Teacher Diversity in Canada: Leaky Pipelines, Bottlenecks, and Glass Ceilings

Authors

James Ryan, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
Katina Pollock, Western University
Fab Antonelli

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

Journal

Canadian Journal of Education

Volume

32

Issue

3

First Page

591

Last Page

617

Abstract

This article examines the racial diversity of the teacher population in Canada. In particular, we compare the number of teachers of colour in Canadian elementary and secondary schools from the 2001 and 2006 Census data with the diversity of the student and general populations. We also explore ways to understand the gap between the proportion of Canadian educators and students of colour by interrogating the leaky pipeline metaphor that scholars commonly employ to account for labour shortages. We contend that the pipeline metaphor, frequently used to account for supply and demand balances in various professions, does not sufficiently explain this disparity, and we explore others.

Citation of this paper:

Ryan, J., Pollock, K., & Antonelli, F. (2009). Teacher diversity in Canada: Leaky pipelines, bottlenecks and glass ceilings.Canadian Journal of Education, 32(3), 512–538.