Congratulations to Dr. Jan Hare, Dean pro tem, on receiving a Spencer Foundation grant for her Indigenous-led Teacher Education in Global and Local Contexts: Setting Research Priorities and New Directions project.
The project, a three-day international symposium, will culminate in a final research report. The research report will detail a research agenda for Indigenous teacher education (ITE) and draw on critical dialogues, knowledge co-creation and symposium activities. It will also help guide research directions and establish research questions and key issues in ITE, based on priorities identified by scholars, teacher educators, students and community members taking part in the symposium, as well as those conducting research in this critical area of development.
The Spencer Foundation has been a leading funder of education research since 1971 and is the only national foundation focused exclusively on supporting education research. The Spencer Foundation supports high-quality, innovative research on education, and its programs provide funding for education-focused research projects, research training fellowships and additional field-building initiatives.
This edited volume addresses the pressing imperative to understand and attend to the needs of the fast-growing population of minority students who are increasingly considered “superdiverse” in their cultural, linguistic and racial backgrounds. Superdiverse learners—including native-born learners (Indigenous and immigrant families), foreign-born immigrant students and refugees—may fill multiple categories of “diversity” at once. This volume helps pre- and in-service teachers and teacher educators to move beyond the demographic backgrounds of superdiverse learners to consider not only their ways of being, motivations and social processes, but also the ongoing systemic issues of marginalization and inequity that confront these learners.
Challenging existing teaching and learning paradigms in the K-12 North American context, this volume provides new methods and examples for supporting superdiverse learners in a range of settings. Organized around different conceptual underpinnings of superdiversity, contributors identify the knowledge gaps and effective practices in engaging superdiverse learners, families and communities. With cutting-edge research on this growing topic, this text will appeal to researchers, scholars, educators, and graduate students in multilingual education, literacy education, teacher education, and international education.
Superdiversity and Teacher Education: Supporting teachers in working with culturally, linguistically, and racially diverse students, families, and communities is available through Routledge.
Thank you for joining us at the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture!
We hope you enjoyed the event. Please see below for a recording.
Date
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Time
5:30 to 7:00 pm PDT
Location
Online; register below
Climate Justice and Educational Responsibility
The evidence of climate change is irrefutable. What is less apparent is how different groups—rich and poor, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, youth and elders—are differently affected by climate change and related risks such as extreme weather events, floods, and wildfires. How can we bring together educators, activists, policy makers, Indigenous communities and elders, scholars and frontline communities to ensure we are all working towards environmental justice? What role does education play in supporting and preparing youth to participate in and address the crisis?
Event Description
The distinguished lecture series highlights ongoing work in the Faculty of Education and beyond to address some of society’s most pressing problems. Join Dr. Jan Hare, Dean pro tem of the Faculty of Education, as she engages Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis in conversation. Following the distinguished lecture, the Association of Canadian Deans of Education will launch its Accord on Education for a Sustainable Future, a document that highlights the role of education in preparing for the crisis that is on our doorstep.
Host
Dr. Jan Hare, Dean pro tem, Faculty of Education, UBC
Distinguished Speakers
Professors Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis, Department of Geography, UBC
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and international bestselling author of eight books, including No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, No Is Not Enough and On Fire, which have been translated into over 35 languages. Her most recent book is How to Change Everything: The Young Human’s Guide to Protecting the Planet and Each Other. She is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept and an inaugural Marielle Franco fellow of the Social Justice Initiative Portal Project at the University of Chicago. In 2018, she was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, and is now Honorary Professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers. In September 2021, she joined the University of British Columbia in the Department of Geography as UBC Professor of Climate Justice (tenured) and is the founding co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice.
Avi Lewis is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and educator. His 25-year journalism career has spanned directing and producing award-winning theatrically-released documentaries, The Take (2004) and This Changes Everything (2015) to hosting and reporting for tv networks worldwide including Canada’s City TV, the CBC, UK’s Channel 4 and Al Jazeera English. In 2017, he co-founded, and was Strategic Director of, The Leap – a grassroots climate organization launched to upend our collective response to the crises of climate, inequality and racism. From 2018-2021 he was a lecturer in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. In 2021’s Federal Election, Avi was the NDP candidate in the West Vancouver–Sunshine Coast–Sea-to-Sky riding and is currently an Associate Professor in the Geography Department in the Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia.
Featuring
Dr. Richard Barwell, Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
Dr. Sharon Wahl, Dean, Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick; President, Association of Canadian Deans of Education
The UBC Faculty of Education is pleased to partner with the Association of Canadian Deans of Education (ACDE) in presenting the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture. During the event, ACDE will launch its Accord on Education for a Sustainable Future, which outlines the responsibilities of faculties of education to understand, promote and contribute to a socially and ecologically just, healthy and flourishing society.
