No abstract

Segregation of visible minorities has persisted throughout time in Toronto. In examining these concentrations, the literature has been heavily focused on the notion that visible minorities are choosing to live in proximity to their respective ethno‐racial groups and that these are spaces of aspiration rather than marginalization in Canada. This paper raises questions about the assertion of “self‐segregation” by emphasizing affordability constraints on residential choices that are often rooted in discrimination in the labour market. Census data from 2016 and an adopted neighbourhood classification scheme were used to understand the spatial patterning of visible minorities in the Toronto census metropolitan area and highlight differences in the socio‐economic characteristics of visible minority dominant and white dominant census tracts. The findings invite the inference that economic opportunities play a critical role in the residential choices of visible minorities and raise concerns about the quality of life in visible minority neighbourhoods. This research contributes to our understanding of how social inequalities have impacted the socio‐spatial organization of the city of Toronto.

Affective polarization is on the rise in the Canadian context. Increasing polarization is commonly attributed to the nature of political discussion on social media platforms, but little is known about the affective consequences of the incivility of online discussion. We adopt a classic trust game to consider whether people punish the incivility of co-partisans and out-party individuals and whether there are gender-related differences in punishment. We also examine whether incivility can have spill-over effects on people’s out-party evaluations. Five pre-registered hypotheses were tested with a survey experiment fielded to a sample (N=974) of adult Canadian citizens who report some level of attachment to Canada’s three major parties (Liberal, Conservative, New Democratic Party). The study provides evidence for some of our hypotheses, but not all. Our findings support the theory that people punish the out-party for their politically-challenging views, regardless of how they are stated. There may however be some spillover effects of incivility on affective orientations towards the out-party. Interestingly, the incivility of co-partisans is punished, at least to the extent that it extinguishes the reward for an aligned viewpoint. Finally, we did not find evidence that women are more likely to be punished for incivility, and we see no evidence that the effects we observe vary across other dimensions we might think are important, like strength of partisanship, affective orientations, or political knowledge or interest. Our findings highlight significant nuance with respect to the effects of incivility on affective polarization, but overall they invite the inference that people do hold certain expectations of civility for individuals online and that when this norm is violated, there can be consequences.

The promotion of critical thinking and communication skills has become more crucial in the present. Enhancing the capabilities of elementary school children, enables them to solve the kinds of complex problems encountered in real life situations. Rolling a role play as an innovative teaching technique can be considered as useful for enhancing critical thinking and communication skills. It provides a platform where students work together in potentially real life situations. The use of role play in teachinglearning situations emphasizes on cognitive, affective and psychomotor aspects of children. The aim of the present paper is to probe the usefulness of role play in promoting critical thinking and communication skills amongst elementary school children. Descriptive research design has been taken up wherein the investigators have attempted to study the identification of role play activities and its significance in enhancing critical thinking and communication skills amongst elementary school children. The present paper also probes the level of critical thinking amongst elementary school children.