
Democratic Education: the pedagogical aims and learning objectives that are rooted in freedom, values, and trust
Democratic Moral Development: moral learning acquired throughout life, supported by freedom and autonomy
Descriptive Writing: words that involve dates, locations, minor statistics, and a summary of events
Didactic Education: a teaching method where the teacher provides instruction to students, and students are mostly passive learners
Diverse Strategies: wide-ranging pedagogical approaches that encompass a broad range of competencies
Educational Internationalization: teaching and learning that is focused on international cultures, with the goal of creating globalized understanding
Educational Ethics: analyzing and conceptualizing moral behaviour through pedagogical determinants
Educational/Innovation System: interdisciplinary goals that are developed from a framework of sociological, psychological, technological, and physical systems networks (attributed to Julie Thompson Klein)
Epistemology: the rationalization and justification of knowledge, considering all factors of education, life, and society
Ethical Interdisciplinarity: the process of ensuring knowledgeable connections for learning that meet the needs of the greater good on a large scale
Experiential Learning: the acquisition and reflection of knowledge through real-life and real-world experiences
Extrinsic Factors: the environmental factors that can motivate or influence individuals
Feedback: constructive communication for the benefit of both the student and the educator; regarded as a key for learning and achieving learning outcomes
Feminist Pedagogy: a theory about the teaching and learning process that empowers educators and students to act responsibly toward one another and the subject matter, and to apply that learning to social action
Flipped Teaching: the educational theory of assessment that lays the groundwork for doing the homework in the classroom and the classwork at home
Foundational Learning: the necessary prerequisites to fully participate in society, relationships, and employment
Genetic Epistemology: learning is acquired at a young age through action and assimilation, which shapes learning throughout life
Goals: effective steps for the learner that are rational and achievable in order to effectively meet expectations
Holism-Pluralism-Action Orientation (HPAO): the coherent vision for students’ competencies with actionable and integrated teaching
Hybrid Learning: the combination of in-person and technology-based education that accommodates learners with more flexibility for scheduling and time-management
Indigenization: the braiding of pedagogies and ways of knowing between western and Indigenous learning tools that complement each other
Indigenous Epistemology: the justification of knowledge and how knowledge is formed within an Indigenous context; focuses on relationships, sacredness, stories, histories, philosophies, and ceremonies
Indigenous Pedagogy: a teaching method that connects Aboriginal stories as a guide towards knowledge, relying on nature and a broad, holistic interconnectedness
Industrialized Education: education based on the industrial revolution and pedagogical principles akin to factory work
Instructional Paradigms: the teaching methods of one instructor and one classroom, where the learning is cumulative and linear
Interconnected Moral Development: acts of good and bad are only perceivable and not based on a prior (reasoning based on self-evident truths) response
Interdisciplinarity: multiple, academic disciplines that are consolidated into one idea, objective, or task
Intrinsic Factors: those that are derived from an individual’s cognitive or biological factors
Leadership: a social relationship with the express consent of reaching and attaining certain goals within an organization
Learning Community: a group of people who meet regularly and share common academic goals and attitudes
Learning Organization: any organization that fosters growth through learning in an ongoing manner
Learning Paradigm: the active participation of students in their own learning
Liberal and Scientific Epistemology: the advancement of learning through actions to create merit, and through merit to create action
Lifelong Learning: ongoing, autonomous, self-motivated learning that is both personal and professional (see OECD goals for lifelong learning)
Management: the planning, organizing, and directing of activities within an organization, using resources to obtain goals
Mastery Learning: an empirical scale achieving knowledge and conditioning within a normal distribution
Meaningful Learning: learning that results in information being completely understood that makes use of active, constructive, cumulative, self-regulated, and goal-oriented teaching
Metaphor: an expression, word, or image that is used in place of another expression, word, or image, suggesting a likeness or analogy
Moral Development: a structure of moral reasoning throughout life, from punishment and obedience at the early stages, to conventional morality and authority in the latter stages, following a divergent design
Motivation: a person’s willingness to attain goals or carry out a task
Normative Ethics: the field of morals of how one ought and should act regarding the ethical principles of justice, utilitarianism, duty/obligation, and human rights
Ontario First Nations, Métis , and Inuit (OFNMI) Education Policy Framework: educational policies that enhance the knowledge, skills, and confidence FNMI students need to successfully complete their elementary and secondary education in order to pursue post-secondary education or training and/or to enter the workforce
Operant Conditioning: a learning method that employs rewards and punishments for behaviour
Organizational Complexity: the number of various departments, tiers, and resources of an organization
Organizational Culture: the philosophical, administrative, and stylistic characteristics of a learning organization
Organizational Learning: building learning competencies through organizational and administrative philosophy
Pedagogy: derived from the Greek words of ‘paidos,’ meaning child or boy. and ‘agogos,’ meaning leader; the leading of the child to knowledge
Postmodern Pedagogy: a theory of learning that focuses on a rejection of classical and societal pedagogical norms, and focuses on individual differences in learning
Post-Secondary Education: education after high school that offers diploma, certificate, and degree programs through theoretical and applied foundations
Powerful Learning: a set of principles guiding educators to design learning experiences that evoke learners’ active construction of knowledge
Rational Pedagogy: a teaching approach that focuses on clear communication of academic content
Reflective Practice: learning that is self-aware and tends to focus on actionable reflection and construction for mastery
Rubric: A table of expectations and requirements for each marking range and learning category, written in descriptive language
Scientific Method of Teaching: education that is modeled after a scientific inquiry-based process, and may include learning that is cooperative and student-centred
Self-Engaged Learning: an effective learning environment for engaged individuals of all ages that promote self-efficacy and exploration in a term coined pedandragogy.
Social Cognition: a sub-topic of social psychology that explores the role that cognitive processes play in social interaction
Stakeholders: individuals who are affected by the actions of a group or organization
Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) Taxonomy: a taxonomy for classifying learning outcomes in terms of their complexity
Structuring Cognition: organizing knowledge outcomes so that the personal competency of the student can be achieved
Student Satisfaction: ensuring that the broad range of students are happy with diverse practices and engaged in their learning
Theological Pedagogy: a theory of learning that relates pedagogy to a higher being or force, guiding the learning of both the teacher and the student
Threshold Concepts: stem from two types of knowledge: declarative and functioning, contrasting core concepts of learning through performances of understanding
Transformative Education: tendencies placing the teacher as the designer of learning and the learner as the co-designer of knowledge
VARK Learning: providing instruction for learning through many different modes including visual, audio, read/write, and kinesthetic
