Research and publications

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Open Access
Advancing Black Inclusion and Addressing Anti-Black Racism in the Faculty of Education: A Reflection on Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities
(2022-06-09) Barrett, Sarah; Dove, Nicola
This report, written by the Special Advisor to the Dean on Black Inclusion and Anti-Black Racism (2021-2022) and Research Assistant to the Special Advisor provides a snapshot of the ways in which our Faculty has worked to address issues related to Black Inclusion and Anti-Black Racism and also create a record of what the Black members of our Faculty’s community identify as next steps.
Open Access
Increasing the Representation of Black Faculty Members at York: Report and Recommendations by the Joint Subcommittee of Employment Equity and Inclusivity.
(2020-01-09) Barrett, Sarah; Dua, Ena; Fallah, Mazyar; Idahosa, Pablo; James, Carl; Pillai Riddell, Rebecca
The Joint Sub-Committee on Employment Equity and Inclusivity has been charged with providing recommendations to the JCOAA on how best to increase the number of Black faculty members at York University. As an outcome of the 2018 negotiations between York University and YUFA, the Joint Subcommittee on Equity and Inclusivity was struck with a mandate to make recommendations on how the University can most effectively increase the representation of Black faculty at York.
Open Access
Evolution of new teachers' beliefs about teaching STSE: Report to school boards
(2013-08) Barrett, Sarah Elizabeth
This longitudinal multi‐case study followed four new science teachers over the course of five years. Its purpose was to examine the ways in which new science teachers integrate science‐technology‐society-environment (STSE) and inquiry‐based work into their teaching. I am particularly interested in new science teachers not only because of my work with prospective science teachers at York University’s Faculty of Education but also because this is a group that is simultaneously expected to usher in new and innovative approaches to teaching while receiving very little subject‐specific professional development to support their efforts (Luft, 2007).
Open Access
School and community engaged education (S.C.E.E.): Final Report
(2014-09) James, Carl; Barrett, Sarah Elizabeth; Barkaoui, Khaled; Dippo, Don; Ford, Donna; Gormley, Louise
Situated within a collaborative approach for supporting schools, the School and Community Engaged Education (SCEE) project was a three-year university/school board partnership (2008-2011, culminating in the TDSB/YCEC 2012 Summer Institute), created to examine ways of co-developing more inclusive forms of curriculum that are appropriate for students’ diverse needs, considerate of their cultural experiences, and supportive of their aspirations. Recognizing the critical links between inclusive and equitable teaching and learning scenarios, and student achievement and engagement, the project was an opportunity for five “high–needs” schools (Barrett, Ford & James, 2010) in the Toronto District School Board to examine ways that schools can integrate the histories, cultures, experiences and contributions of all students, thereby improving marginalized students’ participation and achievement.
Open Access
Emergency Distance Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Final Report
(2021-01-31) Barrett, Sarah Elizabeth
The report summarizes the findings of a mixed methods study of teachers’ experiences transitioning from face-to-face to emergency distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic school closures in Ontario Canada. Teachers were surveyed in May/June 2020 (n = 764) and then fifty were interviewed in June/July/August 2020. Findings suggest that the biggest consequence of the shift to emergency distance learning, for both teachers and students, was a disruption in established relationships. The report contains descriptions of how teachers handled the transition, professional development, assessment, student engagement, parents and parenting. Recommendations for future emergency situations are provided.
Open Access
Social Implications of Adolescents Engaging with Racist Trends on TikTok
(The Media Education Research Journal, 2021) Liu, Helen
This article examines a racist TikTok trend titled “How’s My Form” in order to understand the possible motivations behind adolescent users and their engagement with the social networking platform, TikTok. Guided by uses and gratifications theory, the social implications of adolescent engagement with such trends are explored alongside notions of accountability. In doing so, the efficacy of current media literacy education is questioned in order to determine whether standards are keeping pace with technologically driven social changes. The role progressions of recent adolescent generations from passive consumers to active producers on social media will also be considered.
Open Access
A whole-institution approach towards sustainability: a crucial aspect of higher education’s individual and collective engagement with the SDGs and beyond
(Emerald Insight, 2021-10) Kohl, Katrin; Isabel, Toman; Abidin Bin Sanusi, Zainal; Abdul Razak, Dzulkifli; Hopkins, Charles; Barthand, Matthias; Michelsen, Gerd; Dlouha, Jana
Purpose – Higher education and its leadership are not yet using their potential impact for a sustainable future. This paper aims to focus on UN developments and the long history of university involvement in sustainability might create more interest and understanding that sustainably oriented universities are actually possible and a much stronger role for higher education is needed when nations are discussing their future. Design/methodology/approach – Literature review with a focus on international treaties and declarations on the UN level and international university networks, literature review of the background and potential of the whole-institution approach and the need/suggestions for further research, also to measure advancement. Findings – History shows a strong engagement of higher education with sustainability from its beginnings. There have been strong calls/offers from within university networks to take a crucial role in moving towards sustainable development that involves more than teaching about sustainability. The international community calls for higher education to be involved in policymaking rather than simply implementation, have been limited and the full potential of higher education institutions using all opportunities such as being living labs for sustainability has not as yet been realized. Currently, calls for engagement are often still limited to training and providing research when scientific evidence is wanted.
