Making a Difference in Urban Schools: Ideas, Politics, and Pedagogy

What can be done to improve the educational experiences of students who live in cities with increasingly high levels of diversity and inequality? Making a Difference in Urban Schools evaluates how school and community leaders have worked to change urban education in Canada for the better over the past fifty years.

This analytic and comparative study traces the evolution of urban education in Toronto and Winnipeg from the 1960s onward. Jane Gaskell and Ben Levin identify important contrasts between the experiences in each city as a result of their different demographics, institutional structures, cultures, and politics. They also highlight the common issues and dilemmas faced by reformers in these two cities, across Canada, and globally – including many that persist and remain controversial to this day.

Jane Gaskell is a professor in the Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education and former dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Ben Levin is Canada Research Chair in Education Leadership and Policy and a professor in the Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.