Page 95 - THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 11 AND 12 | Cooperative Education

C. THE INQUIRY PROCESS OVERALL EXPECTATIONS
By the end of this course, students will:
C1. Exploration and Investigation: explore and investigate a topic, issue, or process relevant to the cooperative education experience, formulating questions to guide research, gathering information, and making connections to the cooperative education experience
C2. Analysis and Communication: analyse the information gathered through the investigation and communicate results, making connections to the cooperative education experience and other current and future endeavours
SPECIFIC EXPECTATIONS
C1. Exploration and Investigation
By the end of this course, students will:
C1.1 identify and explore a variety of topics, issues, and/or processes related to the cooperative education experience (e.g., emerging trends
in specific industry sectors; wages, benefits and potential employment opportunities; pathways to apprenticeship; the impact of social media on the workplace; new equipment available for improving workplace safety; the need for a new app related to the organization or sector; a recycling program for a construction project; innovative hair-colouring techniques; new soldering techniques; the relationship between merchandising and sales; conflict-resolution techniques and strategies; poverty, racism, sexism, mental health [as these issues relate to workplaces]; biodiversity, pollution, climate change, natural disasters [as these issues relate to particular sectors]; getting workers to adopt changes that make food-processing safer; legal processes for developing a patent; business plan models for starting your own business; design processes for developing a computer application; how marketing plans are drawn up)
Teacher prompts: “What have you noticed in your co-op experience that interests you? What do you want to know more about?” “What issues or topics related to your co-op sector have been addressed in the media?” “In what ways has your co-op sector changed in recent years? What caused these changes? What future developments might be expected in view of these changes?” “What are some tasks you have performed during your co-op experience
that you might want to investigate?” “Before you started your co-op placement, you explored some topics related to the placement or the sector. Now that you have started your placement, how may your experience to date provoke further thinking and deeper exploration of
one or more of these topics?”
C1.2 develop questions to guide their research on a chosen topic, issue, or process (e.g., factual questions:“What is the legislation on pay equity in Canada?”; causal questions:“How is the agricultural sector responding to a potential future labour shortage?”; comparative questions:“What are some current retail trends in Canada? Are they different from trends around the world?”), making connections to their cooperative education experience
Teacher prompts: “You’ve brainstormed a list of questions on the topic of gender equity in the workplace to guide your research. When you review the list, do you notice any questions that overlap and that might be combined into one question? Are any of the questions only marginally related to your topic? If you remove them, do the remaining questions provide a focus for your investigation? What will be your next step?” “How could your factual question about truck and coach apprenticeship be adjusted to support deeper learning?” “Your chosen topic is the impact that unions have had on different aspects of work, such as health, safety, and well-being. How do your research questions support learning about different perspectives on this topic?” “How can you check for bias
in your questions?”
THE INQUIRY PROCESS
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Creating Opportunities through Co-op
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