A Brock University professor is being recognized for his outstanding contributions to educational psychology with an award in memory of his friend and mentor.

Zopito Marini, professor in the Department of Child and Youth, recently received the 2017 Canadian Association for Educational Psychology (CAEP) Robbie Case Memorial Award for his research related to bullying and victimization.

“Robbie Case was a brilliant builder of psychological theories designed to help children. He was also a very dedicated teacher,” says Marini. “Receiving this award is rather unique in that in addition to having great professional significance, it has deeply personal meaning as Robbie was my teacher, supervisor, mentor and valued friend.”

Marini, a 3M National Teaching Fellow and founding Chair of the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock, did his graduate work at the University of Toronto with the late Robbie Case, a noted scholar and leading researcher in the field of child and adolescent cognitive development.

For the last 30 years, Marini has been doing research related to social cognition, peer relationships, bullying and civility, which were results of working in Case’s lab on the development of co-operation.

“Curiously, we found that while many children adopted co-operative strategies, there were a substantial number who adopted exploitative strategies, which eventually we came to recognize and define as bullying.”

Along with presenting at two conferences for receiving this award, Marini will be delivering the keynote address at the CAEP annual meeting in Regina in 2018.

Zopito Marini, left, with Deborah Butler, President, Canadian Association for Educational Psychology and Marion Porath, Professor, University of British Columbia at the Robbie Case Memorial Award ceremony in Calgary.