Abstract
Most Canadian teacher education programs are offered in urban centers, resulting in limited access for rural and remote Canadians unwilling or unable to relocate to participate in pre-service teacher education. To better understand the extent of this issue and provide Canadian teacher education programs with current data, this study examines how many Canadians live within a reasonable commuting distance from at least one program—a distance we define as a 1-hour drive, one-way. Using ArcGIS and current Statistics Canada data, we analyze the populations that have geographic access to Canadian programs, the populations that are excluded, and offer recommendations for stakeholders across institutions so that we might continue to improve how we offer teacher education to students in rural and remote communities across the country.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Program models of teacher education in Canada are varied, and often changing to meet the needs of students. Naming conventions and offerings also differ between institutions. While this chapter offers some insights into the locations of these programs, exploring the nuances in how these programs are conceptualized and implemented extends beyond the scope of this research.
- 3.
In the consecutive model, students may have already left their home communities to pursue their initial undergraduate studies.
- 4.
Program stakeholders were often hesitant or unwilling to provide information with regard to the demographics and number of students who were pursuing their community-based/blended program models, where options exist, which meant we were unable to provide a meaningful consideration of them in this chapter.
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Smith, C.W., Peller, P. (2020). “You Can’t Get There from Here”: Mapping Access to Canada’s Teacher Education Programs. In: Corbett, M., Gereluk, D. (eds) Rural Teacher Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2560-5_3
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