Recording
RECORDING: Dean's Distinguished Lecture: Climate Justice and Educational Responsibility
Event Poster
Please feel welcome to download a copy of our event poster.
Call for Contributions: Indigenous Historiographies, Place, and Memory in Decolonizing Educational Research, Policy, and Pedagogic Praxis
Special Issue of The Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education (JCIE) In Honour and Memory of Professor Michael Marker (1951-2021)
We are honoured to submit a Call for Contributions for a special issue of The Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education (JCIE) in honour, memory and celebration of the life and work of UBC Professor Michael Marker. Professor Marker was an Indigenous scholar, storyteller, elder, musician, gentle activist, and long-term relation of the Lummi Nation.
Contributions for the Special Issue
This special issue is sponsored by a collective composed of Professor Marker’s colleagues in the Department of Educational Studies at UBC: Drs. Hartej Gill, Deirdre Kelly, André Elias Mazawi, Bathseba Opini, Amy Parent, Michelle Stack, and Pierre Walter.
Contributions to the special issue could be in the form of conventional research papers, creative works or decolonizing works using photographs, features of the visual and performative arts, poetry, stories or songs (MP3), as long as these contributions engage some of the broad themes engaged by Professor Marker in his life and work. Abstracts must be submitted for editorial consideration before July 31, 2022.
In January 2022, Dr. Reg D’Silva, Dr. Lesley Andres, Anna Bin, Michael Wilkinson, and Dr. Siobhan McPhee (Faculty of Arts) received an Equity Enhancement Fund grant of $5,500 for the project “Equity in Faculty Hiring: Evaluation of a Two-year Hiring Pilot Initiative.” The project seeks to evaluate the two-year pilot initiative launched by the Faculty in 2020 to improve Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in the Faculty’s hiring practices. The funding from the Equity Enhancement Fund will support part of the team’s efforts in evaluating this pilot initiative.
From Octavia to Cherry: Queer of Color Critique, Ballroom Culture and Black 2SLGBT+ Inclusive Curriculum
Shamari Reid is an Assistant Professor of Critical Studies in Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Reid earned his doctorate in Curriculum & Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University. As a scholar, Dr. Reid’s research focuses on working with Black trans and queer youth and their communities to reimagine the ways we approach social justice teaching, learning and educational leadership. You can engage more with Dr. Reid and his work on his personal website: shamarireid.com.
Event Description
“This world is for me too, honey”- Octavia St. Laurent
“If only my teachers learned from ballroom, school and the world would be more human” – Cherry
Recognizing the negative schooling experiences of Black 2SLGBT+ youth, the fact that informal 2SLGBT+ curriculum often centers whiteness and the lack of clarity around what constitutes formal 2SLGBT+ inclusive curricula, this talk will draw on Queer of Color Critique (QOC critique) to present an approach to designing K-12 2SLGBT+ inclusive curriculum that affirms, celebrates and reflects the lived experiences of Black 2SLGBT+ youth. In addition, I offer curricular examples from ballroom culture to illustrate how curriculum that is grounded in QOC critique can resist reproducing 2SLGBT+ inclusive curriculum that centers whiteness and damage-centered narratives of 2SLGBT+ individuals.
Featuring
Dr. Shamari Reid, University of Oklahoma
Dr. Harper Keenan, Director of SOGI UBC
Dr. Reginald D’Silva, Associate Dean, Equity & Strategic Programs
Lee Iskander, Graduate Research Assistant, SOGI UBC
Welcome to the Community Update’s first issue of 2022, which I hope will be a kinder and gentler year for our communities and our province.
The past 22 months have taught us that even the most stable and orderly of systems, like BC’s public education system, can be thrown off balance by external forces. As a Faculty of Education, our concerns include not only learners and educators in the K-12 education system but also early childhood learners and educators, adult learners and educators, and our own teacher education and graduate students. All of these groups have been severely impacted by COVID-19 and related disruptions to health, learning and community cohesion. Teaching and learning have changed as a result, and will continue to change into the future.
The Faculty of Education is using this notion of the constancy of change as an opportunity to develop new educational possibilities. Our recently launched Edith Lando Virtual Learning Centre is helping to remediate the educational inequities highlighted by the pandemic, by designing and distributing current learning tools and evidence-informed technological practices among communities often overlooked and underserved by online education. Through the Centre, instructors, students and community groups collaborate to transform online education practices, develop timely and place-centred professional development opportunities for rural educators, support early childhood educators’ focus on the socio-emotional wellness of children and families, honour Indigenous and intergenerational knowledges and practices, and create online networks of support, including second language learning resources for immigrant and refugee students and parents. I invite you to share information about the Edith Lando Virtual Learning Centre within your networks.