Open Access
Early adolescents' perceptions and attitudes towards gender representations in video games
(Journal of Media Literacy Education, 2020-07-21) Liu, Helen
This study investigated adolescents’ perception and attitudes towards gender representation in video game covers, and the degree to which these depictions may influence their notions on gender and identification. Seventeen participants ranging from ages 12 and 13 participated in semi-structured interviews to explore this topic. This study’s conceptual framework encompassed social cognitive theory, gender schema theory, and cultivation theory. Findings suggest that gender representation in video games does influence the majority of participants’ notions of gender. However, there are differences between how males and females’ approach, interpret, and respond to this type of media. Findings also showcased that evidence of implicit bias was detected in both male and female participants, demonstrated through inconsistencies in their responses. Finally, the findings revealed a significant lack of identification from the majority of participants with video game characters, as many participants were able to clearly distinguish between simulated and real-life experiences.
Open Access
Creating spaces: testimonio, impossible knowledge, and academe
(International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2003) Haig-Brown, Celia
This article examines what it means to engage seriously with speech and writing events, such as testimonio, articulated by people whose theoretical base lies primarily in experience outside the walls of academe. I argue that we dismiss such unfamiliar scholarship to the detriment of all involved. If we are truly committed to learning, then we must expose ourselves to language forms and cultural norms that are different from those with which we are familiar. We must learn from them how to acknowledge the limits of our analysis and how to find “impossible knowledge” in unaccustomed places.
Open Access
“Returning the Dues:” Community and the Personal in a University-School Partnership
(Urban Education, 2001-03-01) Haig-Brown, Celia; James, Carl E.
This study uses interviews to explore students’ perspectives of a university path program, one initiative of a university-school partnership. Responses show that the abstraction of the program lives in concrete and personal dimensions for students as they move from high school to university in the same neighborhood. Advanced placement work at the university and the secondment of faculty from the school board blur distinctions between school and university. Most striking is the students’ desire to contribute to the community that has supported them and is most closely associated with their families, the school, and the university that lies, at least geographically, within community bounds.
Open Access
Continuing Collaborative Knowledge Production: Knowing when, where, how and why
(Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2001) Haig-Brown, Celia
This paper questions assumptions about conducting research based in programs developed to serve communities which have traditionally had restricted access to the university. Grounded in an off-campus Master of Education initiative, it raises a number of ethical considerations. The questions addressed are as follows. (1) When does one move to doing research on a project which has been a satisfactory collaboration between a university and a community? (2) How is an academic to think about a collaborative project which will not, or perhaps cannot, become a site of research? (3) Where, in the space between community members’ focus on the local/specific and an academic’s focus on the global/theoretical, is it appropriate to share what has been learned? (4) Why should members of a First Nations/Aboriginal community (read any traditionally excluded group) participate in a piece of research destined for the world of academe?
Open Access
Culturally Responsive Teaching: Stories of a First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Cross-Curricular Infusion in Teacher Education
(Leading English Education and Resource Network (LEARN), 2014-08-01) Vetter, Diane; Haig-Brown, Celia; Blimkie, Melissa
This paper explores how the work of the infusion of First Nation, Métis, and Inuit traditions, perspectives, and histories at York University’s Faculty of Education Barrie Site unfolds in practice. It also highlights the learning experiences of pre-service teachers, the majority of whom were non-Aboriginal. Using narrative accounts of practice in faculty and practicum classrooms, the authors elaborate on a set of guiding principles to highlight their practical application by demonstrating what their implementation looks like in local school classrooms. They subsequently describe the challenges faced by faculty and pre-service teachers as they moved theoretical knowledge into practical settings.
Open Access
Shifting Perspectives and Practices: Teacher Candidates’ Experiences of a First Nation, Métis and Inuit Infusion in Mainstream Teacher Education
(Brock University, Faculty of Education, 2014-10-09) Blimkie, Melissa; Vetter, Diane; Haig-Brown, Celia
This exploratory case study shares teacher candidates’ perspectives and experiences of an Aboriginal infusion at York University’s Faculty of Education field site in Barrie, Ontario. For this initiative, Aboriginal content and pedagogies were infused throughout placements and courses of the mainstream teacher education program. Teacher candidates shared that the Infusion prepared them to teach Aboriginal content in culturally respectful and meaningful ways by providing them with a foundation to build on and helping them to develop teaching practices inclusive of diverse ways of knowing and being in the world. These findings may be useful to other educators developing and implementing their own infusion initiatives.
