Brock University’s Distinguished Professor designation is a lifetime appointment recognizing outstanding achievement in each recipient’s academic discipline. This series of articles highlights this year’s recipients. Read more about the award and its recipients on The Brock News.

Distinguished Professor Susan Drake has executed the traditional writing and grants expected of academics, but her most significant research impact in education has been felt in real classrooms across the globe.

Drake, Professor of Educational Studies, joined Brock University in 1989 as a freshly minted PhD with a passion. As a secondary school teacher, she experimented with innovations to engage students and enhance their learning.

“During my graduate studies, I discovered the educational theory to affirm my discoveries, and to expand upon them. I wanted to help teachers find the secrets to student success through engaging pedagogy and assessment,” Drake said.

Her research had always been grounded in hands-on work effectively bridging the practice-theory gap.

With expertise in curriculum design and assessment, often focusing on integrated and transdisciplinary curricula, Drake’s research uses a narrative research approach.

By connecting the patterns across educators’ stories and existing academic theories, Drake’s work generates new curriculum theories and offers practical classroom applications.

Drake said she is most proud of her connections to the field, notably “working over three years as a researcher in a local high school where my colleagues and I developed the basic process for implementing an integrated curriculum needed for a Ministry of Education policy initiative.”

Drake also headed a provincial team to design a holistic curriculum model. These formative real-world experiences provided the foundation for her future work.

“I was invited to lecture and work with educators across North America; these experiences enriched my research,” she said.

By the mid-’90s, the North American socio-political context changed abruptly when education entered the ‘age of accountability’ and meeting disciplinary standards as measured by standardized tests prevailed, Drake said.

In response, the theme of Drake’s work shifted to designing curriculum and assessment that integrated accountability mandates from the government and a relevant and engaging course of study for students.

Today, integrated curriculum has re-emerged, she said, as a method to teach transferable skills such as communication, critical thinking and problem-solving, creativity and technological literacy.

Drake has been invited internationally to deliver presentations, keynotes, consultations, and extended research discussions on the topic.  More locally, she recently worked with the Ontario Ministry of Education to review the revised language curriculum.

Drake has also worked with local educators reviewing their curriculum documents to solve curricula and assessment issues in Europe, Asia, Turkey, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

“As a result of working with so many different educational jurisdictions, I have enlarged my understanding of global education — the similarities across jurisdictions are striking,” she said.

In addition to her work in the field, Drake has published extensively including more than 100 articles and 11 books that were published by respected presses, such as Oxford University Press. Seven of her books have been translated, variously, into Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese and Thai.

Drake said most of these publications build on a grounded theory emerging from educators’ experiences.

“Often, practising educators read my work and contact me. In turn, I try to help them solve their current issues and this exchange adds to the theory/research base.”

For example, recently she worked with American educators in International Baccalaureate (IB) Schools to help them integrate focused reading instruction with the transdisciplinary IB curriculum.

Drake said the most fulfilling aspect of her career is working with students, many of whose academic lives she has supported long after they have left her classroom.

“I hope I have been a caring and effective mentor,” she said. “My students are my most valuable legacy.”