Active school travel (AST) is promoted in many jurisdictions, including Ontario, Canada, where there is provincial support for school travel planning (STP) efforts. Two pillars of school travel plans in the province are education and encouragement. For these pillars to stand, relevant stakeholders must be cognizant of and understand the issues and stakes. For this reason, we deem it important to understand how AST is communicated. In this research we adopt framing analysis to investigate the ways in which various organizations communicate to the public around AST. A frame is a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to a particular phenomenon, and thus helps to set the parameters for conversations about policy. In the case of AST, framing can influence what policy alternatives are perceived as available by children, parents, and their wider communities. The research is supported by natural language processing techniques applied to publicly available documents from Ontario stakeholders involved in school travel planning. We then compare the findings from these documents to a selection of academic studies on AST. We conclude that framing of AST in Ontario is mostly empirical-scientific in style, and largely in agreement with academic research on AST. However, it is essentially conservative and does not challenge the status quo of motorized travel. Furthermore, the frames tend to download responsibility for change to households, which limits the scope of policy alternatives by keeping collective action out of the frame.

许多司法管辖区都提倡主动学校旅行 (AST)，其中包括加拿大安大略省，该省为学校旅行计划 (STP) 工作提供省级支持。该省学校旅行计划的两大支柱是教育和鼓励。为了使这些支柱站稳脚跟，相关利益相关者必须认识并理解问题和利害关系。因此，我们认为了解 AST 的沟通方式非常重要。在本研究中，我们采用框架分析来调查各个组织围绕 AST 与公众进行沟通的方式。框架是一个中心组织思想或故事情节，为特定现象提供意义，从而有助于设定政策对话的参数。就 AST 而言，框架可能会影响儿童、家长及其更广泛的社区认为可以采取的政策选择。该研究得到了自然语言处理技术的支持，该技术应用于参与学校旅行规划的安大略省利益相关者的公开文件。然后，我们将这些文件的发现与精选的 AST 学术研究进行比较。我们的结论是，安大略省 AST 的框架在风格上主要是经验科学的，并且在很大程度上与 AST 的学术研究一致。但本质上还是保守的，并没有挑战机动出行的现状。此外，这些框架往往将变革的责任归咎于家庭，这通过将集体行动排除在框架之外而限制了政策选择的范围。