Open Access
Towards a Pedagogy of Land: The Urban Context
(Canadian Society for the Study of Education, 2013) Styres, Sandra; Haig-Brown, Celia; Blimkie, Melissa
This article examines the possibilities when shifting what we have come to call a pedagogy of Land from rural to urban contexts. The authors explore some persisting questions around what it means to bring a pedagogy of Land into classrooms and communities in urban settings. The authors consider the ways a pedagogy of Land might translate from rural to urban contexts while addressing some of the ways this work may move forward in a good way. Further, the authors share various aspects that have allowed Land to inform both pedagogy and praxis in teacher education focusing on student success, particularly Aboriginal students within schools.
Open Access
Indigenous Thought, Appropriation and Non-Aboriginal People
(Canadian Society for the Study of Education, 2010-01-04) Haig-Brown, Celia
In this article, I explore the question, “What is the relationship between appropriation of Indigenous thought and what might be called ‘deep learning’ based in years of education in Indigenous contexts.” Beginning with an examination of meanings ascribed to cultural appropriation, I bring texts from Gee on secondary discourses, Foucault on the production of discourse, and Wertsch on the deep structures underpinning discourse into conversation with critical fieldwork experiences extracted from years of research and teaching. Ultimately hopeful, I conclude the article with direction from Indigenous scholars on appropriate cultural protocol in the use of Indigenous knowledges by non‐Aboriginal people in educational contexts.
Open Access
Taking Indigenous Thought Seriously: A Rant on Globalization with Some Cautionary Notes
(Canadian Society for the Study of Education, 2008) Haig-Brown, Celia
Open Access
A Pedagogy of the Land: Dreams of respectful relations
(McGill University, Faculty of Education, 2002) Haig-Brown, Celia; Dannenmann, Kaaren
This article arises out of a partnership between an aboriginal community member and a university faculty member whose relational focus is the development of a pedagogy of the land within the Indigenous Knowledge Instructors Program. (Re)creating traditional knowledge with others in contemporary contexts, as their birthright, is the goal of the program. We struggle to communicate and locate this work within an appropriate 'community.' Dreaming of respectful relations, we are committed to thinking through the complexity of such a quest.
Open Access
Coordinating policy layers of school fundraising in Toronto, Ontario, Canada: An institutional ethnography
(2019) Winton, Sue
In this article, I report findings from an investigation into the politics and coordination of school fundraising in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Theoretically grounded in institutional ethnography and critical policy analysis, the study began from the standpoint of parents asked to give money to their children’s school(s). I show how provincial and TDSB funding, parent involvement, fundraising, and school council policies organize parents’ experience of school fundraising. I also explore how participating in fundraising enables parents to meet neoliberal expectations of a “good parent” and how through their efforts to secure advantages for their children, fundraising parents are accomplices in the privatization of public education. I conclude by discussing possibilities for intervention into the social organization of school fundraising in Toronto schools.
Open Access
Between art and testimony: Transforming oral histories of Holocaust survivors into young adult fiction and creative non-fiction.
(Oral History Forum/Forum d’histoire oral, 2012) Krasny, Karen
Works of historical fiction and creative non-fiction written about the Holocaust continue to occupy an important place in both the literary and history curricula in K to 12 schools. In discussion with author Kathy Kacer, I describe the particular challenges of transforming oral testimonies of Holocaust survivors into young adult (YA) narratives including the ways in which these narratives are mitigated by the adult desire to educate and protect and by the undeniable influence of the publication of the diary of Anne Frank. By taking up the problem of bearing literary witness as a mode of pedagogical address through Spargo’s notion of vigilant memory and his reformulation of Levinasian ethics into terms of mourning, I demonstrate how oral histories directly or indirectly embedded in YA Holocaust narratives, might address the epistemological consequences of the Holocaust, specifically for invoking an ethical and social responsibility for the other through a resistance to consolation as a conventional form of commemoration.
Open Access
Mental Imagery and Affect in English/French Bilingual Readers: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective
(Canadian Modern Language Review, University of Toronto, Mar-08) Krasny, Karen; Sadoski, Mark
We investigated the evocation of mental imagery and affect in English/French bilinguals to determine whether the linguistic demands of reading in a second language (L2) limit readers’ ability to form non-verbal text representations of literary stories. The participants were 26 Grade 11 French immersion students enrolled in a Canadian high school. Each student read two literary stories, one in English and another in French. Next they rated story paragraphs for the degree of either mental imagery or emotional response evoked. Later, students reread the same texts and completed a writing task in which they reported their imagery or emotions in response to the two highest-rated paragraphs. Moderate to high correlations were found between ratings of imagery and emotional response for each story, for two French stories combined, for two English stories combined, and for all stories in both languages combined. Reading times were somewhat longer for the French versions. The patterns of response for both the ratings and the written reports replicate and extend earlier research and suggest that as bilingual readers progress in their ability to read in their L2, reports of imagery and affect become closer in kind and number to those reported in response to reading the same text in their first language.