Educating Adults for Citizenship: Critiquing Adequate Language Practices and Canada’s Citizenship Test

Authors

  • Casey Megan Burkholder McGill University
  • Marianne Filion McGill University

Keywords:

Adult Education, Citizenship, Canada, Literacy, Immigrants

Abstract

In 2012, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) implemented a requirement that all aspiring Canadians who wish to take the Citizenship Test must have an adequate level of English or French language skills, defined as Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 4. The CLB 4 language policy directly and, we argue, problematically links language abilities with the right to citizenship for new immigrants, and relatedly, assumes a deficit conception of literacy. We examine the discourses embedded within the citizenship study guide, Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship (2012), the new language requirement policy, and the CIC website in order to expose how these place problematic restrictions on new immigrants who aspire to become Canadian.

Author Biographies

Casey Megan Burkholder, McGill University

Casey Burkholder is a PhD student at McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education whose research surrounds the existing and desired educational and literacy rights for Hong Kong’s non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students. Her research interests originate from her time teaching junior high school to NCS youth in Hong Kong. She also loves to draw.

Marianne Filion, McGill University

Marianne is a PhD student in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University.  Her interests lie in educational philosophy, particularly in the aims of education for citizenship and in liberal democratic societies.  Her research focus is on teacher education programs and how they approach pluralism and multiculturalism.

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Published

2014-11-15

How to Cite

Burkholder, C. M., & Filion, M. (2014). Educating Adults for Citizenship: Critiquing Adequate Language Practices and Canada’s Citizenship Test. Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 27(1), 1–14. Retrieved from https://cjsae.library.dal.ca/index.php/cjsae/article/view/3336

Issue

Vol. 27 No. 1 (2015): November 2014

Section

Articles

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