One of the happiest pieces of news I’ve received recently is the announcement that one of our emeritus faculty members, Dr. Donald McKenzie, was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. Dr. McKenzie, who was cross-appointed in both the School of Kinesiology and the Faculty of Medicine, was recognized for his contributions to exercise and sports medicine, including his work with breast cancer survivors. In 1995, Dr. McKenzie pursued research that challenged the view that engaging in physical activity would result in lymphedema for breast cancer survivors. His successful study engendered Abreast In A Boat, which raises awareness about breast cancer and demonstrates that women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer can lead full and active lives. I offer my sincere congratulations to Dr. McKenzie on this recognition!
I am also pleased to announce that UBC’s Gateway Building, slated to open in 2024 as a home for the Schools of Kinesiology and Nursing, Integrated Student Health and Wellbeing Services & Programs, Language Sciences Initiatives, and components of UBC Health, has been recognized with the 2021 Canadian ArchitectAward of Excellence. To be located at the corner of Wesbrook Mall and University Boulevard, the Gateway Building will serve as a principal point of entry to the campus and will incorporate learning, research, and community outreach spaces that combine Musqueam building traditions with leading-edge sustainability approaches.
On November 15, 2021, Dr. Cindy Blackstock delivered the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture, entitled “Reconciling History”. In case you missed what was a moving, enlightening and ultimately, hopeful event, a recording of the session is now available. Please do take some time to listen to it, and let me know whether Dr. Blackstock’s lecture touched you, as it did me.
Nearly one-third of BC’s K-12 public education students attend schools outside the main urban areas, including larger centres such as Prince George and smaller communities located in more remote parts of the province. Many of these communities, which have very different needs from urban communities, are challenged to recruit and retain qualified teachers. The Faculty of Education’s new rural and remote teacher education program, the first of its kind in BC, will address this need through a blended (online and in-person components) program for elementary and middle years teacher-candidates. The first intake begins August 2022, with in-person classes held at the UBC West Kootenay Rural Teacher Education Program Learning Centre in Nelson, BC. More.
The latest issue of the BC TEAL Journal, the journal of the Association of BC Teachers of English as an Additional Language, has been released. The open access journal is hosted by the UBC Library and edited by the Okanagan School of Education’s Dr. Scott Douglas. Nine peer-reviewed articles and one editorial cover a range of topics related to English as an additional language, including universal design for learning, social justice content in English language learning programs, and more. More.
Neoliberalism and Public Education Finance in Canada: Reframing Educational Leadership as Entrepreneurship is a new book by Faculty of Education authors Dr. Wendy Poole, Dr. Vicheth Sen and Dr. Gerald Fallon. Situated in the world of BC’s school district administrators (SDAs), the book reports on research into a neoliberal public education policy environment that is characterized by retrenchment of government expenditure on public education, and the imperative for school districts to actively generate supplementary revenue through entrepreneurial and other means. More.
Please join me for the UBC Dean of Education’s Community & Alumni Engagement Series. This is an online speaker series focusing on important questions and significant priorities that are engaging educators today. This dynamic series brings together researchers, practitioners, educators, youth, and you—the participants—to discuss how educators and students are making a difference every day, and explore how we, as a community, can support and empower young people to face the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Our next conversation, focusing on Climate Change in Education and Supporting Youth Mental Health, is scheduled for February 15, 2022 beginning at 5:00 pm. More.
Situated in the world of BC’s school district administrators (SDAs), the book reports on research into a neoliberal public education policy environment that is characterized by retrenchment of government expenditure on public education, and the imperative for school districts to actively generate supplementary revenue through entrepreneurial and other means. SDA initiatives to protect public funding and to generate new sources of funding through business-like activities are discussed, with attention to the ways in which SDAs responded to the policy environment in locally contextual conditions.
The book’s themes include:
The impact of entrepreneurial public education finance policy on financial equity between school districts in a spatially diverse province, and the implications for equity of student access to quality education; and
How SDAs negotiated their subjectivities as educational leaders within a policy rationality that compelled a business-like model of leadership.
The authors propose a vision of educational leadership that transcends the parochialism and self-interestedness of entrepreneurial leadership at the school district level, and moves toward public education and educational leadership for the common good.
The book will appeal to those whose interests include K-12 education finance, K-12 international education, K-12 education policy, critical analyses of neoliberal K-12 education policy and its impacts and K-12 educational administration and leadership.
